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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

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