Page:The Collected Works of Mahatma Gandhi, vol. 1.djvu/181




 * (c) It practically puts the free and indentured Indians in the same scale.


 * (d) Taking out for a moment the question of policy as the principle of the Bill, which seems to have developed but lately, the Bill seems to lay down that India has not at the present moment any Indian who is fit to exercise the privilege of franchise and that there is such a wide difference between a European and an Indian that contact with the former, even for any length of time, does not fit him for the exercise of the precious privilege.

8) Is it fair, your Petitioners humbly ask, that, while the father is a voter, he has to see his son, on whom he has lavished enormous sums of money to educate him so that he may become a public man, unable to possess a right that is now recognized as the birthright of all really educated persons born in civilized countries where representative institutions prevail?

9) Your Petitioners would very much like to have dwelt upon the fear that the permission to allow the Asiatic to vote would ultimately result in a Government of Natives by coloured people, the Indians. But your Petitioners are afraid that this is not the occasion on which your Petitioners may lay their humble views before your Honourable Council on the question. They would rest content with saying that, in their opinion, such a contingency can never happen, and certainly the time is not ripe to provide against it, were it even possible in the remote future.

(10) Your Petitioners beg respectfully to submit that the Bill makes an invidious distinction between one class of British subjects and another. But it has been said that, if Indian British subjects are to be treated equally with the Europeans, the same treatment should be accorded to other British subjects, e.g., the Natives of the Colony. Without entering into odious comparisons, your Petitioners would venture to quote from the Royal Proclamation of 1858, which would show on what principles the British Indian subjects have been and should be treated :
 * We hold ourselves bound to the Natives of our Indian territories by the same obligations of duty which bind us to all our other subjects, and those obligations, by the blessing of Almighty God, we shall faithfully and conscientiously fulfil. And it is our further will that, so far as may be, our subjects, of whatever race or creed, be freely and impartially admitted to offices in our services, the duties of which they may be qualified by their education, ability and integrity, duly to discharge. In their prosperity will be our strength, in their contentment our security and in their gratitude our best reward.