Chapter XXXIX
When Marriage is not a Marriage
As if unseen by any one God was preparing the ingredients for the Indians’ victory and demonstrating still more clearly the injustice of the Europeans in South Africa, an event happened which none had expected. Many married men came to South Africa from India, while some Indians contracted a marriage in South Africa itself. There is no law for the registration of ordinary marriages in India, and the religious ceremony suffices to confer validity upon them. The same custom ought to apply to Indians in South Africa as well and although Indians had settled in South Africa for the last forty years, the validity of marriages solemnized according to the rites of the various religions of India had never been called in question. But at this time there was a case in which Mr Justice Searle of the Cape Supreme Court gave judgment on March 14, 1913 to the effect that all marriages were outside the pale of legal marriages in South Africa with the exception of such as were celebrated according to Christian rites and registered by the Registrar of Marriages. This terrible judgment thus nullified in South Africa at a stroke of the pen all marriages celebrated according to the Hindu, Musalman and Zoroastrian rites. The many married Indian women in South Africa in terms of this judgment ceased to rank as the wives of their husbands and were degraded to the rank of concubines, while their progeny were deprived of their right to inherit the parents’ property. This was an insufferable situation for women no less than men, and the Indians in South Africa were deeply agitated.
According to my usual practice I wrote to the Government, asking them whether they agreed to the Searle judgment and whether, if the judge was right in
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