On a train in South Africa in 1893, a young lawyer named Mahatma Gandhi was sitting in the first class of a train. He was an attorney helping people who moved there.

While on the train, he was confronted by two men who worked on the train, and even though Gandhi had a first-class ticket, he was told that there were no colored attorneys in South Africa and was kicked out of the train. He spent part of the night in the cold wondering how to fight the injustice that he experienced.

Gandhi decides to take the first course of action towards freedom. He takes some identity passes and burns them in a pit. The significance of the passes is that they are not given to the British, just people of color. Gandhi says that the passes represent a difference between the people, and he want to say that they are all equal. Even as he is beaten by the police he continues to throw the passes into the flame. He was aided by his Muslim friend, Nehru, and they were both arrested.

As Gandhi is talking to one of his rich friends at a party, he is told to go see the real India. He decides to journey in the third class of a train to experience how crowded it was. While he was driving around, he saw that many of the people out in India were working constantly, mostly farming. 

Gandhi then decides to build an Ashram, a place for anybody to live and where everybody is equal and has to clean and cook. When his wife was supposed to clean the toilet, she argued with him as she said it was a job for the 'untouchables'. Gandhi says that the first step towards equality with the rest of the world was to eliminate their social classes within their own communities.