A fateful train ride
The legal case which had brought Gandhi to South Africa in 1893 was in Pretoria, 500 miles from where he’d landed in Durban, Natal the previous week. His client, Dada Abdulla, made arangements for his travel north.
In the late afternoon of May 31, Gandhi boarded a train for the first stage of the journey. He’d traveled by train in India and England, sometimes utilizing third class in the interests of economy, but now he was a world-traveling barrister representing a wealthy client. At the age of 23, he made himself comfortable in the first-class compartment he felt he deserved.
The sun had set by the time the train pulled into Maritzburg station, and a railroad employee brought around bedding to each compartment for the night’s journey. Gandhi, displaying his usual frugality, declined to pay the additional five shillings for it. The employee left without questioning the irregularity, but a white passenger soon arrived and observed an irregularity of his own; Gandhi was a “coloured” man. Railroad officials crowded into the compartment and demanded that Gandhi move back to third class. When he declined, they threatened to call a constable and have him thrown out.
“Yes, you may,” Gandhi responded. “I refuse to get out voluntarily.”
What must he have thought as he waited for the constable to arrive? Gandhi surely recalled the shame he felt from his willing exit from the courtroom the previous week. This time, he was determined not to yield to a patently unjust demand. Clutching his first-class ticket, he sat stoically in the compartment under watchful eyes.
The constable arrived. Ignoring Gandhi’s explanation — he’d ridden for hours in the compartment — he pulled the “coolie barrister” from the compartment and forced him out onto the railroad platform. The wintry night air bit into Gandhi as he stood there, alone in a strange country, far from anyone he knew. Again, he was told to take his first-class ticket back to the third-class compartment.
Gandhi refused. The train steamed on, abandoning him.
When have you stood up against a capricious demand?