Re-enactment marks Gandhi milestone
BROADCAST to more than 2.5million people in India, a theatrical re-enactment of how Mahatma Gandhi was forced off a train at the Pietermaritzburg railway station was carried out yesterday, marking 125 years since the historical incident.
This racist incident sparked the birth of the global Satyagraha movement, which promoted non-violence, truth and equality.
Indian and South African dignitaries, scholars of Gandhi’s teachings, politicians, senior citizens and pupils boarded the same train that Gandhi travelled in from the Pentrich Station to Pietermaritzburg to experience a part of his journey.
At the Pietermaritzburg station, Nirvikar Bhundoo, who played a young Gandhi, was thrown off the train with his luggage and then walked slowly to the waiting room where Gandhi spent the night in 1893.
That waiting room has now been transformed into one of seven interactive Gandhi museums.
Speaking at the event via a live broadcast from India, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, said Gandhi not only liberated India, but also gave hope to millions of others around the world.
“What went through the mind of the Mahatma as he spent the night in the waiting room is not really known to us, but we do know that it led to the evolution of a force not seen before in any political movement. It led to the force of Satyagraha,” Modi said.
India’s Minister of External Affairs, Sushma Swaraj, unveiled a new bust of Mahatma Gandhi at the station, and a digital museum in the waiting area.
Gandhi’s granddaughter, Ela, said people should learn from him.
“Gandhiji read the scriptures of every religion and extracted the best qualities of each. That is what made him a Mahatma. Today we have the challenge to look at information that we are bombarded with, and extract the best and apply it to our lives,” she said.