ABSTRACT
When Jinnah was a law student in England, another Gujarati man, seven years older than he and a barrister of the Lincoln’s Inn, arrived in South Africa on a year’s contract to help an Indian merchant in a civil suit pending in a Pretoria court. Jinnah returned to India in 1896, but Gandhi stayed on in South Africa for nearly twenty years, not so much to practise law as to organize the small, beleaguered minority of Indian immigrants against racial discrimination at the hands of the dominant European community and the colonial government. Jinnah and Gandhi were not to meet until Gandhi’s return to India in 1915, but they were not ignorant of each other’s activities. Gopal Krishna Gokhale, who was Jinnah’s hero and mentor in politics, had boundless admiration for Gandhi. Jinnah’s influence and prestige reached their zenith in the latter half of 1918. In contrast, Gandhi’s political fortunes were touching their nadir.
