Minister celebrates impact of Gandhi’s vision in India
MINISTER of International Relations and Co-operation Maite Nkoana-Mashabane met Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi in Gandhinagar, Gujurat State, in India yesterday at an event to celebrate the centenary of the return of Mahatma Gandhi from South Africa to India.
The event also marked the Pravasi Bharatiya Divas, or Day of Indians in the Diaspora, honouring the contribution of Indians living abroad to India.
In a speech at the celebration, the minister noted that while in South Africa, Gandhi had founded the National Indian Congress in 1894 and, through his resistance to racial discrimination, had developed his concepts and philosophy of “satyagraha” and “ahimsa”.
“These concepts Gandhi developed in South Africa formed the spiritual and intellectual bedrock of his approach of passive resistance, which differed considerably with how it was understood in Western philosophy.
“In his own words, Gandhi said: ‘Truth (satya) implies love, and firmness (agraha) engenders and therefore serves as a synonym for force’.
“I thus began to call the Indian movement satyagraha, that is to say, the force which is born of truth and love or nonviolence, and gave up the use of the phrase ‘passive resistance’, in connection with it, so much so that even in English writing we often avoided it and used instead the word ‘satyagraha’ itself ’.
“The power of these concepts would not just lead to India’s independence in 1948, but would profoundly influence Dr Martin Luther King and the Civil Rights Movement in the US,” said Nkoana-Mashabane.
“The non-violent approach of Dr King’s activism was based on his understanding of Gandhi’s experiences in South Africa and India.”
She noted that
Nelson Mandela had said Gandhi’s experiences in South Africa had made it possible for “each one of us to claim the immortal Mahatma Gandhi as our national hero”.
“The bond between South Africa and India is one that is forged by our respective peoples,” the minister said, adding that South Africa was home to the largest community of Indians outside of India. “According to the latest census figures, South Africa’s Indian population numbers approximately 1.3 million or about 2.7 percent of South Africa’s population.”
Nkoana-Mashabane said South Africa would like to see better co-operation with India in implementing its National Development Plan, particularly in the fields of Information and Communications Technology, health care and renewable energy. “Our two countries have a lot to learn from one another. We can find innovative solutions to our common challenges.”
She noted that the leaders of both countries had agreed to raise annual two-way trade from its present $15 billion to $18bn by the year 2018. It is our hope that we will be able to use our historic and cordial relations to tackle our common challenges and realise our shared aspirations.
And she said South Africa looked forward to the contribution India could make to shaping a new international financial architecture as first president of the Brics New Development Bank, which would also provide South Africa with another concrete tool for development objectives.
Nkoana-Mashabane also said South Africa, India and the other members of Brics, as well as Ibsa (the India, Brazil, South Africa forum), should intensify their efforts this year – the 70th anniversary of the founding of the UN – for urgent reforms of global institutions of governance like the UN Security Council and the international financial institutions to make them more democratic.