Page:Speeches And Writings MKGandhi.djvu/239

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IMPERIAL CONFERENCE RESOLUTIONS

If they could consider well over what he had said, they would try and abolish the system in a year's time and this one taint upon the nation would have gone and indentured labour would be a thing of the past. He wanted to remove the cause of the ill-treatment of the Indians in the Colonies. However protected that system may be, it still remained a state bordering upon slavery. "It would remain," said Mr. Gandhi, "a state based upon full-fledged slavery and it was a hindrance to national growth and national dignity."


IMPERIAL CONFERENCE RESOLUTIONS

In the course of an article criticising the Imperial Conference Resolution on Indian emigration, Mr. Gandhi wrote as follows in the Indian Review for August, 1918:—

The Imperial Conference Resolution[1] on the status of our countrymen emigrating to the Colonies, reads well on the surface, but it is highly deceptive. We need not

  1. A summary of the proceedings of the Conference was cabled by the Secretary of State to the Viceroy. The following is an extract:—

    The fifteenth meeting of the Conference was held on July 25th. The first subject discussed was reciprocity of treatment between India and the Dominions. This discussion followed on the resolution passed by the Conference last year, accepting the principle of reciprocity and a further resolution passed to that effect should now be given to the last year's resolution in pursuance of which the Conference agreed as follows:—(1) It is the inherent function of the Governments of several communities of British Commonwealth including India that each should enjoy complete control in the composition of its own population by means of restriction on immigration from any other communities. (2) British citizens domiciled in any British country including India should be admitted into any other British country for visits for the purposes of pleasure or commerce including temporary resi-