Gandhi’s South African years shaped his views on race and caste.

Evidence

In his recent biography of Gandhi, the historian Ramachandra Guha argues that it was the two decades he spent working in South Africa that made Gandhi a Mahatma. His canonisation—the first time he was publicly called Mahatma—was in 1915, soon after he returned from South Africa to begin work in India, at a meeting in Gondal, close to his hometown, Porbandar, in Gujarat. At the time, few in India knew more than some very sketchy, rather inaccurate accounts of the struggles he had been engaged in. These need to be examined in some detail because whether or not they made him a Mahatma, they certainly shaped and defined his views on caste, race and imperialism. His views on race presaged his views on caste. — Ambedkar, B R, Annihilation of Caste_ The Annotated…, 183

Categorization

• SEED: An essay angle: tracing how Gandhi’s racial experiences in South Africa presaged his caste positions — the colonial apprenticeship of his social philosophy.
• XREF: connects to: All later South African resistance debates trace to Paerl’s 1788 revolt questions — David Theo Goldberg, The Threat of Race: Reflections on…, 1381