hite communities who were in
need of cheap labour for the development of the country. The Europeans,
professing to fear the effects of a large admixture of Asiatic elements,
had begun not only to restrict further Indian immigration, but to place
the Indians already in South Africa under many disabilities all the more
oppressive because imposed on racial grounds. Natal treated them
harshly, but scarcely as harshly as the Transvaal, then still under Boer
government. In the Transvaal the Imperial Government took up the cudgels
for them, and the treatment of the Indian settlers there was one of the
grievances pressed by Lord Milner during the negotiations which preceded
the final rupture with the Boer Republics. When the South African war
broke out Mr. Gandhi believed that it would lead to a generous
recognition of the rights of Indians if they at once identified their
cause with that of the British, and he induced Government to accept his
offer of an Indian Ambulance Corps which did excellent service in the
field. Mr. Gandhi himself served with it, was mentioned in despatches,
and received the war medal. His health gave way, and he returned to
India in 1901 where he resumed practice in Bombay with no intention of
returning to South Africa, as he felt confident that when the war was
over the Imperial Government would see to it that the Indians should
have the benefit of the principles which it had itself proclaimed before
going into the war. He was, however, induced to return in 1903 to help
in preparing the Indian memorials to be laid before Mr. Chamberlain
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 Preto