might be misconstrued as implying their consent to the total prohibition of Indian immigration in the future. The Immigration Act too must therefore be opposed and the only question was: Should this also be included in the Satyagraha struggle? The community’s view was that it was their duty to include in the Satyagraha any fresh attacks on their rights made while the struggle was in progress. If they did not feel strong enough to do so that was altogether a different matter. The leaders came to the conclusion that their lack or deficiency of strength should not be made a pretext for letting the Immigration Act alone, and that therefore this Act too must be covered by the Satyagraha struggle.
Correspondence was therefore carried on with the Government on this subject. We could not thereby induce General Smuts to agree to a change in the law, but it provided him with a fresh handle for vilifying the community and really speaking myself. General Smuts knew that many more Europeans, besides those who were publicly helping us, were privately sympathetic to our movement, and he naturally wished that their sympathy should be alienated if possible. He therefore charged me with raising a fresh point, and he told as well as wrote to our supporters that they did not know me as he did. If he yielded an inch, I would ask for an ell and therefore it was that he was not repealing the Asiatic Act. When Satyagraha was started, there was no question whatever about fresh immigrants. Now when he was legislating to prevent the fresh entry of any more Indians in the interest of the Transvaal, there too I had threatened Satyagraha. He could not any more put up with this ‘cunning.’ I might do my worst, and every Indian might be ruined, but he would not repeal the Asiatic Act, nor would the Transvaal Government give up the policy they had adopted regarding the Indians, and in this just attitude they were entitled to the support of all Europeans.
A little reflection will show how totally unjust and immoral this argument was. When there was nothing like the Immigrants Restriction Act at all in existence, how
