Page:The Collected Works of Mahatma Gandhi, vol. 1.djvu/301



DURBAN, October 9, 1895 TO THE EDITOR The Natal Advertiser

SIR,

No Indian can take exception to the general tenor of your leader in your yesterday’s issue.

If the Congress has attempted, even in an indirect manner, to tamper with a witness, it will certainly deserve suppression. I will, for the present, content myself with repeating the statement that it has not made any such attempt. As the judgment in which the Congress has been condemned is under appeal, I do not feel free to deal with the evidence at length. The only witness who was asked questions about the Congress denied that it had anything to do with the matter. If the doings of men in their private capacity were to be fathered upon the association they may belong to, then I venture to think that almost any charge could be proved against any association.

The Indians do not claim “one Indian one vote”, nor is any vote claimed for the “Coolie” pure and simple. But then the “Coolie” pure and simple, so long as he remains one, cannot get it even under the existing law. The protest is only against colour or racial distinction. If the whole question were studied coolly there would be no occasion for any display of bad feeling or warmth by anybody.

The Indians have in no part of the world attempted to gain political supremacy. In Mauritius, where they are in such large numbers, they are said to have shown no political ambition. And they are not likely to do so in Natal, even though they may number 4,00,00 instead of 40,000.

I am, etc., M. K. GANDHI

The Natal Advertiser, 10-10-1895


 * 35The paper had observed that if the Indian Congress could be proved to have resorted to "wrong and suspicious practices", then "swift and decisive action for its punishment would be justified". The judge in the Padayachi case had said that the Congress was "of the nature of an association of conspiracy, pernicious and fraught with danger to the whole community in this Colony of whatever race". Taking note of this adverse judgment, The Natal Advertiser had in an earlier issue observed that if that was really the case, the judge's censure "will not be regarded as a whit too severe".

=== Letter to Colonial Secretary