Imagine a courtroom in the Imperial British style, all pomp and robes and wigs. A young barrister, freshly returned to India from his legal studies in England, rises from counsel’s table to cross-examine a witness.
He looks the witness in the eye, or tries to. Then he opens his mouth to start the necessary confrontational process of exposing the weaknesses and contradictions in the witness’s testimony.
No words come out.
He tries again.
Nothing.
He can’t collect his thoughts.
Despite years of hard work at public speaking to overcome his natural shyness he finds that when faced with the reality of directly confronting another human being in a courtroom he just can’t do it. He just can’t handle that kind of confrontation.
He closes his mouth, and sits down, disgraced. It’s the worst debut of a barrister anyone can remember.
He refunds his client’s money. And as word gets around it seems like his legal career is over before it began.
The young lawyer’s name is Mohandus Gandhi.
This is the story of how that young man went from being a terrible lawyer too frightened to confront a single hostile witness to the man who famously confronted the greatest empire in the world and won.
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For more, listen to the Podcast episode and check out my book, History Stories for Everyone, where I dive deeper into this and some of history’s other most fascinating and relatable human stories:
