Remarks by Mr. R. K. Bhatia, High Commissioner of India to South Africa, at ‘The 1908 Gandhi Bonfire Walk’, Hamidia Mosque, Fordsburg, South Africa (August 16, 2008) Your Excellencies, Mr. Kgalema Motlanthe, Minister of Government Business and Deputy President of the African National Congress; Dr. Z. Pallo Jordan, Minister of Arts and Culture, Republic of South Africa; Smt. Ambika Soni, Minister of Tourism and Culture, Government of India; Maulana Sahib Ibrahim Bam, Head Imam of the Hamidia Mosque; Mr. Steven Sachs, Director of Arts, Culture and Heritage of the City of Johannesburg, Mrs. Kirti Menon, Chairperson of the Gandhi Centenary Committee; Consul General Navdeep Suri; and Friends. 1. It is with a blend of joy, pride, nostalgia and a keen sense of history that I stand before you to greet and salute you on a truly historic day. 2. We have gathered here to remember and to celebrate together the caravan of Satyagraha, crafted and led by Mahatma Gandhi, which began its unforgettable journey 102 years earlier at the Empire Theatre in Johannesburg. This caravan found in the Hamidia Mosque its second most important milestone exactly 100 years ago. 3. The Satyagraha movement, started by Gandhiji, led to the redressal of grievances of the Asiatic community in South Africa, then to the liberation of India, and later, through the method of inspiration and example, to the successful struggle against apartheid and racial discrimination in South Africa. Perhaps that is why former President Nelson Mandela observed in 1990: “As much as India is a particle of our country, so are we too a particle of India….It is that (shared) history which makes it possible for each one of us to claim the immortal Mahatma Gandhi as our own national hero.” 4. We celebrate today, once again, the power and magic of an extraordinary man, his unique philosophy of fight against injustice and oppression through the weapons of Truth and Non-violence, and the impact it had on our two countries as well as the relations between them. 5. Allow me, on this occasion, to read to you a very brief extract from Louis Fisher’s celebrated biography of Gandhiji called “The Life of Mahatma Gandhi”:   “The Indian community’s temper gradually rose to fever pitch. A meeting was called at the Hamidia Mosque in Johannesburg for four o’clock in the afternoon, 16 August, 1908. A large iron cauldron resting on four curved legs was placed conspicuously on a raised platform. The speeches finished, more than two thousand registration certificates collected from the spectators were thrown into the cauldron and burned in paraffin as a mighty cheer went up from the brown throng. The London Daily Mail correspondent in Johannesburg compared it with the Boston Tea Party. The issue between the Indians and the Government was now joined.” 6. We will no doubt hear more about this great event from other speakers today. 7. What is truly important is the lesson we might carry home today. The conviction with which I will return from this celebration of the 100th anniversary of ‘the 1908 Bonfire Gandhi walk’ is that Gandhiji’s ideas and ideals have a universal and lasting value; that they remain as relevant today as they were a hundred years ago; and that the only question is whether we have the moral fibre to follow them for the larger good of our people and the world. 8. Thank you very much for your attention.