M K Gandhi An Indian Patriot In South Africa

M. K. Gandhi An Indian Patriot in South Africa Originally published in 1909, this, the first biography of Gandhi, was written when he was in South Africa, fighting for human rights for the Indian settlers. Contents Include: The Batteries on the Reef, The Man Himself, A Compact, The White City, His Parents, Early Days, Changes, Life in London, Disillusioned, The Awakening of Natal, A Stormy Experience, The Heart Of The Trouble, Plague Days, A Dreamer Of Dreams, The Zulu Rebellion, The Great Struggle, The Other Side, Passive Resistance, Religious Views Many of the earliest books, particularly those dating back to the 1900s and before, are now extremely scarce and increasingly expensive. Obscure Press are republishing these classic works in affordable, high quality, modern editions, using the original text and artwork.

M. K. Gandhi: Indian Patriot in South Africa by Rev. Joseph John DokeI have nothing new to teach the world. Truth and Non-violence are as old as the hills. All I have done is to try experiments in both on as vast a scale as I could. In doing so I have sometimes erred and learnt by my errors. Life and its problems have thus become to me so many experiments in the practice of truth and non-violence.

Joseph John Doke (1861-1913) was an English Baptist Minister. He travelled to Cape Town in 1882 to establish a Baptist church at Graaff- Reinet. He also went to India to study mission stations. He was president of the Baptist Union of South Africa from 1906 to 1907. In 1909, he wrote a biographical sketch of Ghandi under the title M. K. Gandhi: Indian Patriot in South Africa. In 1913, he wrote his first novel The Secret City: A Romance of the Karroo. His second novel, The Queen of the Secret City, was published in 1916 after his death. Due to the age and scarcity of the original work, some small sections of text may be affected.

This is the first biography of Gandhiji , which was written when he was in South Africa, fighting for human rights for Indian settlers. The material contained in the book was first published in the London Indian Chronicle in 1909. The author Rev. Joseph J. Doke, was a Minister of the Johannesberg Baptist Church at the time when Gandhiji launched his agitation against the South African Government in 1908.

A biography detailing Gandhi’s twenty-year stay in South Africa and his attitudes and behavior in the nation’s political context. In the pantheon of freedom fighters, Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi has pride of place. His fame and influence extend far beyond India and are nowhere more significant than in South Africa. “India gave us a Mohandas, we gave them a Mahatma,” goes a popular South African refrain. Contemporary South African leaders, including Mandela, have consistently lauded him as being part of the epic battle to defeat the racist white regime. The South African Gandhi focuses on Gandhi’s first leadership experiences and the complicated man they reveal—a man who actually supported the British Empire. Ashwin Desai and Goolam Vahed unveil a man who, throughout his stay on African soil, stayed true to Empire while showing a disdain for Africans. For Gandhi, whites and Indians were bonded by an Aryan bloodline that had no place for the African. Gandhi’s racism was matched by his class prejudice towards the Indian indentured. He persistently claimed that they were ignorant and needed his leadership, and he wrote their resistances and compromises in surviving a brutal labor regime out of history. The South African Gandhi writes the indentured and working class back into history. The authors show that Gandhi never missed an opportunity to show his loyalty to Empire, with a particular penchant for war as a means to do so. He served as an Empire stretcher-bearer in the Boer War while the British occupied South Africa, he demanded guns in the aftermath of the Bhambatha Rebellion, and he toured the villages of India during the First World War as recruiter for the Imperial army. This meticulously researched book punctures the dominant narrative of Gandhi and uncovers an ambiguous figure whose time on African soil was marked by a desire to seek the integration of Indians, minus many basic rights, into the white body politic while simultaneously excluding Africans from his moral compass and political ideals. Praise for The South African Gandhi “In this impressively researched study, two South African scholars of Indian background bravely challenge political myth-making on both sides of the Indian Ocean that has sought to canonize Gandhi as a founding father of the struggle for equality there. They show that the Mahatma-to-be carefully refrained from calling on his followers to throw in their lot with the black majority. The mass struggle he finally led remained an Indian struggle.” —Joseph Lelyveld, author of Great Soul: Mahatma Gandhi and His Struggle with India “This is a wonderful demonstration of meticulously researched, evocative, clear-eyed and fearless history writing. It uncovers a story, some might even call it a scandal, that has remained hidden in plain sight for far too long. The South African Gandhi is a big book. It is a serious challenge to the way we have been taught to think about Gandhi.” —Arundhati Roy, author of The God of Small Things