Return to India
On my relief from war-duty I felt that my work was no longer in South Africa but in India. Not that there was nothing to be done in South Africa, but I was afraid that my main business might become merely moneymaking.
Friends at home were also pressing me to return, and I felt that I should be of more service in India. And for the work in South Africa, there were, of course, Messrs. Khan and Mansukhlal Naazar. So I requested my coworkers to relieve me. After very great difficulty my request was conditionally accepted, the condition being that I should be ready to go back to South Africa if, within a year, the community should need me. I thought it was a difficult condition, but the love that bound me to the community made me accept it.
“The Lord has bound me With the cotton-thread of love, I am His bondslave,”
sang Mirabai. And for me, too, the cotton-thread of love that bound me to the community was too strong to break. The voice of the people is the voice of God, and here the voice of friends was too real to be rejected. I accepted the condition and got their permission to go.
At this time I was intimately connected only with Natal. The Natal Indians bathed me with the nectar of love. Farewell meetings were arranged at every place, and costly gifts were presented to me.
Gifts had been bestowed on me before when I returned to India in 1896, but this time the farewell was overwhelming. The gifts of course included things in gold and silver, but there were articles of costly diamond as well.