72 THB SOUTH AFRICAN INDIAN QUESTION of their sentences gave to the community. In all our experience of prison treatment in this country never have we been treated before with such unparalleled cruelty. Insults by warders, frequent assaults hy Zulu warders, with the holding off of blankets and other neces- sary articles, food badly cocked by Zuius, all these necessitated a hunger strike causing immense suffering. You have to know these things to understand the frame of mind with which the community met in the public meeting on Sunday, the 21st December, to consider the position and resolve on future action. There was but one feeling at the meeting and that was that ii we had any self-respect, we must not accept the Oommission unless it was modified in some manner in favour of the Indians and we must also ask for the release of all real passive resister prisoners in which terms we do not include persons rightly convicted of actual violence and we all took a solemn oath in God’s name that unless these conditions were complied with, we would resume our Passive Resistance. Now this oath we mean to keep whatever happens. In this trouble we are fighting with spiritual weapons and it is not open to us to go back on our solemn declaration. Moreover, in this matter it is not as though it is the leaders that are egging the community on, on the contrary so determined is the community to keep the vow which it has solemnly taken that, if any leaders ventured to advice acceptance of the commission without any modification on the lines asked for, they would beyond all doubt he killed and I must add, justly so. I believe we are gaining ground. Several influential Europeans including some ministers of religion, recognising the justice of our stand, are working to help us and we have not yet given
