Heroes are born in times of turmoil

An item on the front page of Wikipedia reminded me that on the 30th of January (same day as today) but in 1948...... that's just days before Sri Lanka regained independence from the British Empire, In New Delhi, India, a man (not worth remembering his name) wished Mahatma Gandhi well, and then shot him to death.

That was the sad end of a great man, who introduced the concepts of "satyagraha", "passive resistance" and " non-corporation" to the world. It's not easy to describe him, so I won't go into that.

But, I've been reading Nelson Mandela's autobiography "Long walk to freedom", and the discrimination Gandhi faced while in South Africa is confirmed by the incidents Mandela describe there.

Both men were thrown out of a train (on different occasions obviously!). Gandhi because he refused to move out of the first class compartment since he had a valid ticket. And Mandela simply because he was black.

Both were sent to prison, and endured severe discrimination. (Apartheid was not in place till 1948, so Gandhi escaped that, which was designed to legally discriminate the blacks and the coloureds from the whites. Yeah.. there were separate legal acts that deprived them of their rights.)

And the ironic thing is that both of them were lawyers, who were very backwards at early ages (in his autobiography Gandhi recalls his first court case, when it was his chance to speak up as lawyer, he got up slowly, found out he couldn't utter a word, and sat back down again) And both men were pushed into the political world due to their experiences in South Africa.

Finally India gained independence in 1947 (Gandhi refused to become president) and in 1994 Mandela became the first black president of South Africa.

Happy ending....

But, the struggle is far from over, even today it's sad that racial discrimination is still a part of our society.