became hardened with the work. Some of them even fainted under unbearable hardships, but they did not know what it was to be beaten.
One must not suppose, that there were no internal jealousies or quarrels in jail. Food constitutes the eternal apple of discord, but we successfully avoided bickerings even over food.
I too was arrested again. At one time there were as many as seventy-five Indian prisoners in Volksrust jail. We cooked our own food. I became the cook as only I could adjudicate on the conflicting claims to the ration supplied. Thanks to their love for me my companions took without a murmur the half-cooked porridge I prepared without sugar.
Government thought that if they separated me from the other prisoners it might perhaps chasten me as well as the others. They therefore took me to Pretoria jail where I was confined in a solitary cell reserved for dangerous prisoners. I was taken out only twice a day for exercise. In Pretoria jail no ghi was provided to the Indians, unlike as in Volksrust. But I do not propose here to deal with our hardships in jail, for which the curious may turn to the account of my experiences of jail life in South Africa.
But yet the Indians would not take a defeat. Government was in a quandary. How many Indians could be sent to jail after all? And then it meant additional expenditure. The Government began to cast about for other means of dealing with the situation.
