Freedom, Dignity, and Decolonization: Two Case Studies – India and South Africa

Freedom, Dignity, and Decolonization:

Two Case Studies –

India and South Africa

India:• Before the 20th century, few

inhabitants of the Indian subcontinent thought of themselves as “Indians”

• Cultural identities were local and infinitely varied

• The most important political expression of an all-Indian identity took shape in the Indian National Congress (established in 1885)

Mohandas K. Gandhi:• 1893, accepted a job with an Indian firm in South

Africa

• Personally experienced overt racism in South Africa

• Began to protest the South Africa’s policies of racial segregation

• Emerging political philosophy, known as Satyagraha (“truth force”), was an active and confrontational, though nonviolent, approach to political action

• Returning to India in 1914, Gandhi rose within leadership ranks of the INC

• Called Mahatma, Great Soul

Campaigns:- Boycott of British Cloth- Salt March- “Quit India”- Addressed injustices regarding untouchables- Addressed issues of religious intolerance

I could not resist this

French cartoon on

Gandhi!

However, Gandhi opposed a modern industrial future and advocated self-sufficient villages to address issues of poverty and injustice in the Indian subcontinent

Of course, Jawaharlal Nehru, another Indian nationalist, a colleague of Gandhi’s, and the first prime minister of embraced modernization, science, secularism, and industrialization

The India of today is Nehru’s India!

A Modern,Secular,

IndustrializedIndia, the

world’s largest democracy!

Case Study: South Africa - South Africa had been independent of Great Britain since 1910

- However, independence had been granted to a government wholly controlled by a white settler minority

• Some whites were descended from British settlers but a politically dominant section of whites descended from the early Dutch settlers (1600s -Boers) and were known as Afrikaners

• The Boers had unsuccessfully sought independence from a British-ruled South Africa in two bitter struggles (the Boer Wars, 1880–1881 and 1899-1902)

• However, while the Boers lost the wars, they did eventually gain control of the white-only South African government after independence

• The Boer concern over race was expressed most clearly in the policy of apartheid which attempted to separate blacks from whites in every conceivable way

• Rigid “pass laws” were enacted to control the movement of Africans to cities

• “Native reserves,” or Bantustans, served as ethnic homelands

• However, black South Africans did NOT accept apartheid and in 1912 founded the African National Congress (ANC)

• The ANC was led by educated, professional, and middle-class Africans who sought political equality within society

• During the 1950s, a new and younger generation of the ANC leaders included Nelson Mandela

• But in 1960 at Sharpeville, police fired on unarmed demonstrators and killed sixty-nine demonstrators

• The government also banned the ANC and imprisoned its leadership

• In 1976 in an impoverished black neighborhood called Soweto, hundreds were killed

-The trigger for the uprising was the government’s decision to enforce education for Africans in the hated language of white Afrikaners rather than English – This decision started an uprising that ended in bloodshed

• In addition, the international community began a divestment movement or the withdrawal of private investment funds in the South African economy to protest the inequities of the apartheid system

• In 1994, the first inclusive national election resulted in bringing the ANC to power

F.W. De Klerk was the last apartheid-elected

President. He dismantled apartheid and shared a Nobel Peace Prize with

Nelson Mandela in 1993.