Page:Heroes of the hour- Mahatma Gandhi, Tilak Maharaj, Sir Subramanya Iyer.djvu/43

 woman, and child (boys and girls over a certain age) had to pay a poll tax of 3 per head. It is unnecessary, however to catalogue in detail the various disabilities legal, economic, political and social under which the Indian laboured.

The small body of professional people, lawyers, doctors, merchants, religious teachers, who followed in the wake of the indentured Indian, these also, whatever their position and culture, fell equally under the same ban. The coloured man was in the eyes of the white colonist in South Africa a vile and accursed thing. There could be no distinction here of high and low. If these colonials had been asked to paint God they would have painted him white! There were certain differences in the position of the Indian between one province and another, in South Africa itself, the ideal in this line having been attained in the Transvaal and the Orange Free State, then independent. Not to labour the tale throughout South Africa the law was unjust to the Indian and man inhuman.

It is however interesting to think what a medley of elements contributed to this attitude. First and foremost, there was the antipathy of colour and race to what lengths this can go