case, beg leave to revert to the matter on some future occasion.
The object of writing this letter is to “surprise” you. The State of Mysore, I am glad to say, has given the political franchise rights to its subjects. I take the following from a newspaper report :
- Under the system now expounded by the Dewan, all landholders paying a revenue of Rs. 100 or more, or mohatarfa[22] of Rs. 13 and upwards, are entitled to vote for members of the Representative Assembly, and are eligible to become members themselves. Besides, all non-official graduates of any Indian University, ordinarily residing in the taluk, have been given the privilege of electing, as well as of being elected. Thus property as well as intelligence will be represented in the Assembly. Further, it has also been specified that public associations, municipalities and the local boards may also elect members. The total number of members fixed is 347, and these members are elected by nearly 4,000 electors.
Sir, I appeal to your good sense, and ask you, will you not better serve humanity by collecting and pointing our points of resemblances between the two peoples than by holding out to the public gaze points of contrasts, often far-fetched or merely imaginary, that can but arouse the worst feeling of a man, while they can do nobody any real good? I hardly think it can be to your interest to sow the seeds of jealousy and animosity between the two nations. That, I doubt not, is in your power, as it is in anybody's, more or less. But a thing far higher and far nobler, too, lies within your reach—a thing that would bring you not only greatness, but goodness, and what is more, the gratitude of a nation that has not been crushed under 1,200 years' tyranny and oppression, a fact by itself a miracle,—and that thing is to educate rightly the Colony about India and its people.
I am, etc.,
M. K. GANDHI
- 21↑ This was in reply to an article entitled "Indian Village Communities" in The Natal Mercury, 7-7-1894, commenting on the petition presented to the Natal Legislative Council by the Indian community in connection with the Franchise Law Amendment Bill. It was argued that Parliamentary Government was very different from any form of representation known to the village communities of India. The Bill excluded Indians from the franchise on the ground that they had not exercised the franchise in their own country. The Indians pleaded that they had done so from ancient times in their village communities. But The Natal Mercury contested this view, and that of Sir Henry Sumner Maine, in his Village-Communities in the East and West, that Indian had been familiar with representative institutions almost from time immemorial. It maintained that Indian village-communities had nothing to do with political representation but only with the legal question of land tenure. It argued that villagecommunity life was common to all primitive peoples and, if anything, proved the backwardness of a people, and quoted General Sir George Chesney's views in The Nineteenth Century to the effect that Indians were still in their political infancy.
- 22↑ Trade-tax, a word of Persian origin
The Natal Mercury, 11-7-1894
Petition to Natal Governor (10-7-1894)
DURBAN,[23]
