The night at Pietermaritzburg station

In 1893, Mohandas Gandhi, a 23-year-old lawyer, travelled to South Africa to work on a legal case. Soon after arriving he boarded a train from Durban to Pretoria with a first-class ticket.

At Pietermaritzburg a white passenger objected to sharing the compartment with an Indian. An official ordered Gandhi to move to the van compartment. He refused, showing his ticket. A constable pushed him off the train, and his luggage was thrown onto the platform.

He spent the night in the freezing waiting room, his overcoat still in his luggage, too humiliated to ask for it. He thought about going back to India. Then he decided that would be cowardice: he would stay and fight colour prejudice, and accept the hardship that came with it.

Gandhi remained in South Africa for over twenty years, developing the method of nonviolent resistance he called satyagraha. Today a statue of him stands in Pietermaritzburg, and he later counted that night among the most important experiences of his life.