By the early 1960s the NIC, battered by state repression, was no longer a significant force in the anti-apartheid struggle. Ela Gandhi, great-granddaughter of the Mahatma and who became vice-president of the revived NIC in 1971, recounted that within South Africa the 1960s were

This ‘gloom’ came in the aftermath of the heady days of the 1950s. Yet before this, there had been years of advance. Dr Monty Naicker's emergence as leader in the 1940s took the NIC in a more radical direction, and in a parallel development in the Transvaal, Dr Yusuf Dadoo, Naicker's contemporary at Edinburgh University, became leader of the Transvaal Indian Congress (TIC).

In the early 1950s the Indian Congresses began to stitch together a working relationship with the ANC that saw them engaging jointly in a series of anti-apartheid campaigns. This relationship was consolidated with the adoption of the Freedom Charter in 1955. As Ela Gandhi pointed out, this progress was blunted by the banning of the ANC and the PAC following the Sharpeville massacre of March 1960. While the NIC was not proscribed, the imprisonment, banning and forced exile of key members resulted in its diminution in the public domain. Support work continued, and NIC founding father Gandhi and leaders of the 1940s, such as Monty Naicker and Kesaveloo Goonam, continued to evoke respect, but there was a lack of visible leadership among Indians. ‘Own affairs’ institutions set up by the apartheid government began to gain ground. It was only at the end of the decade that the NIC began to stir again, sparked partly by the celebrations in 1969 to mark the centenary of Gandhi's birth.