Father of the Indian Nation was a Sergeant Major of British Forces in 2nd Boer War.......

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Father of the Indian Nation was a Sergeant Major of British Forces, running Natal Indian Ambulance Corps in the  2nd  Boer War in South Africa.

Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi (2 October 1869 – 30 January 1948) was born in Porbandar, Gujarat. His early education was in Rajkot and he was married at 13 years to Kasturba who was 14 then. By 1900, the family had four sons. Gandhi, at 18 years of age, moved to England in 1888 and studied at University College, London, for studying law and jurisprudence, at Inner Temple. Gandhi became a Barrister- at- Law by the age of 22, in June 1891. After two years of unsuccessful wait to practice Law in India, he moved to South Africa to take up a case in Natal in 1893 to represent an Indian merchant in a lawsuit. Stayed in South Africa for 21 years and saw and experienced apartheid firsthand.. He was active in local politics of Natal.

The Boers of South Africa were agriculturists – the word ‘boer’ means farmer in both Dutch and Afrikaans – and had carved a living from an often inhospitable land. British politicians saw the abundant mineral wealth, the Witwatersrand Gold Mining Complex and the discovery of huge reserves of diamonds in Griqualand West in the early 1870s., and they pressed on their suzerainty to get hold of this natural wealth. This wealth was spread in the Transvaal region of South African Republic and the Orange Free State.

The First Boer War("First Freedom War"), 1880-1881, also known as the First Anglo-Boer War, the Transvaal War or the Transvaal Rebellion, was a war fought from 16 December 1880 until 23 March 1881 between the United Kingdom and Boers of the Transvaal. South African War, also called Boer War, Second Boer War, or Anglo-Boer War; to Afrikaners, also called Second War of Independence, war fought from October 11, 1899, to May 31, 1902, between Great Britain and the two Boer (Afrikaner) republics

 

The large Indian population of the British colonies in South Africa, led by Gandhi, saw in the Anglo-Boer

War, an opportunity. They were trained and medically certified to serve on the front lines.  According to Arthur Herman, Gandhi wanted to disprove the imperial British stereotype that Hindus were not fit for "manly" activities involving danger and exertion, unlike the Muslims.

During the Boer War, Gandhi had appealed to Indians to join a British war: during the Second Boer War in 1899-1902 and Zulu War in 1906, Gandhi, then in South Africa, had raised eleven hundred Indian volunteers, to form Natal Indian Ambulance Corps in which he served as a sergeant-major ( A Barrister-at-Law, from the Inner Temple, was worth the rank of only this level !?!) of the British Army. The volunteers were trained and medically certified to serve on the front lines. They were auxiliaries  to a  British Unit of  White volunteer ambulance corps. At the battle of Spion Kop Gandhi and his bearers moved to the front line and carried wounded soldiers for miles to a field hospital because the terrain was too rough for the ambulances. Winston Churchill, , joined the volunteer South African Light Horse regiment while performing his duties as war correspondent for the London-based Morning Post. Churchill, assessing the battle through his spyglass, did not notice that Gandhi was one of the two dhoolie-bearers who carried the mortally wounded General Edward Woodgate down the hillside. Gandhi and thirty-seven volunteers, were recipients of the Boer War Medal. Gandhi later received the Kaisar-i-Hind gold medal for his humanitarian work in South Africa and the Zulu War medal for his renewed ambulatory services in 1906.

British steamer, SS Kinfauns Castle,  had reached the English Channel from Cape Town in South Africa in August 1914 when MK Gandhi ,one of the passengers received important news: the British Empire was at war with Germany. By late August, 1914, it had become clear to Gandhi that the Indian Army would be deployed on the Western Front and there could be many Indians wounded needing medical care. So Gandhi proposed to raise an Indian ambulance corps that was soon sanctioned by the British war office. In the next five months, Gandhi managed to inspire many Indians to join the corps, some of whom later served in hospitals in Southampton and Brighton where Indian war casualties were treated. In this cause, he was aided by his wife and Sarojini Naidu, who also drew up a resolution for unconditional support to the British Empire.

Kasturbai "Kasturba" Mohandas Gandhi born Kasturbai Makhanji Kapadia on (11 April 1869 – 22 February 1944) was with her husband Mahatma Gandhi in England when World War One broke out. Together they volunteered as auxiliary hospital workers among the Allied troops in western Europe. In 1914-15, Kasturba Gandhi worked in Indian Army hospitals - on England's southern coast - set up for some 16,000 Indian soldiers who had been wounded in France and Belgium.

"Mrs Gandhi was particularly anxious to see that no Indian patient suffered or felt embarrassed on those delicate questions of caste distinctions," wrote Daya Ram Thapar, a fellow Indian medical volunteer at the hospitals. "She undertook to look after the feeding of seriously ill orthodox patients and often used to clean their utensils if they objected to being fed by non-Hindus."

Historians and political pundits have forever struggled to explain why the apostle of peace and non-violence had rendered support to the British Empire in the First World War. Some say Gandhi was a loyalist who had great faith in the British; some say Gandhi was an opportunist who tried to use the Great War to extract political concessions from Britain. Gandhi was a politician back then, and like all politicians, he did contradict himself several times. But at that time in India, there was no demand for total independence or 'poorna swaraj' but dominion status. So it wasn’t just Gandhi but most political leaders of that time, cutting across party lines, supported in varying degrees the British war effort. Gandhi himself struggled to explain it and gave contradictory statements to justify his stand right up to the mid-1920s. But until the end of the war, Gandhi understood Britain’s cause to be a righteous one and worth fighting for.

MK Gandhi later returned the medals, to Viceroy in India, as a demonstration that he could “retain neither respect nor affection for such a government” that continued to act “in an unscrupulous, immoral and unjust manner” towards their Indian subjects. . This was how his letter to the Viceroy ran, quoted from Young India dated 4th August, 1920:

"It is not without a pang that I return the Kaisar-i-Hind gold medal granted to me by your predecessor for my humanitarian work in South Africa, the Zulu War medal granted in South Africa for my services as officer in charge of the Indian volunteer ambulance corps in 1906 and the Boer War medal for my services as assistant superintendent of the Indian volunteer stretcher-bearer corps during the Boer War of 1899-1900. I venture to return these medals in pursuance of the scheme of non-cooperation inaugurated today in connection with the Khilafat movement. Valuable as these honours have been to me, I cannot wear them with an easy conscience so long as my Mussalman countrymen have to labour under a wrong done to their religious sentiment. Events that have happened during the past one month have confirmed me in the opinion that the Imperial Government have acted in the Khilafat matter in an unscrupulous, immoral and unjust manner and have been moving from wrong to wrong in order to defend their immorality. I can retain neither respect nor affection for such a Government ".

( Ref: Wikipedia, Ms Manimugdha S.Sharma(TOI), Sqd.Ldr RT Chhina )