presence of which the best
friends of British rule have had to remain helpless--than the continued
ill-treatment of Indians in South Africa."

Every Indian member of the Viceroy's Legislative Council who spoke
during that debate, whatever race or creed or caste he represented,
endorsed the truth of Mr. Gokhale's statement, and had a vote been taken
on the resolution it would have had what no other resolution moved
during the whole session would have secured--the unanimous support of
the whole body of Indian members and the sympathy of every English
member, official as well as unofficial. The Government of India wisely
averted a division by accepting the resolution. Not a single attempt was
made either by the Viceroy in the chair or by other representatives of
Government to controvert either Mr. Gokhale's statement or the
overwhelming array of facts showing the nature and extent of the
ill-treatment of Indians in South Africa, which was presented by the
mover of the resolution and by every Indian speaker who followed him.
The whole tone of the debate was extremely dignified and
self-restrained, but no Englishman can have listened to it without a
deep sense of humiliation. For the first time in history the Government
of India had to sit dumb whilst judgment was pronounced in default
against the Imperial Government upon a question which has stirred the
resentment of every single community of our Indian Empire. It was the
one question which called forth very deep feeling in the Indian National
Congress at Lahore last December, where subscriptions and donations
flowed in freely to defray the expenses of a campaign throughout India,
and it figured just as prominently in the proceedings of the All-India
Moslem League, which held its annual meeting there in the following
month. In fact, Mahomedans have the additional grievance that the laws
of the Transvaal discriminate by name against those of their faith.
There is scarcely a city of any importance in India in which public
meetings have not testified to the interest and indignation which the
subject arouses in every class of Indian audience.

This is a very grave fact. I need not enter into the details of the
question. They are well known. There may be some exaggerations, Indian
immigrants may not always be drawn from desirable classes, there may be
differences of opinion as to the wisdom of the attitude taken up by some
of the Indians in South Africa, and Englishmen may sym