58 THE SOUTH AFRICAN INDIAN QUESTION modification of the present law proposed by Mr. Smuts will take place irrespective of the continuance of the passive resistance at present being offered by the British Indians of the Transvaal, but we are in a position to state that the proposed concession will not satisfy passive resistors. The struggle of the Indian community of that Colony was undertaken in order to obtain the removal of the stigma cast upon the whole of India by this legis- lation, which imports a racial and colour bar into the Immigration Laws of a British Colony for the first time in the history of Colonial legislation. The principle so laid down that British Indians may not enter the Transvaal because they are British Indians is a radical departure from traditional policy, is un·British and intolerable, and if that principle is accepted even tacitly by British Indians, we consider that they will be untrue to themselves, to the land of their birth, and to the Empire to which they belong. Nor is it the passive resisters in the Transvaal who, in a matter of this kind, have alone to be considered. The whole of India is now awakened to a sense of the insult that the Transvaal legislation offers to her, and we feel that the people here, at the heart of the Empire, cannot remain unmoved by this departure, so unprece- dented and so vital, from Imperial traditions. Mr. Smuts’ proposal brings out the issue in the clearest manner possible. If we were fighting not for a principle but for loaves and fishes, he would he prepared to throw them at us in the shape of residential permits for the small number of cultured British Indians that may be required for our wants, but because we insist upon the removal of the implied racial taint from the legislation of the Colony, he is not prepared to yield an inch. He would give us the husk without the kernel. He declines to —
