Page:The Collected Works of Mahatma Gandhi, vol. 1.djvu/191

 be self-evident.

20. Your Lordship's Petitioners have noticed with shame and sorrow the zealous attempt made to compare your Petitioners with the Natives of South Africa. Very often it was said the Natives had a better claim to vote, if the Indians had any, simply because they were British subjects. Your Lordship's Petitioners would not enter into a discussion of the comparison, but would draw Your Lordship's attention to the Royal Proclamation of 1858, as also to Your Lordship's own personal experience of the Indian nation. Your Petitioners need hardly point out the marked difference that exists between the Governments of Indian British subjects and Native British subjects.

21. There are, at the present moment, hundreds of educated Indians, signatures of some of whom appear in the petition, who would not be able to vote at the Parliamentary elections if the Bill became law. Your Petitioners fully trust that Your Lordship will never advise Her Most Gracious Majesty to sanction a Bill that would cause such a grave injustice to any section of British subjects.

22. In the Natal Government Gazette of March 27, 1894, Your Lordship's Petitioners find, from the Indian Immigrants School Board Report for 1893, that there were 26 schools and 2,589 scholars studying in the schools that year. Your Petitioners respectfully submit that these boys, who are many of them born in the Colony, are entirely brought up after the European style. They, in later life, come in contact chiefly with the European community, and therefore, in every respect, become as fit for the Franchise privilege as any European, unless there is something radically wanting in them to compete with the Europeans in educational ability. That they are not incompetent, Your Lordship's Petitioners submit, has been proved beyond doubt by the best authorities on such subjects. The results, alike in India as in England, of the competition between English and Indian students, furnish ample proof of the Indian's ability to successfully compete with the European. Your Lordship's Petitioners purposely refrain from quoting extracts from the evidence given before the Parliamentary committees, or from great writers on the above head, because that would almost look like carrying coals to Newcastle. If, then, your Petitioners humbly venture to claim a vote for these boys when they come of age, is it not merely asking what any person in a civilized country would consider as his birthright and would very properly resent any interference with? Your Petitioners confidently trust that Your Lordship will not let these boys be subjected to the indignity of being deprived of the commonest right of a