Page:The Collected Works of Mahatma Gandhi, vol. 1.djvu/271

 Council with regard to the Indian Immigration Law Amendment Bill, so far as it affects the present term of indenture, and proposes a yearly licence of £3 to be taken out by every immigrant wishing to stop in the Colony as a free Indian, after finishing his term of indenture.

Your Petitioners respectfully submit that both the clauses above referred to are entirely unjust and uncalled for.

Your Petitioners humbly draw the attention of this Honourable House to the following from the report of the delegates, Messrs Binns and Mason, who were commissioned to go to India in connection with this matter:


 * So far no second term of indenture has been agreed to in the case of any country to which Coolies emigrated, although the consent of the Government of India had frequently been asked for; and in no instance had the condition of compulsory return at the end of the indentures been sanctioned.

Thus the clauses in the Bill are a total departure, your Petitioners submit, for the worse, from the practice prevalent throughout the British Colonies.

Assuming that the average age of an indentured Indian at the time of his entering into the contract of indenture is 25, under the clause which expects the Indian to work for 10 years, the best part of the life of the indentured Indian would be simply spent away in a state of bondage.

For an Indian to return to India after continuous 10 years’ stay in the Colony would be pure fatuity. All the old cords and ties will have been broken up. Such an Indian will be comparatively a stranger in his motherland. To find work in India would be almost impossible. The market is already overcrowded, and he will not have amassed sufficient fortune to enable him to live on the interest on his capital.

The total of the wages for 10 years would amount to £87. If the indentured Indian saves £50, allowing only £37 for clothing and other expenses during the whole 10 years, that capital will not give him interest sufficient to keep body and soul together, even in a poor country like India. Such an Indian, therefore, even if he ventured to return to India, would be compelled to return