Page:The Collected Works of Mahatma Gandhi, vol. 1.djvu/247



16. It is true, however, that this does not appear in the newspapers. The public Press thinks that your Petitioners are “filthy vermin”. The representations to the Volksraad say the same thing. The reasons are obvious. Your Petitioners, not knowing the English language so well as to be able to take part in such discussions, or even to keep themselves informed of all the misrepresentations about them, are not always in a position to refute such statements. It was only when they became aware that their very existence was at stake that they went to the European firms and doctors to give their opinion about their sanitary habits.

17. But your Petitioners claim also a right to speak for themselves, and they have no hesitation in stating deliberately that collectively, though their dwellings may appear uncouth and are certainly without much adornment, they are in no way inferior to the European dwellings from a sanitary point of view. And as to their personal habits, they confidently assert that they use more water and bathe much oftener than the Europeans residing in the Transvaal whom they come in frequent connection with. Nothing can be further from your Petitioners’ wish than to set up comparisons, or to try to show themselves superior to their European brethren. Force of circumstances only has driven them to such a course.

18. The two elegant petitions at pp. 19-21 of the Green Book No. 2, which pray for an exclusion of all Asiatics, and contain wholesale denunciation of all the Asiatics, Chinamen, etc., render it absolutely necessary to state what has been stated above. The first petition enumerates terrible vices, peculiar, as alleged therein, to Chinamen, and the second, referring to the first, includes in the denunciation all the Asiatics. Speaking specifically of Chinese, Coolies and other Asiatics, the second petition refers to “the dangers to which the whole community is exposed by the spread of leprosy, syphilis, and the like loathsome diseases engendered by the filthy habits and immoral practices of these people”.

19. Without entering into further comparison, and without entering into the question as affecting the Chinamen, your Petitioners most emphatically state that the above charges are entirely withoutgrounds so far as your Petitioners are concerned.

20. To show how far the interested agitators have gone, your Petitioners quote below an excerpt from a memorial presented to the Volksraad of the Orange Free State, a copy of which was sent with approval by the Pretoria Chamber of Commerce to the Transvaal Government :