Page:The Collected Works of Mahatma Gandhi, vol. 1.djvu/310

 Governorship of Bengal contains a population numerically equal to that of the Madras and Bombay Presidencies put together, and from an administrative point of view much more difficult to manage.


 * Sir Charles Elliott bears generous testimony not only to the absence of factious opposition but to the valuable practical aid which he has obtained in maturing this necessarily complex measure (The Bengal Sanitary Drainage Act) from his Legislature as expanded by Lord Salisbury’s Statute. Many of the discussions have been most helpful, and so far as Bengal is concerned—the province in which the elective system seemed fraught with the greatest difficulty—the experiment, after a severe trial, has proved a success (the italics are again mine).

II

The second objection is that the Indian in South Africa represents the lowest-class Indian. The statement is hardly correct. It will not, of course, be true as regards the trading community, nor will it be so as to all the indentured Indians, some of whom belong to the highest castes in Indian. They are certainly all very poor. Some of them were vagabonds in India. Many also belong to the lowest class. But I may be permitted to say without giving any offence that, if the Indian community in Natal is not, nor is the European community here, drawn from the highest class. But I venture to submit that undue importance is given to this fact. If the Indian is not a model Indian, it is the duty of the Government to help him to become one. And if the reader wishes to know what a model Indian is, I beg to refer him to my “Open Letter” where many authorities are collected to show that he is as much civilized as a “model” European. And just as it is competent for a lowest-class European to rise to the highest level in Europe, so is it for the lowest-class Indian in India. By persistent indifference, or retrogressive legislation, the Indian would be degraded lower still in the Colony, and thus may constitute a real danger which he was not before. Shunned, despised, cursed, he will only do and be what others in similar positions have done and been. Loved and well treated, he is capable of rising higher like any member of every other nationality. He cannot be said to be well treated so long as he is not even given those privileges which he enjoys or would enjoy in India under similar circumstances.

III

To say that the Indian does not understand the franchise is to ignore the whole history of India. Representation, in the truest sense