Swaminathan Gounden - South Africa
Change Through Civil Disobedience
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It was a White area. So we defied, we went there and pitched our tents there and stayed there, thinking that the police are going to come and arrest you and put you in prison and that's what we wanted. We wanted to show the world that we are resisting, but they didn't do that. They used their own tactics. They used White hooligans. They came, they started hitting the resistors, you know, left, right and centre, injuring them in the process. There was an Indian policeman who was there, and they didn't worry if it was an Indian police and they hit him and he died. Now, anyway, the police came, arrested them and put them in prison. From that point onwards, we used to send batches of Indians, Coloureds, some Whites, some Africans, all who sympathized with the NIC, all went to court with them. This went on, over 2,000 people went to court. The idea behind the whole thing was to focus the attention of the whole world you know, to say this is how the Non-Whites are being treated and this is what we are doing in order to see that the White Government gives us what we require. You know, that was the idea behind the Passive Resistance that was in 1946.
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