Monday, May 23 2005 17:11 Hrs (IST) - World Time -

Durban: Mahatma Gandhi's Phoenix Settlement, the birthplace of the non-violent movement or Satyagraha, may be recommended for nomination as a World Heritage site, the South African Government has said.

The settlement could be included in a list of potential sites to be the submitted to the UN Educational Scientific and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO), a spokesperson for the South African Department of Environmental Affairs and Tourism said.

The call for the historic site to be recognised as a World Heritage site has been made by leading members of the Indian-origin community in Durban.

Historian and activist, Hassim Seedat, is one such person who has taken up the issue with the Government.

"The importance of the Phoenix Settlement has not been fully appreciated," he said.

"Gandhi was inspired to establish the settlement in 1906 after witnessing the horrors of a war by the British against the Zulus. He formed the ambulance corps to serve at the front, to nurse the wounded Zulus who were abandoned on the battlefield. Gandhi was shaken by the brutality of the English. It was not a war but a manhunt Gandhi had stated."

Seedat said the Phoenix settlement later became the headquarters for the struggle against apartheid and white minority rule.

"Nowhere in the world will we find a site as significant as that of Phoenix. It was the starting point of the non-violent movement, Satyagraha, which made Gandhi a beacon of light in the most violent century that mankind witnessed."