STATEMENT IN THE SPECIAL POLITICAL COMMITTEE OF THE GENERAL ASSEMBLY

JANUARY 7, 1957(1)

THE ITEM THAT IS NOW BEFORE THE COMMITTEE is what some people have, unfortunately, come to regard as a hardy annual. There could be no greater tragedy than this idea and, so far as my delegation is concerned, we report on this item not simply to keep it on the agenda, or because it has become part of our political or mental habit. We participate in a consideration of it each year for the same reasons, and with the same degree of responsibility of concern, that we introduced it in 1946 - or even earlier, when, in South Africa, the great leader of our nation, Mahatma Gandhi, entered into negotiation with General Smuts.

In other words, our approach to this problem is not one of debate and retort. It is an approach from the point of view of the sufferings of the people who are affected by it, from the point of view of human rights and of a solution in terms of conciliation.

Eleven years ago, the item came before the Assembly; it was placed on the agenda by a very considerable vote of the General Assembly, in spite of the very solid opposition of the Union of South Africa, supported by a handful of other delegations. The objection against inscription of the item, at that time, was based not on its merits, which came up for consideration later, but on the view that the Assembly had no competence in this matter. Year after year, this question of competence has been argued, and each year there has been an increase in support for the competence of the Assembly. This year, however, my delegation does not propose to argue this question because, unfortunately - and I say this in all sincerity - the delegation of the Union of South Africa is not present at this meeting, and the objection has really been raised by that delegation. I have no desire, therefore, to take up the time of the Assembly on a matter on which the Assembly is in no doubt, and on which there is no objection. I share with my colleague from Pakistan his regret at the absence of the representative of the Union of South Africa, because we still believe, even after 11 years of what may appear to be infructuous debate, that the time will come when South Africa itself will either take the initiative or cast its vote in favour of a solution of this problem in terms of the Charter of the United Nations.

For two years, repeatedly, my delegation has said, at plenary meetings, that, while resolutions on this subject are adopted by large majorities, the one vote that is really required has not been forthcoming, that is, the vote of the Union of South Africa. Until we are able to persuade the Union of South Africa, since our approach to this problem is a peaceful one, the Assembly must continue consideration of this item year after year, and must not fall into the attitude of, "what is the use of passing resolutions, since nothing happens?" If the Assembly were to adopt that attitude at any time, not only would it be a defeat on this question; it would be a retrogression so far as the United Nations is concerned, and, taking the long view of it, a great disservice to the peoples of South Africa itself, by which I mean the peoples who have political rights today, that is, the European population. It is they who must be brought by persuasion, by reasoning and by the force of public opinion, to an acceptance of human decencies.

Various devices have been suggested by this Assembly. Going back to early days, when the delegations of Mexico and France - on the distinguished initiative of Mexico's Foreign Minister and of the great French civil servant, Mr. Parodi - tried to find conciliation, my delegation was the first to come forward and proclaim that we would not take up any rigid positions, but that anything leading to conversations would be adequate.(2)

Since then, we have had prescriptions from this Assembly, committees of good offices, and United Nations representatives, and have had direct negotiations and various other formulas, on each of which the Assembly had adopted a resolution.

If the Committee will look back into the records, it will be found that on each of these my Government and the Government of Pakistan, both severally and jointly, have conformed to the instructions of the Assembly and pursued it to the best of our ability. In every case, while we would not, and we shall not hereafter, sacrifice the support of the United Nations, or disregard the fact of United Nations responsibility in this matter, since it was seized of the item, and while we shall not conduct negotiations on the condition that the United Nations is to be excluded, we have at the same time offered the South African Government a basis for talks without the sacrifice of any positions held...

THE PRESENT SITUATION ARISES FROM, so far as my delegation is concerned, document A/3186, which was submitted to the Assembly in pursuance of last year`s resolution. Last year`s resolution asked us to negotiate -- to enter into negotiations -- directly with the Union of South Africa. The Governments of Pakistan and India took the step of doing so and I would like to read these letters so that they will be incorporated in the records:

This was signed by the Ambassador of India.

Now, it will be noticed from this letter that, first of all, we have gone out of our way to make no difficulties with regard to South Africa's accepting in principle the jurisdiction of the United Nations, but we feel obliged, and we will continue to feel obliged, to say that these negotiations are in continuation of United Nations resolutions. To do anything else would be a dereliction of our duty in regard to the United Nations itself. We also offered to the Union of South Africa the opportunity to negotiate wherever they like, at whatever time they choose, because the Government of India, having broken off diplomatic relations with the Union, has no representation in South Africa.

The reply to that letter is also contained in document A/3186, as Annex II, along with our letter. The representative of the Union of South Africa, Mr. Louw, in speaking in the Assembly on the admission of this item, has referred, apart from other matters, to two things. First of all, the delegation of India -- and I note that the onus is placed upon the delegation of India -- have been pursuing this matter as a vendetta. Let that stand alone. I leave the Assembly to judge whether our approach to this problem during the years has been of a character that did not spell conciliation but on the other hand spelt hatred or the desire to find fault.

I HAVE READ THESE LETTERS IN THEIR FULL TEXT, partly, only partly, so that the Assembly may be seized of its implications; mainly because the other side is not present, and we bear the responsibility of putting their case as fully as possible. The burden of this reply of the South African Government is, one, that the Prime Minister of India misbehaved by making two speeches and, secondly, that negotiations taking place at the headquarters of the United Nations, references to United Nations General Assembly resolutions, and what is more, references to the principles of the Charter of the United Nations were not acceptable to the Union Government.

Therefore, I submit that this issue, apart from all its very gruesome and very serious implications, not only to South Africa but to the stability and order in that part of the world, perhaps in the world as a whole, to racial relations and the prospects of racial conflicts of a very tremendous character - apart from all that - this reply is a challenge to the United Nations itself.

The speeches referred to were made by the Prime Minister of India, so far as I recollect, sometime early in 1955, long before the session of the Assembly took place, so that all of the decisions of the United Nations Assembly had taken into account whatever sins of commission the Government of India and its Prime Minister may have committed in this regard. Let us assume for a moment that the Prime Minister's speech was objectionable in the terms in which the South African Government has pointed out. But this speech was made before the Assembly passed its last resolution; are we to be asked to accept the position that because the speech was made sometime, this question can never be opened? And, what is more, does the South African Government expect the Prime Minister of the Government of India to consult it, or its convenience, or its susceptibilities, in addressing his own Parliament on a matter which, for the last 50 years, has stirred Indian public opinion to its depths? Furthermore, it was the only issue - and I think I am right in saying that it was the only issue - on which the then British Government of India and public opinion in India were in accord; it was the only issue during the period of pre-independence, when we were in conflict with British authority, where the British Government of India of the day and the peoples of the day were in full accord. That is a measure of the depth of public opinion.

I have looked through the speech and I cannot find anything that is new; I cannot find anything in it that has not been said, not only by my delegation but even more forcefully by the delegation of Haiti in this Committee. Therefore, to argue that the Prime Minister made two speeches, and, therefore, we cannot discuss the matter, appears to me to be unreasonable and unsound...

The South African Government, in the meantime, not only disregarded, but insisted on disregarding, the United Nations and said that its headquarters in New York - even New York - is unacceptable for the holding of the talks; and, secondly, the resolutions could not be mentioned and, further, the Charter was not competent in this matter. Not only that; while we are accused of making speeches, the South African Government not only had initiated legislation but was practising it with great severity.

The Committee may recall that on a previous occasion the Governments of Pakistan and India, after having initiated talks, had to break them off because while the talks were just about to begin, or had just begun, the South African Government initiated the Group Areas Act, and I would like the Committee - and, particularly, those members who do not belong to our part of the world, the Asian Continent - to realise that this Group Areas Act is not the crux of the Indian question; it is the crux of the whole question of apartheid, that is, the segregation of populations because their racial origins, complexions, or their civilisations are different. The Group Areas Act - the suspension of which we hoped for and the General Assembly requested - was enacted and, furthermore, very cruel acts have been undertaken in that connexion. Therefore, if it is a question of introducing any controversy, of doing something unfriendly or contrary to the spirit of negotiation - even placing on the Government of India and its Prime Minister the full onus of stating and re-stating what has been said for the last 50 years - it has to be placed side by side with the legislation in South Africa.

I ask this Committee, in all conscience: Is the Head of a Government to refrain from telling his Parliament what is happening in South Africa when human rights are violated in this way, with particular application to peoples of Indian origin? And, as I shall point out later, this has a relation to treaty obligations and treaty relations existing between the South African Government and ourselves, which has also been a part of negotiations, admitted at one time by the Prime Minister of South Africa to be proper and to which the Government of India has made its full contribution. That is the background of this situation.

THIS PROBLEM OF THE PEOPLE OF INDIAN ORIGIN in South Africa goes back to the last century. The Indian people did not go there in search of wealth or in search of fortune; the Government of India, the British Government at that time, was not so keen to send people over to South Africa. It was the desire of the Colonial Office, which was then responsible for the rule of South Africa, that persuaded the Government of India of that day - you know that there were two hands of the same body: the Colonial Office on the one hand and the India Office on the other; the Colonial Office persuaded the India Office and the Government of India of that day - to send labourers to South Africa because South Africa, at that time, was an undeveloped country, and the greater part of its sugar, rice and agricultural production is the work of the Indian populations who had gone there.

We deny the right of the South African populations, other than Africans and Indians, to claim that the country is theirs. The Africans in the main, the Indians, and all of the other populations that went there, have built something out of the wilderness that today is very much a part of an improved state.

We sent these people in those days, and from 1860 onwards, we have had this problem on hand. I want to submit to this Committee that, in sending these populations, the Government of India of the day took care to mention what would be the status of these people and Lord Salisbury, that distinguished British statesman who cannot be accused of any ultra-liberal tendencies because he was the arch-spokesman of British conservatism, as Secretary of State for India in 1875, told the House of Commons:

he referred to Indian settlers, not Indian immigrants -

For purpose of brevity, I merely quote this statement. But this is an undertaking given to the Government of India of the day, by the colonial Government. In other words, the successor Governments are bound by this. The successor Government to the Government of India of the day is ourselves. The successor Government of the Colonial Office is the Union of South Africa.

Lord Salisbury made a further statement later on, in 1908, when he had become Secretary of State for the Colonies; he had shifted from the India Office to the Colonial Office - a phenomenon that takes place usually in the British Government.

Lord Salisbury, the Secretary of State for the Colonies in 1908, said:

it looks as though the present situation has been anticipated and, as I shall point out in a moment, that is what is happening -

I read this out particularly because I would like the distinguished representatives of the United Kingdom, New Zealand and Australia, who represent successor Governments to the British Government which was responsible for this action, and who have consistently voted against us on this question, to take their responsibilities into account...

In the early period of indenture the Indian populations were a very valuable commodity indeed. They had to clear the bush, cultivate the sugarcane; they developed Natal and helped to develop the Transvaal. They worked in other spheres; they supplied the human material for that particular element in trade which was not worthwhile to the European community, namely, the small trader, the domestic servant, the repairman - all those things which were below the economic standards or, if I might say so, the racial dignity of the white population. That was carried on the backs of the Indian population.

From 1890, the Colonial Office put the screws on, and, even before the situation had reached its present heights, Mr. Gandhi appeared on the scene. He represented to the Government of India and to the Viceroy of India at that time the hardships of the Indian populations. In the early part it was in the way of asking for remedial measures of one kind or another, and it led ultimately to great movements of resistance by the Indian populations.

Mr. Gandhi nursed the gospel of passive resistance and non-cooperation on the soil of South Africa, a gospel which was afterwards to shake the very foundations of the British Empire in India, and these people who were regarded as belonging to an inferior civilisation - as a South African professor said on the British Broadcasting System the other day - were the material, the soldiers in the great war of non-violent resistance. They set an example to those who were practising cruelty and discrimination against them. Mr. Gandhi mobilised them, and right through this period they asked for conferences.

The history of the Indian people in South Africa in this matter will bear examination. From 1906 onwards, until General Smuts and Mr. Gandhi signed an agreement in 1914 - and that breaks the back of any idea that this is a matter of domestic jurisdiction - the people who were the victims of the policies practised non-violent resistance and were always willing to negotiate and to confer. This was a South African phase under the leadership of Mr. Gandhi.

THEN CAME THE PERIOD OF CONFERENCES. In 1917, 1921, 1924 and 1926, at various meetings then called the Imperial Conferences, we shift from the negotiations between the leader of the Indian people, who was not an official, and the South African Government, which was official, to a situation in which the Government of the United Kingdom sits in conference with the Government of South Africa, and this matter came up there. Although India was not internally self-governing it had a seat at those conferences. It never had a seat of equality - the conferences were called the Imperial Conference of Great Britain and the Dominions and India - but it had a seat. The settlement of this problem of peoples of Indian origin in South Africa was the subject of discussion, and every successive British Government has stated the case for the Indian settlers. Whatever might have been the final result, every successive British Government, both in India and in Britain, has stood by the position that apartheid cannot be practised, and we ask them to stand by that position in this Assembly.

At these Imperial Conferences, General Smuts and various other members of the Union Government were present, and the main concern of the South African Government at that time in connexion with this problem was not that there should be disabilities heaped upon the Indian people; it was afraid of unrestricted immigration. I ask the members of the Committee to apply their minds to this problem. The plea of General Smuts was what has been called in other places "the peril of a racial invasion"...

The Committee knows that of the population of India, which is today nearly 400 million, there are only 12 million people of Indian origin in the entire world outside of India, of which only perhaps two or three million are Indian born. So we are not a colonising people. We did colonise South Africa some three or four thousand years ago, but not now. At any rate, the fear of General Smuts was that of immigration.

Rightly or wrongly, the British Government of that day - and I believe with the support of Indian public opinion as it then was - agreed not to foster any further immigration. There is no fresh immigration to South Africa. That should be understood. This is not the Indian Government fighting for its subjects; these people are as much South African as any white man who lives there. They built the country, they were born there and in many cases their fathers and their grandfathers were born there. They know no other land, no other environment and no other surroundings. We - the Government of India of that day - to the extent that there was public opinion in India at that time on this matter, acquiesced in this view, and General Smuts was satisfied that this matter was out of the way. I wish the Committee would kindly listen to what he said in 1917:

This is the position in which we are now: that the fear which formerly upset the settlers has been removed. As General Smuts said:

There is a great deal that can be said about this. General Smuts felt so at the time when he made the above statement and there is nothing in our history and nothing in the history of this question which indicates that we have not cooperated as well as anyone could have done.

I RESPECTFULLY DISAGREE with the late General Smuts in his claim that fear is gone from the hearts of the white population, or sections of the white population - I am very careful in making this distinction - and from the Government of the Union of South Africa. Why are they afraid? They are afraid because they are guilty. It is guilt that causes fear; it is not strength that causes fear. That fear still continues to exist.

So far as the Indian population is concerned, you can put them in a desert and they will survive. This problem, however, now exceeds the bounds of half a million Indians in South Africa - less than half a million people of Indian and Pakistan origin in South Africa. It has become the crux of the question of the future of that entire continent. It is responsible for the defiance of the Government of South Africa of the Charter of the United Nations, not only in regard to this matter but in the illegal and unwarranted annexation of mandated territory. It is responsible for all the legislation which has been passed.

This is again addressed to the Government of the United Kingdom. When she handed over the Government of South Africa to the present Union Government -- an act which in itself was proclaimed as the perfection of liberalism and which we are not disputing - the forefathers of the present rulers of that country made provisions designed to combat discrimination of this character. The succeeding Governments have continually attacked these so-called entrenched clauses and have removed all provisions designed to guard against discrimination.

In the years following 1917, the Government of India, through its representatives, then dominated by the British Government, negotiated with the South African Government. It may seem strange to some but these negotiations ended in an agreement upon repatriation. The Government of India said that it was willing to grant entrance to India to as many people as wished and could come there.

Logically, that was a position which should not have been taken. The people involved are nationals of another country. They are not Indian nationals. For the sake of peace, however, we agreed upon these provisions in accordance with the Cape Town agreements.

I have recently heard it said that we violated the spirit of these agreements and did nothing about the matter. We were also told that these Indians were so comfortable in South Africa that they would not want to return to India. Our answer to that is: Comfortable or not, it is their country and they are entitled to stay there. We hope that they will stay there in spite of all hardships. Our advice to Indian people has been to be loyal to the country in which they are born and from which they draw their sustenance.

What I wish to point out here is the view of the South African Government on the performance of the Government of India with regard to this agreement on repatriation. That is to say, when we said that we would take as many Indians as possible, in accordance with the agreement, how did we conduct ourselves? That conduct is now challenged by the spokesman of the Union Government.

I do not think that anyone in this Committee - not even an apologist for the Union Government - would say that Dr. Malan suffers from any liberal views with regard to the racial question. He is the arch-priest of racialism in South Africa. Dr. Malan, who is a very nice and kind gentleman when you speak to him in private, was chairman of the conference held in 1932 on the question of repatriation. He said:

With regard to the Indians, he went on to say:

This was the position taken by Dr. Malan.

THIS MATTER HAS BECOME very important now because we have reached a stage where there are now going on in South Africa actions of a character which uproot populations which have been settled for years. Their property is taken away and they are pushed into what is virtually the bush. I say virtually because I do not want it to be said afterwards that we are exaggerating. People who had homes are being forced to leave them under the provisions of the Group Areas Act. Whole communities - not only individuals - are being uprooted from their agricultural and urban settlements. In this process they are not only losing their homes. I believe that in one township in Johannesburg - I am speaking from memory - there are some 20,000 people of Indian origin, of whom some 1,500 may be working at occupations which may be described as being of a subsidiary character, or which arise from trade, and upon whom the others are dependent. If these people were sent to isolated communities they would have no hope of earning a living.

The problem is not only that of their being uprooted. Their properties have to be sold by the Group Areas Board at a price fixed by that Board. If the Group Areas Board cannot sell it the owner may sell it to a private party. You can well imagine that such procedure is permitted only when there are difficulties involved. When the owner has sold his property, if he receives more money than the amount fixed by the Group Areas Board, that additional amount goes to the Board. It is a matter of, "Heads you win, tails I lose". These people are practically being pushed out of these places.

Furthermore, I notice that the purchase of any kind of habitable land in the new township involves the finding by the person who goes there of a minimum of 350 pounds. This is a rather large fortune for some of these people who make their living by waiting on tables in restaurants and so on. These people are really forced into a state of destitution. The bulk of these people, as I have said, are ordinary hard-working people. They cannot be expected to leave South Africa.

The Group Areas Act which has now been enacted states that work is to begin - or supposedly has been started - in the township of Lenasia. I hope that those members of this Committee who are interested in this problem will, even after this meeting, have the time to go through some of these clippings taken from South African newspapers. My delegation will be very happy to lend them to any member of the Committee who would be interested in seeing them. I cannot refer to all of these clippings since there are so many. In one instance it is stated:

That is pure euphemism. There is a jungle track from this township to Johannesburg and that is all there is.

GREAT CREDIT IS DUE TO MANY MINORITY GROUPS in South Africa. There are Europeans there who are putting up a very good fight at great prejudice to themselves.

That is what a South African said.

I SHOULD LIKE TO POINT OUT that this is a continuing question and that eviction under the Group Areas Act has begun with a vengeance. You will find in American newspapers, in British newspapers and in newspapers all over the world, accounts of the hardships that are inflicted on people.

In the South African Parliament there have been protests about this development, which is directed particularly against the Indian community, where it was stated that in terms of the proclamations 9,000 Indians, an equal number of Coloureds and several thousand Africans living in the six western areas of Johannesburg must sell their property and move within the next two years. Some have to vacate their premises within a year. Failure to comply with these requirements renders the person concerned liable to prosecution.

The 9,000 Indians evicted by this proclamation are roughly one quarter of the total Indian population of the Transvaal. The entire community will have to move to a site called Lenasia within 22 miles of the city of Johannesburg. This reallocation has been described in the Johannesburg Star as mass callousness. The Anglican Archbishop of Cape Town, the Most Reverend Geoffrey Clayton, has stated that "it is wrong to move people around like pawns, regardless of their wishes, to satisfy some ideology".

Then we come to an American comment about this. The Washington Post-Times Herald, on November 15, 1956, states:

The Bishop of Johannesburg, whose name is well known in the world outside, referred to

I have read enough to draw the attention of the Committee to the fact that we are not dealing with a problem that is just a historical survival. We are dealing with a situation in South Africa where persecution has gone beyond anything that has happened in the past.

Now I should like to refer to some other opinions which are important. One is from the Osservatore Romano, of Vatican City, which says:

It goes on to say that this policy of apartheid, which is called the Group Areas Act, is unjust and immoral, both in the goals it pursues and the means it uses. I shall refrain from reading much more about this.

NOW WE COME TO THE WAY IT IS ENFORCED and that is where prosecutions come in. These prosecutions today are mass prosecutions. I will not go into the details of this because that has to be dealt with under the other item. There are some 20 or 30 Indians involved in this mass trial of 150 people(4) and I think I must state to the Committee frankly that the Committee should not fall into the trap of drawing Communism as a red herring across the path of adequate thinking.

There is in South Africa what is called the Suppression of Communism Act and a Communist in South Africa is anybody who stands for decency. Any African who is against racial discrimination, any African who asks for higher wages or anything of that kind, is a Communist. Under the Suppression of Communism Act, the whole of the group areas people are brought under trial and they are tried en masse. We are speaking about law, individual liberty and such things here; in South Africa, a founder-member of the United Nations, not only are they tried en masse, but they are tried under conditions of degradation, cruelty and injustice.

The proceedings are in Afrikaans and the majority of the people, or all of the people, who are the defendants in the case cannot speak Afrikaans; they cannot understand it. There is no reason for using Afrikaans because everybody in South Africa speaks English and certainly the judges and counsel in court do. So this trial is, first of all, an expression of arrogant nationalism and, what is more, they are tending to put the defendants in a place of disadvantage. They are brought into court huddled together in cages. We in India have forgotten the history of cages as part of trial proceedings. We have got to go back to the days of the Amritsar affair when leading Indians were put into cages which were far too low for them in height. But that is a chapter of history we have forgotten and our relations with our former rulers are the most friendly and cordial.

But to bring these people imprisoned in cages before the court, without proper defence, and hurl them back into prison - I can only say that, despite experience of trials of various kinds, this passes all understanding. That is how the Group Areas Act is operating.

I SHOULD NOW LIKE TO REFER TO JUSTIFICATION, and I think the Committee should understand the South African mind if it is going to do anything about it. I wish to refer, not to a politician, because politicians sometimes give to a doctrine a kind of divine halo to further their own political purposes, but to a man who is a university professor and is regarded as one of South Africa's intellectuals. He spoke recently on the British Broadcasting Corporation programme, and this is the newspaper report:

Now it is for the Assembly to decide, who is the more cultured: The people who inflict the kind of thing I have spoken about, or the people who are its victims?

To continue the quotation:

If this were true - if we were to assume that it is true - all the more reason for compassion, for care, and for extra consideration from the Government whose responsibility they are. But it is not true. The newspaper comment continued:

that is, the ancient Briton, not the modern one -

To continue with the quotation:

to which we made a humble contribution.

This is a British view.

WE HAVE NOW COME TO THE STAGE where the Government of India is placing no resolution before this Committee. The reasons are simple. We would like the Assembly to feel that this is no longer to be considered a problem in which the Indians have a special vested interest. Half a million people in the context of 400 millions of the Indian people are a small proportion. But it is a problem that has bedevilled our history - our relations to a certain extent, if I may say so with respect, with the Western world. We like to live with South Africa in peace. Our economies are complementary. For the last ten years we have imposed sanctions upon them - unfortunately broken by a number of people by trading behind the line. But we like to think that the time has come when, after 11 years, every resolution of this Committee has been disregarded and, what is more, that we are moving into a situation - short of large-scale racial war in which all the Asian peoples and the Africans would combine along with the liberal Europeans, leading to a state of unsettlement in this peninsula - where the problem is not regarded as one of half a million Indians being uprooted but as a violation of human rights, the disregard of treaty obligations and, what is much worse, putting before the world apartheid as a pattern. This is the worst of it. The South African Government sincerely, it appears, says to the world, "We are doing a service to humanity by the solution of multi-racial problems". This is what Hitler said. For that reason it becomes very much more an Assembly concern than it ever was.

We are submitting no resolution. We hope there will be some member states who will feel an obligation to do so. We feel the time has come to ask the South African Government to accept its obligations. We are prepared to go into conference; we are prepared to talk at any time. But my Government, so far as we are presently instructed, will at no time forsake the protection of the United Nations. We are not prepared to go into conversations which impose the condition that we must not mention the United Nations. We are quite prepared to go into conversations without prejudice to the position held by South Africa on the question of domestic jurisdiction, as they have asked. And we hope, therefore, that when some member state puts forward a resolution - as I hope it will - the Assembly will pass it unanimously.

My Government desires to make a special appeal to the members of the Commonwealth countries, because they are in part responsible for the situation. The United Kingdom Government is a party to the treaty obligations. The United Kingdom Government until our independence was a spokesman of this problem in South Africa. At every Imperial Conference they took that line. The peoples of their countries are solidly with us in this question. The Governments of Australia and New Zealand are successor Governments who equally have responsibility; and nothing pains us more on this question than for them to take sides with the country that is the accused in this matter.

So far as South Africa itself is concerned, we have no feeling of hatred towards that Government. We believe the great majority of the people of South Africa - by which I mean the eight and a half million Africans too, for they also are South Africans, half a million of us, and at least half the white population - stand against this vicious principle and practice. They realise its dangers.

Today this problem may be regarded here as one of those things which come up year after year, but I would like to tell you that my Government feels, in all conscience, that its neglect is bound to lead to a situation, the dimensions of which are at present immeasurable. The use of the Suppression of Communism Act, or the attempt to draw this problem into some other conflict and thereby turn the world against the oppressed, is something we have to guard ourselves against.

So far as the Indian population is concerned, if this takes a hundred years they will still offer resistance. But let it not be said that the community of the world was callous to their plight, and, what is more, let it not be said that this Committee does not realise that the Group Areas Act which is pleaded as domestic legislation is the crux of this whole problem, dividing humanity by racial barriers. No, not by racial barriers but by racial prejudices.

If this is to be accepted, then your country and mine, which is multi-racial, the great continents of South America and North America and great parts of Europe, where no country today can trace back its origins in a racial group - they will all be split up again and the peoples will be returned to their origins of two or three thousands years ago. This is the spectacle facing us, this would be the consequence of the (South) African problem.

We make no apologies for reporting to the Assembly; indeed, we have a mandate to do so. We hope the Assembly today - and it is the eleventh time that it is considering this problem - will show the same degree of concern, and the same degree of desire to find a solution, and will not be diverted from its path by the unjustified and saddening action taken by the South African Government in not being present. We hope that the United Kingdom Government, and the Governments of Australia and New Zealand, which are particularly concerned in this matter, will be able to support the position we have taken, so that the voice of the civilised world will stand against this proposition. We ask for no condemnations of anybody - we have never done so. But we do think that the time has come when something more than mere pious statements, merely another resolution asking for negotiation, is required. We have offered solution after solution. The Assembly has been generous. But it is not enough even to be generous at this time; it is necessary to realise that a challenge is thrown, and not against these half a million Indians who are fighting, along with eight million Africans, the battle of human rights in South Africa.

(1) On "Treatment of People of Indian Origin in the Union of South Africa".

Source: Foreign Affairs Record, New Delhi, January 1957

(2) In 1946, Luis Padilla Nervo, Foreign Minister of Mexico, and Alexandre Parodi, representative of France, consulted with the sponsors of various draft resolutions and proposed a joint draft resolution which was accepted by India and adopted by the General Assembly.

(3) United Nations document A/3186, Annex I, page 1

(4) The reference is to the trial of 156 leaders of African and Indian Congresses and other organisations who were detained in December 1956 and charged with high treason.