He tried to settle down, but where? No prime ministership was offered to him and if anything the British treated him with arrogance. Friends of the family had connections in Africa, and so Gandhi sailed to Natal as adviser to a white attorney there. (It was a case of two Indians in litigation.) London had pushed Gandhi not only deeply inward but had also made him a gentleman—of all British gifts to the world the most precious. The gentleman combined in himself (somewhat) the moral firmness of the saint, the shy statement of the chevalier, the knight, and withal the practical wisdom of a politician or businessman. The gentleman might trade in shares or fight for parliament, but he rode his horse in Hyde Park in the mornings, went to his club in the evenings, read his Times, drank a little perhaps, but kept his word. He was ever courteous. Every Englishman seemed a bit of the Prince Consort, the revered husband of Queen Victoria.

But here in the wilds of Africa, between the Boers and the British, though the first read the Bible assiduously, and the second tried to behave like gentlemen (remember it was the time of Kruger and Rhodes, of Smuts and Churchill) Gandhi was only a coolie, a coolie barrister. He was not even a Christian. He could not have his turban on his head at the courts nor ride a train in the first class like a gentleman. Thrown out of his compartment, on the frontiers of Natal where the Transvaal began—at Pietermaritzburg—Gandhi sat in a dingy cold room in a vast world of hills and spaces, with no one to turn to. Then he turned into himself, and that was, he says, the most creative experience of his life. What the hanging of his brother was to Lenin, being abandoned in this discreet and egregious part of Africa was to be for Gandhi. Neither white nor black, coolie nor barrister, he had only God to help him.

He would have an experience of God, and help the humblest among his fellowmen. Here his contacts with the Christians helped him. Their fervour towards their Creator, and their concern for their neighbour, gave him an example of dedicated and human service. This the Hindus today seemed to lack. Gandhi taught English to the coolies—in a country where English was spoken, you have to learn the language of the land. The barber and the shopkeeper learnt English from him. For the Indian barber and trader had generally come as coolies, that is as indentured labourers, to Natal. Just as cargoes of ships brought negroes from Africa to the tobacco lands of Virginia, the poor and miserable Indians were shipped out of India as indentured labourers, that is to say, slaves, but for a duly contracted period. After that they were free and could own land, for, whatever happened they were subjects of Her Majesty, the queen of England.