Phoenix (South Africa): The superlatives flowed freely on Sunday when Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and South African President Thabo Mbeki met on the "hallowed grounds" of the Phoenix settlement, the commune founded by Mahatma Gandhi in 1904, to celebrate their shared heritage.
“This is the blessed land that transformed Gandhi to the Mahatma,” Manmohan Singh said at the simple function at the settlement on the outskirts of Durban.
He added that he felt "spiritual bliss" to be present on the "sacred soil" of Phoenix, which was inspired after Gandhi read John Ruskin's Unto this Last, which extolled the virtues of the simple life of love, labour and the dignity of human beings.
“The settlement that was razed by apartheid violence in 1985 and then painstakingly rebuilt was a testament to Gandhi's spirit,” said Manmohan Singh.
"I could almost feel his presence here today," he said at the complex of simple buildings surrounded by a sprawling urban settlement.
"The settlement is a place of pilgrimage for us as the site of Mahatma Gandhi's first endeavour in community living," Manmohan Singh wrote in the visitor's book.
Mbeki echoed the mood in a short, emotive speech punctuated with humour and lots of laughs.
Speaking impromptu, he told the gathering-comprising Indian ministers Ambika Soni and Anand Sharma and National Security Advisor M K Narayanan as well as Gandhi's granddaughter Ela that he would very much like to keep Manmohan Singh back in his country, much like Mahatma Gandhi in Phoenix who stayed on longer than he intended to.
"We want you to follow in Gandhi's footsteps... so we want to keep you here for a little longer," he said.
"I don't know what will happen to India then," he added to laughs and splattering of applause.
Earlier in the day, Manmohan Singh went to the resistance park, which commemorates the first resistance in South Africa, and also visited the Ohlange High School and the memorial of Rev John Dube – a friend of Gandhi's who later went on to become the first president general of the African National Congress.
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