Gandhi joined with his fellow-Indians in working for their rights, and it was in this struggle that he developed the nonviolent techniques he was to use later in India. He opposed unfair taxes levied on Indian workers and he agitated to get Indians their voting rights. In 1904 he set up Phoenix Farm outside Johannesburg, a community where he started to practise simple community living, which he continued at a new community, Tolstoy Farm, five years later.
In 1907 he began a campaign against the laws that made Indians register if they wanted to live in South Africa. 3,000 Indians publicly burnt their registration cards. Another great demonstration against racial discrimination took place in 1913, when Gandhi got a contingent of Indian women to march illegally over the border from the Transvaal into the Natal coal fields, where they persuaded the miners to go on strike. When Gandhi and the miners were savagely punished, the outcry made Prime Minister Smuts negotiate with Gandhi, and this resulted in the Indian Relief Act of 1914 which removed some of the burdens from Indians. Gandhi was now convinced of the power of nonviolent disobedience to make people aware of injustices.
Gandhi returned to India, an experienced political campaigner. He set up a new community, an 'ashram' at Ahmedabad. People living at the ashram had to be nonviolent and truthful, had to do farming and spinning for their living, and have no servants or personal possessions. At the ashram, women enjoyed full freedom and equal rights, there was complete religious tolerance, and caste distinctions were ignored.
