![]() ![]() ![]() It was around 1904 that Gandhi began to think about his ‘duty’ to the wider community, and not just to his clients, although Swan argues that at that time Gandhi was still thinking about the wider middle classes, and not indentured labourers or non-Indians. Indian traders and middle classes had already formed associations to represent their interests before Gandhi arrived in South Africa. Gandhi, as Maureen Swan has demonstrated, was not the initiator of Indian political activity in Natal and South Africa. Yet for some critics he was too constrained by the limits of his middle-class formation and failed to generalise his commitment to a truly universal philosophy of human rights. From a representative of a small faction of one ethnic group Gandhi was forced by the logic of his ‘experiments with truth’ to become a defender of the rights of the oppressed and downtrodden. Gandhi himself was transformed by the struggles he waged: his first battles for the rights of a small group of Indians in South Africa eventually broadened his outlook into a more universal struggle for human rights. Gandhi’s campaigns forged a new form of struggle against oppression that became a model for political and ethical struggles in other parts of the world – especially in India (the struggle for independence) and the United States (the civil rights campaign of the 1960s). The passive resistance campaigns led by MK Gandhi in South Africa had huge consequences not only for the history of the country but also for world history in general. ![]()
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