Page:The Collected Works of Mahatma Gandhi, vol. 1.djvu/279



21. To show yet further how grossly unjust the adoption of the compulsory return or re-indenture has seemed from the first time that the idea was started, your Memorialists crave leave to quote from the report of and evidence taken before the Immigration Commission that sat in Natal in the year 1885.

22. Mr. J. R. Saunders, one of the Commissioners, forcibly puts his views on the matter in his additional report in the following terms:


 * Though the Commission has made no recommendation on the subject of passing a law to force Indians back to India at the expiration of their term of service unless they renew their indentures, I wish to express my strong condemnation of any such idea, and I feel convinced that many who now advocate the plan, when they realize what it means, will reject it as energetically as I do. Stop Indian immigration and face results, but don't try to do what I can show is a great wrong.


 * What is it but taking the best out of servants (the good as well as the bad), and then refusing them the enjoyment of the reward! Forcing them back (if we could, but we cannot) when their best days have been spent for our benefit. Whereto? Why, back to face a prospect of starvation from which they sought to escape when they were young. Shylock-like, taking the pound of flesh, and Shylock-like we may rely on meeting—Shylock's reward.


 * Stop Indian immigration if you will; if there are not enough unoccupied houses now, empty more by clearing out Arabs and Indians who live in them, and who add to the productive and consuming power of a less than half-peopled country. But let us trace results in this one branch of the enquiry, taking it as an example of others and trace out how untenanted houses depreciate the value of properties and securities—how, out of this must result stagnation in the building trade and those other trades and stores for supplies dependent on it— follow out how this leads to a reduced demand for white mechanics, and with the reduction in spending power of so many, how fall of revenue is to be expected next, need of retrenchment or taxation, or both. Let this result and others, far too numerous to be calculated in detail, be faced, and if blind race sentimentalism or jealousy is to prevail, so be it. The Colony can stop Indian immigration, and that perhaps far more easily and permanently than some ‘popularity seekers’ would desire. But force men off at the end of their service, this the Colony cannot do. And I urge on it not to discredit a fair name by trying.

23. The late member of the late Legislative Council and the present Attorney-General (the Hon. Mr. Escombe), giving his evidence before the Commission, said (p. 177):