Dare to Dream Big!

Imagine This: It’s 1893 and you’re a 24-year-old Indian lawyer practicing in South Africa. While taking a train, you’re asked to leave your first-class compartment and go to the third-class compartment because of the color of your skin. You refuse because you have paid for a first-class ticket. You’re forcefully removed from the train, your luggage is confiscated, and you’re left in the bitterly cold waiting room of the railway station with only a small suitcase. What do you do? Do you fight for your rights or do you return to India and forget the injustices in South Africa?

You’re born on October 2, 1869, in Porbandar, India, the youngest of four children and you’re influenced by your father’s politics and your mother’s religion. As a young boy, you’re shy and afraid of many things, including the dark and you have to sleep with the lights on.

In 1887 your family reluctantly allows you to leave India to study law in London, and to satisfy your mother, you  make a solemn vow not to touch wine, women, or meat. Despite your attempts to fit in, you still feel like an outcast in the city.

You feel very much alone, a foreigner in a strange country. You try to feel more comfortable and secure by transforming  yourself into an English gentleman–living in fancy rooms and wearing fancy clothes. You learn to speak perfect English, you take violin lessons, and you even learn how to dance.

 But you still feel a deep conflict between your inner self and your outer self. Remembering the values of your home, you decide to live a simpler life. You give up your fancy rooms, you cook your own meals, you walk everywhere you go,  and you join the Vegetarian Society of London. These changes make you much happier although you still remain awkward and shy.

You finally pass your law exams and, after three years in London, you return home to India in 1891 to set up a law practice in Bombay. Your shyness and problems with the Indian courts, however, lead you to accept a low-paying position as a legal adviser in South Africa in 1893 where you experience racism firsthand.

 Traveling by train to Pretoria shortly after your arrival in South Africa, you’re told to leave the first class car, for which you have a ticket, because you’re not white. When you refuse to go to another compartment, you’re thrown off the train.

Outraged by the experience, you resolve to fight back legally. Overcoming your shyness, you sue the railroad and win a grudging victory. The law is then changed so that all Indians can sit in the seat to which their tickets entitle them, provided they wear English-style clothing.

Word of this victory spreads quickly, and soon you become a champion of Indian rights in South Africa and indirectly a spokesperson for all the powerless. You remain in South Africa for the next twenty-two years, working to end the country’s discriminatory legislation against people of color.

You and your followers work for the rights of black and Indian people and also for the rights of women. You do legal work for free, you nurse sick people abandoned during a plague, and you comfort the dying. You believe that all people are your brothers and sisters and that their suffering is your suffering.

By believing in the power of love and treating everyone as your family, you discover that you’re no longer shy and no longer afraid of anything.

When you’re assassinated on January 30, 1948, by a young Hindu dissident named Nathuram Godse as you walk to a prayer meeting where thousands of people are waiting for you, your last words are of forgiveness to your killer.

Your philosophies of nonviolence and peaceful protest inspire other leaders to pick up your torch! Both Martin Luther King’s nonviolent Civil Rights Movement in the United States and Nelson Mandela’s Anti-Apartheid Movement in South Africa use your techniques of civil disobedience and nonviolent, passive resistance to protest racial segregation and injustice. You inspire people around the world and change the lives of millions!

“We must be the change we wish to see in the world.”

Mahatma Gandhi (1869-1948)

 Excerpted from They Stood Alone!: 25 Men and Women Who Made a Difference by Sandra McLeod Humphrey

For More about

 Giving Back: Gandhi devoted his entire life to helping those less fortunate and working for equal rights for everyone.

Did You Know that  Gandhi spoke English with an Irish accent because one of his first teachers was an Irishman?

 Something to Think about: Why do you think Gandhi was able to overcome his shyness and feelings of  insecurity as he became immersed in his campaign for equal rights?

Willoughby and I hope you enjoyed this week’s true story and will be back next week for another story to inspire you to DARE TO DREAM BIG!