Mahatma Gandhi, his life, writings and speeches/The Rev. Lord Bishop of Madras on the South African Situation
THE LORD BISHOP OF MADRAS ON THE SOUTH AFRICAN SITUATION
Under the auspices of the Indian South African League, a public meeting was held on the 15th December 1913 in the Y.M.C.A. Auditorium to thank H.E. the Viceroy for his sympathetic assurances about the conditions of Indians in South Africa and to protest against the composition of the Committee appointed by the South African Union Government to go into the question. The Rev. Lord Bishop of Madras, the Chairman, said:—
Gentlemen,—The object of this meeting is: to convey most respectfully our thanks to His Excellency the Viceroy for his remarks on the South African question during his recent visit to Madras, and our hearty appreciation of the deep sympathy which he has shown with the wrongs and sufferings of the Indians in South Africa and the wise and statesmanlike spirit in which he has dealt with this most painful and difficult question. I will leave the three speakers, who will respectively move, second and support the resolution that will be submitted to this meeting, to express your views on this subject, and also the gratitude which all classes of Indians in Madras feel towards His Excellency for his courageous and timely utterances. But before calling upon them to speak, I should like to say a few words as an Englishman and a Christian, I do not propose to argue all over, again the Indian question in South Africa except to emphasise once more the fact that Indians are not now claiming the free right of entry for the people of India to South Africa or any other part of the British Empire. What they do claim is that the Indians who have been allowed to settle in South Africa and make South Africa their home, the men and women by whose labour and toil Natal has been saved from ruin and made a prosperous colony, should be treated with common justice and humanity. If you have not done so already, I should advise you to procure and read carefully a copy of Mr, Gokhale's speech at Bombay on the 24th October last. It gives the clearest and fullest statement of the history of this struggle and of the Indian demands that I have read anywhere. I have nothing to add to what Mr. Gokhale has already said so eloquently and so feelingly and yet with admirable self-restraint. But I will say just a few words on some of the criticisms which have been levelled against His Excellency the Viceroy in England and in South Africa.
UNDIPLOMATIC
In the first place his speech has been condemned as undiplomatic. Possibly it was undiplomatic. But there is a time for all things. For many years the Government of India have tried patiently to secure justice for the Indians in South Africa by diplomatic methods and they have failed. And now that matters have been brought to a dangerous crisis and all India is ablaze with a fiery indignation, time has come to put aside the soft phrases of diplomacy, to call a spade a spade and to tell the politicians of South Africa plainly how their action in this matter is regarded in India. We are deeply grateful to His Excellency that he has done this and has come forward at a critical time as the spokesman and representative of the Indian people.
Then, in the second place, His Excellency has been criticised for having, encouraged the men who are breaking the law. No sensible person would ever say a word to encourage law-breaking without a deep sense or responsibility. It is a platitude to say that society is built up on respect for law and order. But there is such a thing as tyranny masquerading under the forms of law; and when that is unhappily the case, resistance to law becomes not a crime, but a virtue. I shirnk from saying anything that may even seem to encourage lawlessness; bat I think that it is necessary to say quite plainly and openly that the Indians in South Africa are now resisting not law but tyranny. They have been very patient. For twenty years or more they have pleaded for justice, and it is only after exhausting every other possible means of securing redress for their cruel wrongs, that they have at last taken the step of passive resistance to unjust laws. For the South African Government, therefore, to appeal to the duty of obedience to the law seems to me to ignore the obvious fact that the just complaints of the Indians for the last twenty years has been that the law has been made an engine of tyranny and injustice. It is all very well for the South African Government to say, 'we cannot consider your grievances till you cease your resistance to the law.' The Indians can say with far more reason: 'we will cease our resistance to your laws when you cease to make them Instruments of oppression.' In saying this, I do not for a moment condone any acts of unprovoked violence that may have occurred on the part of the Indians; I must repeat with regard to these outbreaks what I have already said elsewhere, that the responsibility for them must rest mainly upon those who have provoked the conflict by injustice and cruelty.
I have spoken so far as an Englishmen, taught from my childhood to hate tyranny and to regard it as a sacred duty to stand up for the oppressed and persecuted, to whatever race or country they belong. May I say just a very few words as a Christian. I feel all the more indignant at the cruel injustice inflicted on the Indians in South Africa just because it is inflicted by men who profess to be disciples and followers of Jesus Christ. Tyranny is hateful in any case. It is doubly hateful when exercised by Christians in direct defiance of their creed and in flagrant opposition to the whole teaching and. example of Him whom they acknowledge as their Lord and their God. 1 frankly confess, though it deeply grieves me to say it, that I see in Mr. Gandhi the patient sufferer for the cause of righteousness and mercy, a truer representative of the Crucified Saviour than the men who have thrown him into prison and yet call themselves by the name of Christ.