many of his countrymen during this period, affected the manners of the English gentleman. Nevertheless, during his student years,
Fischer notes, Gandhi took a serious interest in his own Hindu
faith, reading the sacred book of the Hindus, the Bhagavad-Gita, for the first time; he adhered strictly to a vegetarian diet; he
took a serious interest in the activities of the Theosophical
Society. Completing his studies in June of 1891, Gandhi enrolled
as a lawyer before the High Court and sailed immediately for
Gandhi practiced law in Rajkot and Bombay for two years
after his return to the subcontinent. He had a difficult time
establishing his practice; his inherent shyness made it most
difficult to excel as a lawyer. When offered a short-term posi-tion with an Indian law firm in South Africa, Gandhi accepted it. He left for South Africa in 1893. He would not return to India to live permanently until 1915, and by that time his reputation as a holy man and a tenacious defender of civil rights had been
established not only in South Africa but in Great Britain and India as well.
In South Africa Gandhi prospered as a lawyer. Fischer notes
that he was making the equivalent of approximately 330,000 a year and, while living in Durban, he lived in a mansion on the beach,
befitting one who had attained stature in the Indian community. In the course of his stay in South Africa, however, it was not
his appreciable skill as a lawyer for which he became most noted, but for his staunch defense of civil rights and his unshakeable
faith in God and the brotherhood of all mankind.
In South Africa Gandhi experienced first-hand the full-force
of racial prejudice. Since the Indians had first come to live
and work on the British plantations during the mid-nineteenth
century, they had felt the strong hand of prejudi
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