Page:Sketch of the Non-cooperation Movement by Babu Rajendra Prasad.pdf/3



Born at Porbandar on 2nd October, 1869; son of Karamchand Gandhi, Prime Minister first of Probandar and then of Rajkot; educated at Kathia war High School, London University and the Inner Temple; married to Kasturibhai 1881, having been betrothed at the age of 8; Advocate, Bombay High Court, 1891; visits South Africa, 1893; enrolled as Advocate, Supreme Court in spite of White opposition; founded Natal Indian Congress, 1894; agitation in India on behalf of South African Indians, 1895; mobbed almost to death under the lead of Attorney-General Escombe on landing in S. Africa on return and saved by the heroism of the wife of the Police Superintendent; led the Indian Ambulance Corps in the Boer War, 1899, whose services were well appreciated in S. Africa as well as in England; returns to India to ręcoup health, 1901; attends the Calcutta Congress under the presidentship of Mr. Wacha; called to Natal to place the Indian case before Mr. Chamberlaim appointed to consider the question; helps Transvaal Indians in the same manner, though right of leading the deputation was refused by the White authorities; enrolled as Attorney of the Supreme Court of Transvaal; founds the Transvaal British Indian Association and becomes its Hony. Secretary and legal adviser; founds also the Indian Opinion; also the Phoenix settlement, 1904, under the influence of Ruskin and the experience of the conflict between Capital and Labour in S. Africa; anti-plague work in Johannesburg in 1904; led the Stretcher Bearer Corps in the Native Revolt in 1906; anti-Asiatic Law Agitation, 1906; Passive Resistance struggle; arrest and imprisonment; Gandhi-Smuts compromise; nearly killed by his own followers who thought the compromise was a betrayal of Indian interests; General Smuts’s repudiation of the compromise;