Page:The Collected Works of Mahatma Gandhi, vol. 1.djvu/371




 * The reason why he refused to do this was because it was apparently doing it by a side-wind and quietly, and the Government intended to do it in the full light of day.

It is difficult to conceive a better mode of doing a thing by a “side-wind and quietly” than that of passing the present Bill, which leaves everybody in the dark. The Natal Advertiser of the 8th May, 1896, says:


 * . . . What is the present Bill if not a side-wind? Its whole object is to endeavour quietly and by a side-wind to effect that which the measure of last session failed to accomplish. Mr. Escombe admitted that the measure was brutally blunt and to this he rightly ascribed its failure to obtain acceptance by the Imperial Government. He further admitted that the present Bill has precisely the same object in view as the “brutal” Bill, only it does not state its object honestly and straightforwardly; in other words, it seeks quietly and by a side-wind to reach the goal apparently unattainable by plain sailing.

If Her Majesty’s Government are convinced that a real necessity exists for legislation restricting the Indian franchise in Natal, and if Her Majesty’s Government are satisfied that the question cannot be dealt with but by class legislation, and if Her Majesty’s Government further accept the Colonial view that Indian British subjects, in spite of the gracious Proclamation of 1858, may be treated on a different footing from that on which the European British subjects are treated, then, your Memorialists submit that it would be infinitely better and more satisfactory to exclude the Indians by name from any rights and privileges that they in the opinion of Her Majesty’s Government, should not be allowed to enjoy, than that by ambiguous legislation the door should be left open for litigation and trouble.

That the Bill, if assented to, would give rise to endless litigation owing to its ambiguity is an admitted fact. It is admittedly also of the first importance that the question of the Indian franchise should be “settled once for all”. to quote the words of the Honourable the Prime Minister of Natal. And yet, in the opinion of the majority of the leaders of opinion in Natal, the Bill will not settle the question once for all.

Mr. Binns, the leader of the Opposition in the Natal Assembly, after quoting chapter and verse to show that the Indians in India did possess elective representative institutions, founded on the parliamentary franchise, is reported to have said this:


 * He hoped he had shown clearly that on that ground this Bill was wrong. There were representative institutions and the elective principle