The Story of My Experiments with Truth · Chapter
XIV: Coolie Locations or Ghettoes? explained
Gandhi draws a parallel between the treatment of 'untouchables' in India, Jews in ghettoes, and Indians in South African 'coolie locations,' describing the insanitary conditions, municipal neglect, and legal battles over land acquisition in
What happens
Gandhi draws a parallel between the treatment of 'untouchables' in India, Jews in ghettoes, and Indians in South African 'coolie locations,' describing the insanitary conditions, municipal neglect, and legal battles over land acquisition in Johannesburg. He recounts his role as legal adviser for the tenants, his fee arrangement, and the use of funds to support Indian Opinion, while highlighting his close relationships with ex-indentured laborers who called him 'bhai.'
Themes in this chapter
Social Justice and Anti-Colonialism
Gandhi compares the oppression of Indians in South Africa to the treatment of 'untouchables' in India and Jews in ghettoes, highlighting systemic racial and social injustice.
Service and Community Leadership
Gandhi serves as legal adviser to impoverished tenants, dedicates half his fees to community welfare, and builds brotherly bonds with ex-indentured laborers.
Characters to notice
- Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi
Legal adviser for Indian tenants in Johannesburg location; sets aside half his fees for a hospital; works closely with indentured laborers.
- Abdulla Sheth
Refuses to address Gandhi as 'Gandhi' or 'saheb,' instead calls him 'bhai' (brother), a name adopted by ex-indentured Indians.
- C. F. Andrews
Mentioned in context of sacrifice to rehabilitate Indians in South Africa.
- Sjt. Jairamsing
President of the association of ex-indentured laborers; helpful to Gandhi.
- Sjt. Badri
Leader of the ex-indentured laborers' association; close contact with Gandhi and prominent in satyagraha.
Key passages
“Some of the classes which render us the greatest social service, but which we Hindus have chosen to regard as 'untouchables,' are relegated to remote quarters of a town or a village, called in Gujarati dhedvado , and the name has acquired a bad odour. Even so in Christian Europe the Jews were once 'untouchables,' and the quarters that were assigned to them had the offensive name of 'ghettoes.' In a similar way today we have become the untouchables of South Africa.”
Just as Hindus segregate 'untouchables' into remote quarters called dhedvado, and Jews were once confined to ghettoes, Indians in South Africa are now treated as untouchables and relegated to 'coolie locations.'
Gandhi draws a direct analogy between caste-based segregation in India, anti-Semitism in Europe, and racial segregation in South Africa.
“The criminal negligence of the Municipality and the ignorance of the Indian settlers thus conspired to render the location thoroughly insanitary. The Municipality, far from doing anything to improve the condition of the location, used the insanitation, caused by their own neglect, as a pretext for destroying the location.”
The Municipality's neglect and the settlers' lack of hygiene knowledge made the location unsanitary; the Municipality then used that very insanitation as an excuse to demolish the location.
Gandhi criticizes the Municipality for creating and then exploiting unsanitary conditions to dispossess Indian residents.