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Minister to lead march in footsteps of Gandhi
India's Tourism and Culture Minister Ambika Soni will lead a march in South Africa on August 16 to commemorate the centenary of a historic march organised by Mahatma Gandhi against an oppressive discriminatory law.
- IANS
- Published: 23:35 August 3, 2008
Johannesburg: India's Tourism and Culture Minister Ambika Soni will lead a march in South Africa on August 16 to commemorate the centenary of a historic march organised by Mahatma Gandhi against an oppressive discriminatory law.
The march will be part of a series of events organised by the Indian mission here.
The original march was prompted by the Asiatic Law Amendment Ordinance of August 1906, requiring any person of Indian origin to register by a certain date or forego the right to live in then Transvaal province of South Africa.
Outraged by this new discriminatory law, the Transvaal Indian Congress asked Gandhi, then resident in Durban, to come to Transvaal to assist in fighting this injustice legally. Among Gandhi's first actions was to publish an interpretation of the new Act in Indian languages, pointing out how insulting the law was in demanding that Indians give prints of their ten fingers, as if they were criminals.
Gandhi's most famous tool for resistance, Satyagraha, was also born during this time. This passive resistance saw the government of the day trying to engage the community through Gandhi, but after long negotiations with Prime Minister Jan Smuts failed, drastic action was agreed upon.
On August 16, 1908 Gandhi led about 3,000 citizens on a protest march against the Registration Certificates, which culminated at the Hamidia Mosque in the Johannesburg suburb of Newtown with a symbolic bonfire as Indians burnt about 800 registration certificates in a large cauldron outside as an act of defiance against the laws.
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