INDIANS IN SOUTH AFRICA.

Press, Volume XLIX, Issue 14829, 21 November 1913, Page 8

INDIANS IN SOUTH AFRICA.

To understand the grave, situation which has arisen in Natal over the restrictions placed on Asiatics, it is necessary to go back a few years. The enactment of legislation in the Transvaal compelling Indians to register finger-prints provoked a campaign of passive resistance, which was abandoned on the Union Government promising to deal with the matter in certain terms as soon as possible. The Indian leaders agreed to abandon al! opposition to restrictions on entry into South Africa, provided that in the restrictive legislation there was no specific mention of Asiatics, and that the rights of Asiatics already domiciled in South Africa were safeguarded. The Government tried to fulfil its obligations, but owing to various causes, the chief of which was obstruction by a small minority, two Bills on the eubject failed to pass. A third Bill was introduced and passed this year, and came into force on August Ist. This Bill, tho Indians contend, doee not fulfil the promises made to them in 1911. TJie main principle of the Act —the exclusion of "any person or class of persons " deemed by the Minister on economic "' grounds, or on account of standard

" or habite of life, to be unsuited to " tiie requirements of the Union or any '"particular province thereof" —is not in dispute. They object to tie Act

because of the new inter-provincial barriers which it sets up against the movement of Indians within the Union, mid hixauso Indians are specifically discriminated against with respect to the Orrt»Ki> River Free State. Before the putting of the Act, British Indians domicile} nnywhere in South Africa had in*> right of entry into Gape Colony, wlitTcuM now they may be excluded from that provinco by the same methods a* arc applicable to immigrants from ouUtdo the Union. Asiatics have to sign a declaration on entering the Orange River Free State—the law is a relic of the days of the Republic— and they are not allowed to trade, hold land, or engage in any occupation within tho province. Opposition in this is a matter of principle. Indians, it is said, do not want to enter the province, but they object to the open indignity placed on their race. In other respects such as disabilities attaching to Indians out of their indentures, it is claimed that the Act is unduly harsh. In the Australasian colonic* sympathy naturally goes with tho Union Government, but it should not bo forgotten that the treatment of British Indians in the Transvaal was one of the causes of the war, and therefore one of the causes of our participation in the struggle. Lord Lansdowno declaro3 in 1899 that among tho many misdeeds of the South African Republic, nothing filled him with more indignation than the treatmont of these Indians. But, according to Lord AmpthiJl. who has Borvecl in India as Governor of a province, and made himself folly acquainted with the subject, the condition of these Indians in South Africa Jias been worso tlis war than it was beforo. Both he and Lord Sydenham, ex-Governor of Bombay, hold that the Imperial Government should have insisted on a modification of the Act. To the%rgument that tho Imperial Government cannot interfere with the affairs of a self-governing country, Lord Ampthill replies by asking whether a foreign nation would be allowed to treat British subjects op-prees-ively. The problem is one of unusual difficulty and delicacy. On tho one hand there is strong feeling among white people in South Africa, and on the other there is, besides the unrest among Indians in South Africa, the effect on natives in India of legislation which gives British subjects in a British possession less consideration than they get in foreign countries. In tho meantime, in Natal, where tho Asiatics largely outnumber the whites, there has been a stoppage of industry, which may havo very serious consequences. It looks as if wo were only just beginning to realise the difficulties in the way of governing successfully an Empire of so many different races.