125th commemoration of Satyagraha in SA

The screening of the biopic ‘Making of a Mahatma’ marked the opening of a series of events to commemorate the historic incident 125 years ago when Mahatma Gandhi was evicted from a train because the compartment he was in was reserved for whites. On the night of June 7, 1893, Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi, a young lawyer then, was thrown off the first class compartment at Pietermaritzburg station for refusing to give up his seat. The incident led him to develop his Satyagraha principles of peaceful resistance and mobilise people in South Africa and India against the discriminatory rules of the British.