E-Book - Mahatma Gandhi

Mahatma Gandhi – His Life & Timesthe problem 'in a non-controversial spirit'. The bill became South African law inJuly.The terms were:Hindu, Moslem and Parsi marriages are valid.The three-pound annual tax on indentured labourers who wish to remain inNatal is abolished; arrears are cancelled.Indentured labour will cease coming from India by 1920.Indians could not move freely from one province of the Union to another, butIndians born in South Africa might enter Cape Colony.Smuts promised publicly that the law would be administered 'in a just mannerand with due regard to vested rights' of Indians.The settlement was a compromise which pleased both sides. Gandhi noted thatIndians would still be 'cooped up' in their provinces, they could not buy gold,they could not hold land in the Transvaal, and they had difficulty in obtainingtrade licences. But he regarded the agreement as the "Magna Carta of SouthAfrican Indians. The gain, he told at a farewell banquet in Johannesburg—hewas feted at a dozen dinners —was not 'the intrinsic things' in the law but thevindication of the abstract principle of racial equality and the removal of the'racial taint'.The victory, moreover, was a vindication of civil resistance- is a force which,'Gandhi wrote in Indian Opinion, 'if it came universal, would revolutionize socialideals and do away with despotisms and the ever-growing militarism underwhich the nations of the West are groaning and are being almost crushed todeath, and which fairly promises to overwhelm even the nations of the East'.Having won the battle, Gandhi, accompanied by Mrs. Gandhi and Mr.Kallenbach, sailed for England on July 18, 1914. Gandhi was in Europeanclothes and looked gentle, thoughtful and tired. Kasturbai wore a white sariwith a gay flower design and showed signs of suffering as well as beauty. Likeher husband, she was forty-five.www.mkgandhi.org Page 134