Page:MKGandhi patriot.djvu/18

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IN SOUTH AFRICA
3

is this cosmopolitan character of the population which forms at once the attractiveness and perplexity of the place. There is no cohesion, there is no monotony.

Problems, which are essentially problems of Johannesburg, appear on every hand—race, colour, education, crime, religion—each in turn presents its own peculiar difficulties, and clamours to be solved. Surely of all places this is the most perplexing, and perhaps the most fascinating. Few live here long without loving it. But amidst the many questions which have appeared in the City since its foundation, there is one which stands out in curious and unique relief, and has done so for a long time. That is, the Passive Resistance movement of the Asiatics.

For some eighteen months, the Asiatic community, which numbers throughout the Transvaal about 10,000, naturally a loyal and law abiding community, has been in revolt against the Government. The Asiatic Law Amendment Act, which was built on the theory that the Asiatics had inaugurated a wide-spread fraudulent traffic in "permits," and was consequently a criminal community, to be legislated against as criminals, awakened