Gandhi — The Universal Man
These early experiences shaped Mahatma Gandhi's eventual destiny as the father of the Indian Nation, It was in South Africa that he conceived the idea of militant non-violence as a political instrument against racism. Later in India he fashioned this instrument into an effective weapon for use by the masses against British rule.
The problem in South Africa is far from complex. It is artificial and was created by the white man. "Apartheid" is a word coined by the Afrikaner National Party as a political slogan, and refined into the un-natural ideology of separatism, on the basis of race. In 1963, the then Prime Minister of South Africa, Said of apartheid: "It means that we want to keep South Africa white. Keeping it white means white domination, not leadership. It means white supremacy and control, and not guidance."
Neither science nor religion recognises any fundamental division of the human species on racial grounds. Nor do they postulate the superiority of any one race over others. Mahatma Gandhi defined race in the following words: "All those who can have children of one another belong to the same race."
The evolution of the jurisprudence of the United Nations on the question of racial discrimination makes interesting reading and I should like to recall some of the important stages. It is not often remembered that at its very first session the U.N. General Assembly adopted a resolution declaring that: "It is in the higher interests of humanity to put an immediate end to racial persecution and discrimination."