whose visit was imminent in connection with the work of reconstruction.
On his arrival he found that conditions and European opinion were
becoming more instead of less unfavourable for Indians, and though in
1906, when the native rebellion broke out in Natal, he again offered and
secured the acceptance of an Indian Stretcher-Bearer Corps with which he
again served and received the thanks of the Governor, he gradually found
himself driven into an attitude of more and more open opposition and
even conflict with Government by a series of measures imposing more and
more intolerable restraints upon his countrymen. It was in 1906 that he
first took a vow of passive resistance to a law which he regarded as a
deliberate attack upon their religion, their national honour, and their
racial self-respect. In the following year he was consigned, not for the
first time, to jail in Pretoria, but his indomitable attitude helped to
bring about a compromise. It was, however, short-lived, as
misunderstandings occurred as to its interpretation. The struggle broke
out afresh until another provisional settlement promised to lead to a
permanent solution, when Mr. Gokhale, after consultation with the India
Office during a visit to England, was induced in 1912 to proceed to
South Africa and use his good offices in a cause which he had long had
at heart. Whether, as Mr. Gokhale himself always contended, as a
deliberate breach of the promise made to him by the principal Union
Ministers, or as the result of a lamentable misunderstanding, measures
were again taken in 1913 which led Mr. Gandhi to renew the struggle, and
it assumed at once a far more serious character than ever before. It was
then that Mr. Gandhi organised his big strikes of Indian labour and
headed the great strikers' march of protest into the Transvaal which led
to the arrest and imprisonment of the principal leaders and of hundreds
of the rank and file. The furious indignation aroused in India, the
public meetings held in all the large centres, and the protest entered
by the Viceroy himself, Lord Hardinge, in his speech at Madras, combined
with earnest representations from Whitehall, compelled General Smuts to
enter once more the path of conciliation and compromise. As the result
of a Commission of Inquiry the Indians' Relief Act was passed, and in
the correspondence between Mr. Gandhi and General Smuts the latter
undertook on behalf of the South African Government to carry through
other administrative reforms not actually specified in the new Act. Mr.
Gandhi returned to India just after the outbreak of the Great War, and
the Government of India marked its appreciation of the great services
which he had rendered to his countrymen in South Africa by recommending
him for the Kaisar-i-Hind gold medal, which was conferred upon him
amongst the New Year honours of 1915.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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