SASTRI, V. S. SRINIVASA (1869– ), Indian man, was born of poor Brahmin parents at Valangiman, near Kumbakonam, Madras, on Sept. 22, 1869. He started life as a schoolmaster, but, deeply impressed by the rules of the Servants of India Society which G. K. Gokhale founded in 1905, on a basis of self-sacrifice, purity and poverty, he was admitted to member ship early in 1907. On Gokhale's nomination, made before his death in 1915, Sastri succeeded to the presidentship. Elected to the viceregal legislative council in 1916, he soon came to the front as the greatest Indian orator of his day. He gave discriminating support to the Montagu-Chelmsford reforms, being a member of the Moderate deputation to England in 1919 and serving on Lord Southborough's Franchise committee; he was elected a mem ber of the new Council of State when the reforms took effect. In 1921 he served on the Indian Railway committee; represented India at the Imperial Conference in London, at the League of Nations Assembly at Geneva, and at the Washington Conference on the reduction of naval armaments. The same year he was called to the privy council, being the third Indian to receive this distinction, and was made a freeman of the City of London. In
1922 he was deputed to Australia, New Zealand and Canada to confer with the respective governments as to the best methods of practical interpretation of the resolution of the 1921 Imperial Conference on the rights of citizenship of lawfully domiciled Indians, and he achieved definite results. He was chairman of a deputation of non-official members of the Indian legislature to London in 1923 to support representations made by the Indians of Kenya on their disabilities, and certain disappointments led him some way in the direction of aloofness; but in 1926 he accepted an invitation of the Government of India to be a member of the Indian delegation to South Africa for a round table conference with the Union Government.
A settlement was reached and with the hearty approval of Gandhi, Sastri accepted early in 1927 appointment as the first agent-general to the Government of India in South Africa. He showed great judgment and skill in promoting good will and concord during the two years to which he limited his acceptance.