Leading member of South African Indian
Congress and the Natal Indian Congress. In 1946, with Yusuf Dadoo, he led
passive resistance campaigns among Indian South Africans to protest the Asiatic
Land Tenure and the Indian Representation Act. As an early advocate of a
multi-racial united front against apartheid he fostered an alliance with the ANC
in 1947 known as the Dadoo-Xuma-Naicker Pact, or the Three Doctors' Pact. He
was imprisoned several times for anti-apartheid activism.