Strength Of Character
We, the ordinary human beings, have complex characteristics contrary to all other animals who are simple in nature and direct in their behavioural attitude. Even though we outwardly exhibit strength, encouragement, and power, we are meek, timid, and mild. Under the adverse condition, during a difficult situation, we get confused and exhibit hopelessness, helplessness, despair, and despondency. We fail to recognise what is correct or incorrect, and what we should do or should not do. We go to a stage of mental paralysis and thereby surrender to the situation. But again, there come some crazy personalities; men and women of character, some oblong thinking people having divergent views, who clear our mind, dispel our doubt, pull us out of our uncertainties. Those who gloom and guide us from darkness to light, meanness to greatness and, consequently from unhappiness to happiness.
When the young, frail, brown barrister from Inner Temple was thrown out from a 1st class railway carriage for being a person of colour in the dead hours of a cold dark night, on 7th June 1893 at some obscure railway station in Pietermaritzburg, South Africa, he escaped to a distant dark corner of the deserted railway waiting room. Here he avoided further humiliation, he sat quivering out of humiliation and shivering out of the cold. Throughout the night he sat with only his humiliation and suppressed anger, as his companion. Mohan (he was not Gandhiji then, not even Mahatma, leave aside Bapu) had two options. Either to sacrifice his self-respect, swallow his pride and join the vast stream of brown coolies who went there (South Africa), for a living or to fight. Fight back, not with his tormentors, but with the system—the system which caused him to be thrown out, a system which separated human being based on the colour of their skin. He chooses the latter. Rousseau’s concept of a free man was born that night. He fought against an evil system of governance that we call colonialism. He fought against another evil system of discrimination based on the colour of skin, which we call apartheid. Finally, he fought against the mightiest of the empires that ever ruled our world, under a trying condition against all obstacles. And he won.
In the process, he also won millions of hearts of both his friends and adversaries. He taught us a very simple lesson by setting an example through his action. Wherever you see evil, fight it! Fight it with all your strength, with all your determination, with all your courage, with all your passion, with all your energy, but, with an open mind, with a compassionate heart, with a clear conscience and with a full conviction for the cause, in a non-violent way. His simple message for this was- “First they ignore you, then they ridicule you, then they fight you, then you win.”
Yes, we can overcome all hurdles, all obstacles, all resistances and can win provided we show the strength of character.
