Inspiring words from Gandhi
On May 18,1908, 109 years ago, made this speech at the YMCA in Johannesburg. It appears in Volume 8 of In it he beckons to the South African future and asks: “If we look into the future, is it not a heritage we have to leave to posterity, that all the dif
THE following address was given by MK Gandhi, barristerat-law, before the YMCA in Johannesburg on May 18, 1908, in moving the negative in a debate on the question: “Are Asiatics and the coloured races a menace to the Empire?”
IT SEEMS to me somewhat remarkable that a question of this description should arise at all, or that there should be any debate whatsoever as to whether coloured races are a menace to the Empire. I think that a question of that description could arise only in the colonies or, better still, only in some of the colonies. In a well-ordered society industrious and intelligent men can never be a menace. If they have any defects, the very order of the society corrects them. At the same time we, as practical men and women living in this very practical age, have to face facts as they are and, seeing that questions of this description arise in the colonies, it is undoubtedly well that we should discuss them and debate upon them; and, to my mind, it is a very happy augury for the future that your humble servant can be called upon to give his views on the question before an audience like this, and I think it is also a happy augury that this hall is so well filled, showing the keen interest taken in the subject. By the term “coloured people” generally, I think we understand only offspring of mixed marriages, but in connection with the question before us this evening, the term “coloured people” has been taken more comprehensively, and has been made to include the coloured people proper – the Africans and the Asiatics. My own observations and experience, as you know, are confined very largely to British Indians, my own fellow-countrymen, but in studying the
Indian question, I have endeavoured to study the question as it affects the Africans and the Chinese. It seems to me that both the Africans and the Asiatics have advanced the Empire as a whole; we can hardly think of South Africa without the African races. And who can think of the British Empire without India? South Africa would probably be a howling wilderness without the Africans. I do not think that the white man would have come to South Africa at all if there had been no Native races.
Coloured
This brings me to the White Man’s Burden as Kipling has called it. His writings, to my mind, have been very much misunderstood. We know now also that he himself has very considerably, with extended experience, revised his views, and he no longer thinks that the coloured people are a menace to the Empire, or that the white man may not coexist with the coloured man. Be that as it may, he has certainly shown in some of his writings that it was really a responsibility thrown on the white people, more particularly on the British people, to act as trustees for the coloured races. But have the white people acted as trustees? Would you consider that your own wards were a menace to yourselves? The majority of people in South Africa, the majority of people in most of the colonies, have become impatient of colour, and it behoves every right-minded man and woman to think twice before he or she jumps to the conclusion that the coloured people are a menace and that, therefore, they ought to be got rid of with the greatest possible despatch.
We hear nowadays a great deal of the segregation policy, as if it were possible to put people in watertight compartments. Captain Cooke has written to the papers and has taken the trouble of discussing the same question with me, and has propounded a policy of segregation. I had no hesitation in telling him that in my own opinion, based now on 14 years’ observation and study, such a scheme, if it was meant to people some portions of east Africa with coloured people only or, better still, with Asiatics only, was not possible of fulfilment. How are you going to restrict Asiatics to some parts of the earth only? Will they be content to have those portions of the earth which may be apportioned to them and which are unfit for white occupation? I have certainly never been able to find any justification for the colour barrier.
In the words of Mr Chamberlain, it is possible to make distinctions on the ground of want of education, on the ground of criminality, or some such ground. Then there will be no cry of segregation.
But from the present civilisation, or, rather, from western civilisation, there flow two propositions which have almost become maxims to live by – I call them fallacious maxims.
They are “might is right” and “survival of the fittest”. Those who have propounded these two maxims have given a meaning to them. I am not going into the meaning that might be attached in our minds to them, but they have said undoubtedly, by (saying) “might is right”, that physical might is right, that physical strength is right and supreme. Some of them have also combined intellectual strength with physical strength, but I would replace both these with heart-strength, and I say that nobody with merely physical might and intellectual might can ever enjoy that strength that can proceed from the heart. It never can be that mere intellectual or mere physical strength can ever supersede the heart-strength or, as Ruskin would say, social affections.
A quickening and quickened soul responds only to the springs of the heart.
What is the difference between western and eastern civilization?
I know that I am treading on very dangerous and delicate ground. We had the distinction given to us by so great an authority as Lord Selborne only a short time ago, and I have very humbly and very respectfully to differ from His Excellency’s views.
It appears that western civilisation is destructive, eastern civilisation is constructive. Western civilisation is centrifugal, eastern civilisation is centripetal. Western civilisation, therefore, is naturally disruptive, whereas eastern civilisation combines. I believe also that western civilisation is without a goal, eastern civilisation has always had the goal before it.
I do not mix up or confuse western civilisation with Christian progress. I decline to believe that it is a symbol of Christian progress that we have covered a large part of the globe with the telegraph system, that we have got telephones and ocean greyhounds, and that we have trains running at a velocity of 50 or even 60 miles per hour. I refuse to believe that all this activity connotes Christian progress, but it does connote western civilisation.
I think western civilisation also represents tremendous activity, eastern civilisation represents contemplativeness, but it also sometimes represents lethargy. The people in India, the people in China – I leave Japan for the time being – having been sunk in their contemplative mood, have forgotten the essence of the thing, they have forgotten that, in transferring their activity from one sphere of life to another sphere of life, they had not to be idle, they had not to be lazy. The result is that immediately they find an obstacle in their way, they simply sit down. It is necessary that that civilisation should come in contact with that of the West, it is necessary that that civilisation should be quickened with the western spirit.
Immediately that fact is accomplished, I have no doubt also that the eastern civilization will become predominant, because it has a goal. I think you will see easily that a civilization or a condition in which all the forces fly away from the centre must necessarily be without a goal, whereas those which converge to a point have always a goal. It is then necessary for these two civilizations to meet and we shall have a different force altogether, by no means a menacing force, by no means a force that disunites, but a force that unites. The two forces are undoubtedly opposing forces, but perhaps in the economy of nature both are necessary. Only we, as intelligent human beings with heart and soul, have to see what those forces are, and have to use them, not blindly but intelligently, not anyhow and haphazard, but with a goal in view. Immediately that is done, there is no difficulty whatsoever in (the) two civilizations meeting and meeting for a good purpose.
I have said that the African races have undoubtedly served the Empire, and I believe so have the Asiatic races or, rather, British Indians. Have not the British Indians fought on many no favour. Immediately you give that to them, you will find no difficulty. Whilst, therefore, Asiatics and other coloured people cannot be a menace, Asiatics at least have been made a menace in some colonies. We have been told that Natal and Mauritius are awful examples to every white man throughout the world. I do not know that they are such awful countries, but I, at the same time, believe that, if what happened in Natal had not happened, it would have been different – whether better or worse, we are not for the present discussing; but, if these countries have been ruined, they have been ruined purposely by white men, or, rather, by a few of them who were in a hurry to get rich. If they had only bided their time and opportunity, no such thing need, would, have happened. They did not hesitate to import indentured labour, which might be called semislave labour, from India. Posterity has to pay for it. If, therefore, Natal or Mauritius has suffered, it has suffered not from Asiatics as such, but from a system of labour of which Asiatics happened to form part. Had there been white indentured labour instead, the result would have been the same. It is not the free Indian population that can ever do any harm whatsoever to the colonies.
Indians
But I do also admit that there are some reasonable complaints with reference to British Indians. I venture, however, to submit that these complaints have no real basis. It is complained that they live in dirty hovels. Yes, some of them do. They are said to live very cheaply. But if you were to examine these complaints, I think, you would come to the conclusion that they could be dealt with very easily and very effectively by municipal regulations. There are many complaints against the people living in the East End of London by the people living in the West End, but no one has suggested that, therefore, the people in the East End should be swept away. Sweep away the rack-rent and the conditions prevailing in the East End, and its inhabitants will be just as good as those in the West End. Similarly also, sweep away the conditions under which British Indians are called upon to live, sweep away the condition that they cannot own a patch of land which they can call their own, that they cannot live, and move, and have their being on God’s earth in South Africa with any degree of freedom, self-respect and manliness, and they will realise that in Rome they must live as the Romans do, and will respond to every real and reasonable call that can be made upon them by the white man; but I ask you to be patient with them just as you would be patient with any fellow-man. Treat him as a real, live human being, and you will have no such thing as the Indian question in the country.
Please do not forget I do not advocate that there should be absolutely free immigration. On the contrary, I have always said, and British Indians admit, that there may be regulation of immigration, but never based on colour. Anyone who is accepted as an immigrant ought to be entitled to all the rights that a man who lives in the country should possess. Whether he should have political rights or not is another question. I am not here today to discuss the political question at all. But there should be no two opinions as to whether he may live freely without being restricted, move freely without being restricted, own land, or trade honestly. British Indians and Englishmen have come together by Divine Providence. I may add, and I believe it is true, that, when the British occupied India, it was not owing to humanitarian grounds, but that the act was selfish and often tinged with dishonesty.
But Nature’s ways are inscrutable. She often unmakes what man makes and produces good out of evil. Such is, in my opinion, the case with the British connection with India. I believe that the two races, the British and the Indian, have been brought together, not only for their own mutual advantage, but to leave an impress on the history of the world. Believing that, I also believe that it is well for me to be a loyal subject of the Empire, but not I hope a member of a subject race. I trust it is the mission of the English race, even where there are subject races, to raise them to equality with themselves, to give them free institutions and make them absolutely free men. If that be the mission of the Empire, the mission of the British race, then is it not as well that the millions of human beings should be trained for self-government? If we look into the future, is it not a heritage we have to leave to posterity, that all the different races co-mingle and produce a civilization that perhaps the world has not yet seen? There are difficulties and misunderstandings, but I do believe, in the words of the sacred hymn, “We shall know each other better when the mists have rolled away.”
Indian Opinion, June 6, 1908, June 13, 1908