Page:The Collected Works of Mahatma Gandhi, vol. 1.djvu/251

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not only not against the Indians freely residing and trading in the Transvaal, but they would also deem it a hardship, should the harassing measures ultimately result in their withdrawal (App. E); and the other signed by the European residents, showing that, in the opinion of the signatories, their sanitary habits are in no way inferior to those of the Europeans, and that the agitation against the Indians is due to the trade jealousy (App. F). But were it otherwise—were every European and every Burgher of the State dead against the Indian— even that, your Petitioners submit, cannot affect the main issue, unless the causes which render such a state of things possible were such as would discredit a community against whom such a feeling exists. At the time of going to press (14-5-95), the Dutch petition was already signed by 484 Burghers and the European by 1340 Europeans.

29. That the Award of the Chief Justice of the O. F. S.[1] does not at all simplify the question and bring its solution a step nearer will appear from the following :

The active exercise of Her Majesty’s Government protection will be just as necessary as if the Award had never been given. For, assuming, for argument’s sake and that only, that the Award is proper and final, and that the Chief Justice of the Transvaal has decided that the Indians must trade and reside in the places fixed by the Government, the question at once arises: where will they be put? May they be put in gullies—in places where sanitation is impossible, and which are so far away from towns as to render it absolutely impossible for the Indians to trade or live decently? That this is quite likely would appear from the following strong protest addressed by His Honour the British Agent against the Transvaal Government assigning an uninhabitable place to the Malays in 1893, at p. 72, Green Book No. 2:

To be forced into a small Location on a spot used as a place to deposit the refuse of the town, without any water except the polluted soakage in the gully between the Location and the town, must inevitably result in malignant fevers and other diseases breaking out amongst them, whereby their lives and the health of the community in town will be endangered. But, apart from these serious objections, some of these people have not the means of erecting dwellings for themselves on the land pointed out (or anywhere else) such as they have been accustomed to live in. The consequence of forcing them out of their present habitations will, therefore, result in all of them leaving Pretoria to the great
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