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Gandhi focused his attention on Indians while in South Africa. He was not interested in politics. This changed after he was discriminated against and bullied, such as by being thrown out of a train coach because of his skin colour by a white train official. After several such incidents with [[White South African|Whites in South Africa]], Gandhi's thinking and focus changed, he felt he must resist this and fight for rights. He entered politics by forming Natal Indian Congress.<ref>{{cite book|last1= Jones|first1= Constance|last2= Ryan|first2= James|title= Encyclopedia of Hinduism|url= https://books.google.com/books?id=OgMmceadQ3gC|access-date= 5 October 2012|year= 2009|publisher= Infobase Publishing|isbn= 978-1-4381-0873-5|pages= 158–59|deadurl= no|archiveurl= https://web.archive.org/web/20151021174237/https://books.google.com/books?id=OgMmceadQ3gC|archivedate= 21 October 2015|df= dmy-all}}</ref> According to Ashwin Desai and Goolam Vahed, Gandhi's views on racism are contentious, in some cases distressing to those who admire him. Gandhi suffered persecution from the beginning in South Africa. Like with other coloured people, white officials denied him his rights, the press and those in the streets bullied and called him a parasite, semi-barbarous, canker, squalid coolie, yellow man, and other epithets. People would spit on him as an expression of racial hate.<ref name="Desai2015p26"/>
While in South Africa, Gandhi focused on racial persecution of Indians, ignored those of Africans. In some cases, state Desai and Vahed, his behaviour was one of being a willing part of racial stereotyping and African exploitation.<ref name="Desai2015p26"/> In a speech in September 1896 in India, for example, Gandhi complained the whites in British colony of South Africa were degrading Indian Hindus and Muslims to "a level of [[Kaffir (racial term)|Kaffir]]". Scholars cite it as an example evidence that Gandhi at that time felt about Indians and
Years later, Gandhi and his colleagues served and helped Africans as nurses and by opposing racism, according to the Nobel Peace Prize winner [[Nelson Mandela]]. The general image of Gandhi, state Desai and Vahed, has been reinvented since his assassination as if he was always a saint, when in reality his life was more complex, contained inconvenient truths and was one that evolved over time.<ref name="Desai2015p26">{{cite book|author1= Ashwin Desai|author2= Goolem Vahed|title=The South African Gandhi: Stretcher-Bearer of Empire|url= https://books.google.com/books?id=lZZ1CgAAQBAJ |year= 2015|publisher= Stanford University Press|isbn= 978-0-8047-9717-7 |pages= 22–26, 33–38}}</ref> In contrast, other Africa scholars state the evidence points to a rich history of co-operation and efforts by Gandhi and Indian people with nonwhite South Africans against persecution of Africans and the [[Apartheid]].<ref>{{cite book|author1=Edward Ramsamy|author2=Michael Mbanaso|author3=Chima Korieh|title=Minorities and the State in Africa|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=-J-EZLTRVRwC |publisher=Cambria Press|isbn=978-1-62196-874-0|pages=71–73}}</ref>
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