Page:The Collected Works of Mahatma Gandhi, vol. 1.djvu/376

 outside India and in the Colonies and allied States. May a respectable Indian venture out of India in pursuit of trade or other enterprise and hope to have any status? The Indian community do not want to shape the political destiny of South Africa, but they may be allowed to carry on their peaceful avocations quietly without any degrading conditions being imposed upon them. Your Memorialists, therefore, submit that if there is the slightest danger of the Indian vote preponderating, a simple educational test may be imposed on all alike, either with or without an increase in property qualifications. That would, in the opinion of the Government organ also, effectually remove all fear and if such a test failed, a more severe test may be imposed, which would tell. Against the Indians without materially affecting the European vote. If nothing short of a total exclusion of the Indians from the franchise would be acceptable to the Natal Government, and if Her Majesty’s Government are inclined to favour such a demand, then your Memorialists submit that nothing short of specific exclusion of the Indians by name would satisfactorily meet the difficulty.

Your Memorialists, however, beg to draw your attention to the fact that the European Colonists as a body make no such demand. They seem to be absolutely indifferent. The Natal Advertiser thus rebukes the indifference:


 * Perhaps the manner in which this all-important subject has been treated by Parliament also brings out a fourth point—the indifference of the Colony to its own politics. It would be highly interesting to discover, if such could be done, how many of the Colonists have taken the trouble even to read the Bill in question. Perhaps the proportion who have not read it would be a striking one. The general unconcern of Colonists in this matter is demonstrated by the fact that meetings have not been held in every centre—not to say every nook and corner of the Colony for its ventilation, and to formulate a demand that Parliament should only pass such a Bill as would render abortive all further controversy over the subject. Had the Colony been fully alive to the real gravity of the issue, the columns of the newspaper would also have teemed with a serious and intelligent correspondence on the question. Neither of these things, however, has happened. As a consequence, the Government have been able to get through a measure supposed to effectually deal with the matter, but which in reality puts it in a far worse and dangerous position than ever it was before.

It would appear from the extracts quoted above that the present Bill satisfies neither party. With the utmost deference to