Page:The Collected Works of Mahatma Gandhi, vol. 1.djvu/190

 the government of the Colony, and more especially the government of themselves?

14. Your Lordship’s Petitioners venture to submit that the Bill is admittedly retrograde in character and that it is manifestly unjust.

15. The very fact that those who are rightly on the Voters' List are to be allowed to remain there, at once, in your Petitioners' humble opinion, recognizes the ability of your Petitioners to understand the privilege and the responsibility attached to the exercise of the Franchise. Your Lordship's Petitioners cannot believe that they are allowed to remain on the List even though they are not fit to vote, as was attempted to be shown in the course of the debate.

16. It has also been said that Clause II of the Bill fully meets the ends of justice. Your Petitioners submit that it does not. On the contrary, it injures the feelings of both those who are on the List and those who are not.

17. It is little comfort to those who are already on the List to know that they may vote, while their children never can, no matter how well educated and well qualified they may be. Indian parents who settle in the Colony will have, if the Bill becomes law, the best stimulus to give higher education to their children taken away from them. They would hardly like to see their sons pariahs of society, without a status or without any ambition in life. Even wealth becomes useless if it gives a man no place in society. The very aim with which men collect wealth is thus nipped in the bud.

18. And the Second Clause vexes those who have been in the Colony already to know that, while their brethren, who are in no way superior to them, by a chance retain the right to vote, they themselves cannot vote simply because, perhaps, owing to circumstances entirely beyond their control, they have not been able to get their names on the Voters' List. The Bill thus makes between Indian British subjects of the same class an invidious distinction based on accidental circumstances.

19. It has also been hinted that the justice done by the Second Clause is not gratefully acknowledged by your Petitioners. But, with the greatest respect to the just intentions of the Government in introducing the Second Clause, Your Lordship's Petitioners have failed to see the justice thereof. This was even admitted by some Honourable Members themselves, who did not care whether the Second Clause was “in” or “out”, as those votes were bound to drop off before long. This seems to