South African Indians joined the anti-apartheid struggle against Gandhi’s politics, not through it

Evidence

In all his years in South Africa, Gandhi maintained that Indians deserved better treatment than Africans. The jury is still out on whether or not Gandhi’s political activity helped or harmed the Indian community in the long run. But his consistent attempts to collaborate with the British government certainly made the Indian community vulnerable during the rise of African nationalism. When Indian political activists joined the liberation movement under African leadership in the 1950s and saw their freedom as being linked to the freedom of African people, they were breaking with Gandhi’s politics, not carrying on his legacy. When Indians joined the Black Consciousness Movement in the 1970s seeking to build a broader Black identity, they were actually upending Gandhian politics. It is these people, many of whom did their time in Robben Island with Nelson Mandela and other African comrades, who have saved the South African Indian community from being painted as a race of collaborators and from being isolated, even expelled, like the Indians in Uganda were in 1972. — Ambedkar, B R, Annihilation of Caste_ The Annotated…, 266

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to the broader examination of Gandhi’s actual record versus his sainted reputation, a recurring thread in the reader’s caste-annihilation study since Gandhi opposed Ambedkar’s anti-caste politics.
• QUESTION: Worth chasing: how exactly did the 1972 Ugandan expulsion of Indians shape fears and the stakes for South African Indians’ political choices?