The British and the Boer saw when they came together (as they did very soon) the Indian would be their most imperious problem. The Bantus were still the good savages, they thought, innocent creatures, who would never give their rulers trouble. What to do, then, with the Indians? ‘Deport them,’ said some white politicians. ‘Fix them a poll tax they can never pay,’ said others. ‘So they will go home on their own accord.’ London would never agree to this. ‘How can a British subject, a subject of Queen Victoria,’ said London, ‘ever be made to pay a poll tax?’ But the immediate power was in the hands of the white South Africans—the Boers and the British. Thus Gandhi went in and out of jail, ever courteous to his jailers, the Indians ever courteous to the warders. ‘Obey every rule,’ said Gandhi, ‘that any decent human being could accept. If you cannot obey, protest in a gentlemanly manner. If you still can get no redress, go on a fast. A satyagrahi can never fail.’ When his wife lay dying, and he was in jail, this is what Gandhi wrote to her:

I love you dearly that even if you were dead you will be alive to me. Your soul is deathless. Time and again I have told you you may quietly breathe your last with faith in God. If you die even that death of yours will be a sacrifice to the cause of satyagraha. My struggle is not merely political. It is religious and therefore pure. It does not matter much whether one dies in it or lives. I hope and expect you will also think likewise and not be unhappy.

How then can one conquer the already dead?