Page:The Collected Works of Mahatma Gandhi, vol. 1.djvu/207

 Letter to "The Times of Natal" (25-10-1894

DURBAN, October 25, 1894

TO

THE EDITOR The Times of Natal

SIR,

I would, with your permission, venture to make a few remarks on your leader, entitled “Rammysammy”, in your issue of the 22nd instant.

I have no wish to defend the article in The Times of India noticed by you; but is not your very leader its sufficient defence? Does not the very heading “Rammysammy” betray a studied contempt towards the poor Indian? Is not the whole article a needless insult to him? You are pleased to acknowledge that “India possesses men of high culture, etc.” and yet you would not, if you could, give them equal political power with the white man. Do you not thus make the insult doubly insulting? If you had thought that the Indians were not cultured, but were barbarous brutes, and on that ground denied them political equality, there would be some excuse for your opinions. You, however, in order to enjoy the fullest pleasures derived from offering an insult to an inoffensive people, must needs show that you acknowledge them to be intelligent people and yet would keep them under foot.

Then you have said that the Indians in the Colony are not the same as those in India; but, Sir, you conveniently forget that they are the brothers or descendants of the same race whom you credit with intelligence, and have, therefore, given the opportunity, the potentiality of becoming as capable as their more fortunate brethren in India, just as a man sunk in the depth of ignorance and vice of the East End of London has the potentiality of becoming Prime Minister in free England. You put upon the franchise petition to Lord Ripon an interpretation it was never meant to convey. The Indians do not regret that capable Natives can exercise the franchise. They would regret if it were otherwise. They, however, assert that they too, if capable, should have the right. You, in your wisdom, woul