7 Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi 7rural atmosphere of his home in India to the cosmopolitan
life of London was not easy for him. As he struggled pain-
fully to adapt himself to Western food, dress, and etiquette,
he felt awkward. During this time he took solace in read-
ing philosophical tomes, and he discovered the principle
of nonviolence as enunciated in Henry David Thoreau’s
“Civil Disobedience.”
South African Activist
In 1891 Gandhi returned to India. Unsuccessful in Bombay
due to the overcrowded legal profession there, in 1893 he
accepted an offer of a year’s contract from an Indian law
firm in the British colony of Natal in South Africa. At
Natal he built a large practice. His interest soon turned to
the problem of fellow Indians who had come to South
Africa as labourers. He had seen how they were treated as
inferiors in India, in England, and then in South Africa. In
1894 he founded the Natal Indian Congress to agitate for
Indian rights. Yet he remained loyal to the British Empire.
In 1899, during the South African War, he raised an ambu-
lance corps and served the South African government.
Later in 1906, however, Gandhi began his peaceful revolu-
tion. Thousands of Indians joined him in this civil
disobedience campaign. He was imprisoned twice. Yet in
World War I he again organized an ambulance corps for
the British before returning home to India in 1914.
Emergence as Leader of Nationalist India
From 1915 to 1918, Gandhi seemed to hover uncertainly on
the periphery of Indian politics. Not until February 1919,
provoked by the British insistence on pushing through
the Rowlatt Bills—which empowered the authorities to