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 CHAPTER XVI

A DREAMER OF DREAMS

Two enterprises will always be associated with Mr. Gandhi's name and work in South Africa. One is the propaganda, commenced in 1903, among his own people, by means of a weekly journal called "Indian Opinion"; the other, that little Tolstoian Colony in Phœnix, where "Indian Opinion" is now published. Both of them have exerted a great influence on the Indian community.

Mr. Gandhi is a dreamer. He dreams of an Indian community in South Africa, welded together by common interests and common ideals, educated, moral, worthy of that ancient civilization to which it is heir; remaining essentially Indian, but so acting that South Africa will eventually be proud of its Eastern citizens, and accord them, as of right, those privileges which every British subject should enjoy. This is the dream. His ambition is to make it a reality, or die in the attempt. And this is the motive that forms the foundation of all his efforts to raise the status of his people, and to defeat everything that would tend to degrade his brethren or hold them in