The South African Indian Problem in the 1920s and 1930s

A revival of satyagraha seemed imminent in South Africa even after five to ten years of the Smuts–Gandhi Agreement of 1914. Gandhi, of course, had forewarned that grievances remained even after the signing of the agreement which would have to be redressed in ‘no distant future’. In 1919 the Transvaal British Indian Association published an account of the situation titled ‘Ill-treatment of Indians in South Africa’, which was carried in the Indian dailies. A countrywide conference of Indians resolved in August 1919 to ask for full civil rights and to resort to civil resistance until those rights were granted.