e an
uncompromising disaffectionist and non-co-operator. To the Court too I
should say why I plead guilty to the charge of promoting disaffection
towards the Government established by law in India. My public life
began in 1893 in South Africa in troubled weather. My first contact with
British authority in that country was not of a happy character. I
discovered that as a man and as an Indian I had no rights. On the
contrary I discovered that I had no rights as a man because I was
an Indian.

But I was not baffled. I thought that this treatment of Indians was an
excrescence upon a system that was intrinsically and mainly good. I gave
the Government my voluntary and hearty co-operation, criticising it
fully where I felt it was faulty but never wishing its destruction.

Consequently when the existence of the Empire was threatened in 1899 by
the Boer challenge, I offered my services to it, raised a volunteer
ambulance corps and served at several actions that took place for the
relief of Ladysmith. Similarly in 1906 at the time of the Zulu revolt I
raised a stretcher-bearer party and served till the end of the
'rebellion'. On both these occasions I received medals and was even
mentioned in despatches. For my work in South Africa I was given by Lord
Hardinge a Kaiser-i-Hind Gold Medal. When the war broke out in 1914
between England and Germany I raised a volunteer ambulance corps in
London consisting of the then resident Indians in London, chiefly
students. Its work was acknowledged by the authorities to be valuable.
Lastly in India when a special appeal was made at the War Conference
in Delhi in 1917 by Lord Chelmsford for recruits, I struggled at the
cost of my health to raise a corps in Kheda and the response was being
made when the hostilities ceased and orders were received that no more
recruits were wanted. In all those efforts at service I was actuated by
the belief that it was possible by such services to gain a status of
full equality in the Empire for my countrymen.

The first shock came in the shape of the Rowlalt Act a law designed to
rob the people of all real freedom. I felt called upon to lead an
intensive agitation against it. Then followed the Punjab horrors
beginning with the massacre at Jallianwala Bagh and culminating in
brawling orders, public floggings and other indescribable humiliations,
I discovered too that the plighted word of the Prime Minister to the
Mussalmans of India regarding the integrity o