Page:The Collected Works of Mahatma Gandhi, vol. 2.djvu/157

 MEMORIAL TO SECRETARY OF STATE FOR THE COLONIES

March 15, 1897

THE RIGHT HONOURABLE JOSEPH CHAMBERLAIN HER MAJESTY’S PRINCIPAL SECRETARY OF STATE FOR THE COLONIES LONDON


 * THE MEMORIAL OF THE UNDERSIGNED INDIANS
 * RESIDING IN THE COLONY OF NATAL

HUMBLY SHEWETH:

That your Memorialists, as representing the Indian community in Natal, hereby venture to approach you with reference to the Indian question in Natal, with special regard to the demonstration that took place in Durban on the 13th January, 1897, headed by Captain Sparks, a commissioned officer, to protest against the landing of Asiatics on board the s.s. Courland and s.s. Naderi, two Indian-owned ships which arrived in Durban on the 18th day of December, 1896 with about 600 passengers, which culminated in an assault on one of them who was saved from being lynched by the tact of the Durban Borough Police.

The Indian community in Natal has been suffering from various legal disabilities for a very long time, some of which have been made the subject of memorials to Her Majesty’s Government. In those memorials, it has been pointed out that the ultimate extinction of the Indian as a free man is the goal of the Colonists, and that every disability placed on the Indian becomes the forerunner of many more, and that his position is to be so reduced that he cannot exist in the Colony, except as (to quote the Attorney-General of Natal) “a hewer of wood and drawer of water”, till the end of his lifetime. On these and such grounds, it was urged that legislation restrictive of the freedom of the Indians in Natal should not be sanctioned by Her