Page:The Collected Works of Mahatma Gandhi, vol. 1.djvu/261

 Excellency with regard to Her Majesty's Indian British subjects in the South African Republic.

Your Petitioners instead of reiterating the facts and arguments embodied in a similar petition, signed by over 10,000 British Indians, and sent to the Right Honourable the Secretary of State for the Colonies, beg to append hereto a copy of the petition with its annexures, and commend it to Your Excellency's perusal.

Your Petitioners after mature deliberation have come to the conclusion that unless they sought the direct protection of Your Excellency as Her Majesty's representative and virtual Ruler of all India, and unless that protection was graciously accorded, the position of the Indians in the South African Republic, and indeed throughout the whole of South Africa, would be utterly helpless and the enterprising Indians in South Africa would be forcibly degraded to the position of the Natives of South Africa, and this through no fault of their own.

If an intelligent stranger were to visit the South African Republic, and were told that there was a class of people in South Africa who could not hold fixed property, who could not move about the State without passes, who alone had to pay a special registration fee of £3 10s as soon as they entered the country for purposes of trade, who could not get licences to trade, and who would shortly be ordered to remove to places far away from towns, where only they could reside and trade, and who could not stir out of their houses after 9 o'clock, and that stranger were asked to guess the reasons for such special disabilities, would he not conclude that these people must be veritable ruffians, anarchists, a political danger to the State and society? And yet your Petitioners beg to assure Your Excellency that the Indians who are labouring under all the above disabilities are neither ruffians nor anarchists, but one of the most peaceful and lawabiding communities in South Africa, and especially in the South African Republic. For in Johannesburg, while there are people belonging to European nationalities who are a source of real danger to the State, and who have necessitated only lately an increase of the police force, and have thrown too much work on the detective department, the Indian community have not given the State any cause for anxiety on that score.

In support of the above, your Petitioners respectfully refer Your Excellency to the newspapers throughout South Africa.