What Makes a Man a Superman?

What Makes a Man a Superman? course of my life.” Then he related the Pietermaritzburg incident. (Gandhi Katha, Umashankar Joshi) In 1893 Gandhi went to South Africa to take up a job in the legal profession. In June 1893, he had to go by train to Pretoria in the Transvaal, a journey which would take him to Pietermaritzburg. Having purchased a first-class ticket, Gandhi took his seat in a first-class compartment. He was thereupon ordered by the railway officials to remove himself to the van compartment, since non-whites were not permitted in first-class compartments. Gandhi protested and produced his ticket, but was warned that he would be forcibly removed if he did not make a gracious exit. As Gandhi refused to comply with the order, he was pushed out of the train, in the extreme cold of winter, and his luggage was tossed out on to the platform It was this shocking incident that made him decide to remove racism from the world. He became a man with a mission and, in 1920, began to take action in India, where at that time India was ruled by the same racist colonial power. When he went to South Africa, he was Mr. Gandhi, but when he started his mission in India, he very soon emerged as Mahatma Gandhi. History tells us that many individuals attained to greatness because of having received some kind of shock. This is a law of nature, and it is this law of nature that has produced so many great personalities of history. It is a fact that shock treatment is the greatest factor in the process of ‘man-making’. But, there is a condition. This law of nature works only in the case of those who