Page:Mahatma Gandhi, his life, writings and speeches.djvu/332

From Wikisource
Jump to navigation Jump to search
This page has been validated.

M. K. Gandhi

to bring home to the Imperial Government and the British public the extreme gravity of the situation, and the certainty of the extension of the demands of Passive Resisters unless a settlement of the points in dispute were promptly arrived at. All these representations, however, failed to conciliate the Union Government, which proved obdurate, and a final warning was sent to them stating that unless assurances of the introduction of legislative and administrative measures, in the following session, were given to recognise in law the validity of de facto monogamous marriage, to remove the racial bar, as regards the Free State, to restore the right of entry into the Cape Colony to South African-born Indians, to repeal the £3 tax, and to administer justly and with due regard to vested interests existing legislation operating harshly against Indians, Passive Resistance would be immediately revived. The warning was ignored, and the struggle was resumed in all its bitterness and on a much wider scale than before. Its incidents are too fresh in the public mind to need more than a brief mention—the compaign of the Indian women whose marriages had been dishonoured by a fresh decision of the Supreme Court, at the instigation of the Government, the awakening of the free and indentured labourers all over Natal, the tremendous strikes, the wonderful and historic, strikers' march of

208