Mohan Hira: a legacy of strength and service through karate

LENASIA karate master Hanshi Mohan Hira's journey to becoming an internationally-recognised karate expert began in the mid-1950s, when he faced significant barriers to his sporting career due to apartheid.

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HANSHI Mohan Hira, seated front left, with his senior black belt graduates since 1956. | Supplied

(Supplied)

Despite being denied entry to white-only dojos as a youth, his determination led him to train privately with Norman Robinson, eventually inspiring others in the community to pursue martial arts.

Born in India on December 14, 1938, Hira immigrated to South Africa in 1947, settling with his family in the Malay Camp in Ferreirastown in Johannesburg.

He began his martial arts training in 1956 and earned his first dan in Shotokan Karate in 1960.

Over the years, he has trained under internationally-renowned karate masters and graduated hundreds of junior karatekas.

Hira also participated in bodybuilding, table tennis, soccer and cricket, and completed notable endurance events such as the Johannesburg to Durban “Footsteps of Gandhi” Walk.

In 2001, he completed in nine days the arduous 485km Salt Walk in India, tracing Mahatma Gandhi's historic 1930 march against British colonialism.

In an interview on his life with veteran photojournalist, Fakir Hassen, about his forthcoming book, Mohan Hira — Humanitarian Extraordinaire, he explained: “We lived in Market Street in central Johannesburg. Jack Robinson’s dojo was at the corner of Main and Eloff streets, near to where we lived, so I would go there as a teenager to look at how the whites were learning karate. Of course, even if we wanted to, we could not join the dojo because of the strict separatist laws of the time. Shihan Jack had introduced judo to South Africa, but it was still an exclusively white terrain.