Chapter L
The End of the Struggle
Within a short time of the issue of the report, the Government published in the official Gazette of the Union the Indians Relief Bill which was to effect a settlement of their long-standing dispute with the Indians; and I went at once to Cape Town where the Union Parliament sits. The Bill contained 9 sections and would take up only two columns of a paper like Young India. One part of it dealt with the question of Indian marriages and validated in South Africa the marriages which were held legal in India, except that if a man had more wives than one, only one of them would at any time be recognized as his legal wife in South Africa. The second part abolished the annual licence of £3 to be taken out by every indentured Indian labourer who failed to return to India and settled in the country as a free man on the completion of his indenture. The third part provided that the domicile certificates issued by the Government to Indians in Natal and bearing the thumb-impression of the holder of the permit should be recognized as conclusive evidence of the right of the holder to enter the Union as soon as his identity was established. There was a long and pleasant debate over the bill in the Union Parliament.
Administrative matters which did not come under the Indians Relief Bill were settled by correspondence between General Smuts and me, as for example, safeguarding the educated Indians’ right of entry into the Cape Colony, allowing ‘specially exempted’ educated Indians to enter South Africa, the status of educated Indians who had entered South Africa within the last three years, and permitting existing plural wives to join their husbands in South Africa. After dealing with all
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