M. K. Gandhi
decision—without result, however, owing to the intervention of the then Secretary of State for the Colonies, the late Mr. Lyttelton. But the general public, by ingeniously manipulated statistics, were led to believe in a huge influx of unauthorised Asiatics into the Transvaal, to which some colour was let by the dispersal of the Indian residents of the Johannesburg Indian location throughout the Colony, after it was burnt down at the time of the plague outbreak in 1904, and meetings all over the Transvaal were held with the object of closing the door against all Asiatic immigration, and compelling Indians to trade and reside exclusively in locations. In an atmosphere of prejudice and terror thus created, it was possible effectively to protest one's innocence, and the request of the Indian community for an open and impartial inquiry, whether by Royal Commission or otherwise, fell on deaf ears; so that when a draft ordinance was published, in 1906, to "amend" Law 3 of 1885, requiring compulsory re-registration of the entire Indian community, men, women, and children, it was voiciferously welcomed by the whole European population, whilst it fell amongst the Indian victims to be like a bomb-shell. The basic assumption, on the part of the authorities, for its necessity lay in the unquenchable belief in wholesale Indian immigration of an unlawful character, to which, in their opinion, resident Indians could not but be a party. So far as
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