Page:The Collected Works of Mahatma Gandhi, vol. 2.djvu/168




 * Mr. Gandhi, (prolonged hissing and hooting) that gentleman came to Natal and settled in the borough of Durban. He was received here freely and openly; all the privileges and advantages which the Colony could afford him were at his disposal. No contracting or circumscribing influence was brought to play upon him any more than on the audience or himself (the speaker), and he had all the privileges of their hospitality. In return, Mr. Gandhi had accused the Colonists of Natal of having dealt unfairly with Indians, and of having abused and robbed and swindled them. (A voice, ‘You can’t swindle a coolie.’) He (the doctor) quite agreed with that. Mr. Gandhi had returned to India and dragged them in the gutters, and painted them as black and filthy as his own skin. (Applause.) And this was what they might call, in Indian parlance, an honourable and manly return for the privileges which Natal had allowed him ..
 * . . It was the intention of these facile and delicate creatures to make themselves proprietors of the only thing that the ruler of this country had withheld from them—the franchise. It was their intention to put themselves in Parliament and legislate for the Europeans; to take over the household management, and put the Europeans in the kitchen . . . . Their country had decided that they had enough Asiatics and Indians here, and they were going to treat them fairly and well, provided they behaved themselves; but, if they were going to associate themselves with such men as Gandhi, and abuse their hospitality, and act in the way he had done, they might expect the same kind of treatment that was to be meted out to him. (Applause.) However great a misfortune it might be for those people, he could not get over the distinction between black and white.

— The Natal Advertiser, 5th January.

Comment is superfluous. That Mr. Gandhi has done nothing to justify the remarks about him will have been seen from what has preceded. That the Indians want legislative powers and that they want to put the Europeans in the kitchen, are but the products of the gallant doctor’s fertile imagination. These and such utterances would not have been noticed here but for the hold they had on the popular mind. The Government wired the following reply to Capt. Sparks’ telegraphic communication giving the text of the above resolutions:


 * In reply, I am to state that the Government has at present no power, apart from such as may be conferred by the Quarantine Laws, to prevent the landing in the Colony of any class of Her Majesty’s subjects. I am to state, however, that the closest attention has been, is being, and will be given to this question, the extreme importance of which the Government most completely recognizes. Government is in full