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On the outskirts of New Delhi, in the dingy, dungy Bhangi (untouchable) Colony, Gandhi was not jubilant, although the British were leaving at last. To him, the violence and disunity of India were a personal affront. To Gandhi, ahimsa (nonviolence) is the first principle of life, and satyagraha (soul force, or conquering through love), the only proper way of life. In the whitewashed, DDT-ed compound which serves him as headquarters, Gandhi licked his soul wounds: "I feel [India's violence] is just an indication," he told his followers, "that as we are throwing off the foreign yoke, all the dirt and froth is coming to the surface. When the Ganges is in flood the water is turbid."
Ironically, Gandhi himself, who has spent a lifetime trying to direct the waters into disciplined channels, had helped to roil his people into turbulence. What he had called the "dumb, toiling, semi-starving millions," who revered (and sometimes worshiped) Gandhi, could understand him when he cried for their freedom; they could not always understand him when he told them they must not use violence to win that freedom. "To inculcate perfect discipline and nonviolence among 400,000,000," he once said, "is no joke."
A Young Bird Knows. Gandhi seriously began his own self-discipline when he went to South Africa as a London-educated vakil (barrister) at the age of 23. There he first felt the full weight of the white man's color bar. More & more he neglected a lucrative law practice to lead his fellow Indians in a fight against local anti-Indian laws.
A British friend lent him Count Leo Tolstoy's The Kingdom of God is Within You. The Russian Christian's doctrine of nonviolent resistance to unjust rule gripped the Hindu lawyer's mind. "Young birds," wrote Tolstoy, ". . . know very well when there is no longer room for them in the eggs. ... A man who has outgrown the State can no more be coerced into submission to its laws than can the fledgling be made to re-enter its shell."
Gandhi broke his shell. He decided manual labor was essential to the good life; he still thinks Indians will find peace only through making their own clothes on the charka (spinning wheel). So he gave up a legal practice bringing in about £5,000 a year, moved to a farm settlement where his helpers worked the ground, and began to get out a newspaper, Indian Opinion.
Gandhi mobilized local Indians for his first civil disobedience campaign. They won repeal of some anti-Indian laws from an obstinate South African Government. In 1915, aged 45, he returned to Bombay, the hero of India.
Colossal Experiment. The first year after his return Gandhi toured much of India. The gentle ascetic in loincloth, walking among the villages, won the hearts of millions of Indians. "Gandhi says" became synonymous with "The truth is," for many a peasant and villager. When simple peasants crowded round to see him (many tried to kiss his feet), Gandhi tried to stop "the craze for darshan" (beholding a god).