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,
Industrialized
India, 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 middleclass 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.