THE STATUS OF INDIANS.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XLV, Issue 13646, 14 January 1908, Page 4

THE STATUS OF INDIANS.

The situation which has been created in the Transvaal by the refusal of Indian subjects of the King to comply with the special legislation directed against them—which legislation, though approved by the Crown, is of very questionable justiceis of the gravest importance. It may be said, of course, that no European community can remain passive while it is being made Asiatic by an influx of immigrants who are. considered undesirable by the great majority of the European population; and that the question of citizenship or subjectship is unimportant as compared with that of race. But it has to be remembered that the Indian question is immensely more than a local one &nd that while " state-rights" cannot be ignored, neither can the Imperial aspect of the problem be thrust contemptuously aside. In Natal, where there is at least as serious an Indian question as in the Transvaal, and where there is a very general feeling against Indian immigration, it has been generally urged that the Transvaal law which is causing the present trouble should be suspended until a conference can be held between the Colonial Office, the colonies interested and the Indian Government, for the purpose of arranging the difficulty in as satisfactory a manner as is possible. There can be no sound objection taken to the course thus suggested, and if the Transvaal Government were really concerned in the strengthening of the Empire they would have agreed to it. For it is farcical to talk of the unity and harmony of the British Empire when British subjects of other race than that of the dominant European are not merely debarred from freely traversing its area, but are made, the object of humiliating local legislation even when they have practically become domiciled in one of its component States. It is absurd to imagine that the Indian Government desires to swamp out the European occupation of South Africa by pouring in hor*des of Indian subjects ; and until a conference has been held and every fair solution of the problem has been discussed and considered it is equally absurd to assert that the registration system which the Transvaal Government is attempting to enforce is the only possible means of keeping the Transvaal European. In any case, it is entirely an innovation— and a thoroughly Boer innovation— that immigrants who have been allowed to enter and to establish themselves in a British colony should be afterwards legally molested. We have never before acted in this manner even to those to whom the Crown owes no special protection; and it is unworthy of our traditions and of our constitutional methods that we should permit it now and that to British-Indian subjects. Men are now being sent to imprisonment in the Transvaal, under this registration law, who have been born under the British flag, have been educated in British universities, have served in British armies, have been admitted to British bars and are eligible for appointment to British judgeships and for election to British Parliaments. It is not even a question of such new comers beingdetained at a colonial border, but of such men, after having been ad- ! mitted to a British colony, being unfairly and unjustly and unwisely discriminated against This is not what we mean in New Zealand when we express a determination to keep it European, as may be seen by our treatment of our Maori fellowcitizens; for it does not make a great deal of difference whether a man is a native, and the child of natives, of a country, or has been in it only long enough to have settled down to the making there of an honest livelihood. The racial problems of the world are increasingly serious; the racial difficulties of the Empire are East and intricate however- tern-

perately we approach them ; but the racial recklessness, and the con* tempt for the evident rights of Indians who are British subjects, exhibited by the Transvaal, can only embitter the racial problems of the world and aggravate the peculiar racial difficulties of our Empire.