From its beginnings in the 1960s, the emergent Black Consciousness Movement (BCM) attracted many young Indian university students. Steve Biko, who was the inspiration and driving force behind Black Consciousness (BC), was born in the Eastern Cape and began to study medicine at the University of Natal in 1966. He was frustrated by what he regarded as the paternalistic attitude of the white liberal National Union of South African Students (NUSAS) towards ‘blacks’, which in his expanded definition included Indians and coloureds. He argued that fundamental to the struggle for freedom was the mental liberation of black people, whom he called upon to shun white paternalism and to be in control of their own organisations and destiny.

With its genealogy in the ideas of Anton Lembede in the 1940s and Robert Sobukwe in the 1950s, BC meant more than merely crossing apartheid boundaries. Biko wrote in December 1971 that ‘by describing yourself as Black … you have committed yourself to fight against all forces that seek to use your blackness as a stamp that marks you out as a subservient human being’. He clarified that

In the aftermath of the crushing of the liberation movements by a determinedly repressive apartheid state, BC preaching was an eclectic mix of ideas that held great attraction for the young in particular.

Among the students of Indian ancestry who joined Biko were Asha Rambally, Sam Moodley, Saths Cooper and Strini Moodley. Cooper matriculated from Sastri College in 1967, and proceeded to the University College for Indians on Salisbury Island. He was a member of the South African Students Organisation (SASO), which was formed after Biko led the walkout from NUSAS in 1968. Cooper explained that his generation refused to accept ‘white as a point of reference and describe everything else in the negative … Black Consciousness was a way of identifying subjectively with the conditions we found ourselves in objectively.’