Synchronicity
1893
Tsarstvo bozhiye vnutri vas by Leo Tolstoy The Kingdom of God Is Within You
In brief, Tolstoy rejected all the sacraments, all miracles, the Holy Trinity, the immortality of the soul, and many other tenets of traditional religion, all of which he regarded as obfuscations of the true Christian message contained, especially, in the Sermon on the Mount. He rejected the Old Testament and much of the New, which is why, having studied Greek, he composed his own “corrected” version of the Gospels. For Tolstoy, “the man Jesus,” as he called him, was not the son of God but only a wise man who had arrived at a true account of life.
Stated positively, the Christianity of Tolstoy's last decades stressed five tenets: be not angry, do not lust, do not take oaths, do not resist evil, and love your enemies. Nonresistance to evil, the doctrine that inspired Gandhi, meant not that evil must be accepted but only that it cannot be fought with evil means, especially violence. Thus Tolstoy became a pacifist. Because governments rely on the threat of violence to enforce their laws, Tolstoy also became a kind of anarchist. He enjoined his followers not only to refuse military service but also to abstain from voting or from having recourse to the courts. He therefore had to go through considerable inner conflict when it came time to make his will or to use royalties secured by copyright even for good works. In general, it may be said that Tolstoy was well aware that he did not succeed in living according to his teachings.
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Tolstoy
1894
January
Constance Garnett publishes English version of The Kingdom of God is Within You.
August
22 Gandhi founded the Natal Indian Congress of which he himself became the indefatigable secretary. Through this common political organization, he infused a spirit of solidarity in the heterogeneous Indian community. He flooded the government, the legislature, and the press with closely reasoned statements of Indian grievances. Finally, he exposed to the view of the outside world the skeleton in the imperial cupboard, the discrimination practiced against the Indian subjects of Queen Victoria in one of her own colonies in Africa. It was a measure of his success as a publicist that such important newspapers as The Times of London and the Statesman and Englishman of Calcutta editorially commented on the Natal Indians' grievances.
"Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi" Encyclopædia Britannica from Encyclopædia Britannica Premium Service.
1897
Enoch Mankayi Sontonga wrote the first verse and chorus of Nkosi Sikelel' iAfrika (Lord Bless Africa) and also composed the music.
January
On landing at Durban Gandhi was assaulted and nearly lynched by a white mob. Joseph Chamberlain, the colonial secretary in the British Cabinet, cabled the government of Natal to bring the guilty men to book, but Gandhi refused to prosecute his assailants. It was, he said, a principle with him not to seek redress of a personal wrong in a court of law.
1899
Nikosi Sikelel' Afrika was first sung in public at the ordination of Rev Boweni, a Shangaan Methodist Minister.
October
11 Boer War , or Anglo-Boer War (Oct. 11, 1899–May 31, 1902), war fought between Great Britain and the two Boer (Afrikaner) republics—the South African Republic (Transvaal) and the Orange Free State. Although it was the largest and most costly war in which the British engaged between the Napoleonic Wars and World War I, it was fought between wholly unequal protagonists. The total British military strength in South Africa reached nearly 500,000 men, whereas the Boers could muster no more than about 88,000. But the British were fighting in a hostile country over difficult terrain, with long lines of communications, while the Boers, mainly on the defensive, were able to use modern rifle fire to good effect, at a time when attacking forces had no means of overcoming it.
"South African War" from Encyclopædia Britannica Premium Service.
1903
DuBois published The Souls of Black Folks.
Herein lie buried many things which if read with patience may show the strange meaning of being black here in the dawning of the Twentieth Century. This meaning is not without interest to you, Gentle Reader; for the problem of the Twentieth Century is the problem of the color-line.
1906
The Transvaal government published a particularly humiliating ordinance for the registration of its Indian population.
January
The "Niagara Movement" was formed. So called after the site of the meeting place–the Canadian side of Niagara falls. (They were prevented from meeting on the U.S. side.) Its objectives were to advocate civil justice and abolish caste discrimination.
September
The Indians held a mass protest meeting at Johannesburg and, under Gandhi's leadership, took a pledge to defy the ordinance if it became law in the teeth of their opposition, and to suffer all the penalties resulting from their defiance. Thus was born satyagraha (“devotion to truth”), a new technique for redressing wrongs through inviting, rather than inflicting, suffering, for resisting the adversary without rancour and fighting him without violence.
