SEPTEMBER 20, 1957(1)
WE HAVE COME HERE, NOT IN ORDER TO INCLUDE A NEW ITEM in the agenda... but in order to carry out the decisions of the Assembly inviting the parties concerned - and the Government of India is one of the parties concerned - to report on what has happened since the conclusion of the last session. We would have been quite satisfied to leave it there because we know the feelings of the Assembly on this question. This matter was first introduced in 1946. In those days it was carried by a very considerable majority. But there were people who probably thought that if it was left alone, things would settle themselves. However, as time went on, year after year, the votes in favour of this item increased, so much so that during the last few years there was only one government that voted against the inclusion of this item or its discussion. But, unfortunately, that one vote is a very significant vote; it is the vote of the Union of South Africa. That is the vote we want, and some day we will get it.
The representative of the United Kingdom, in a very unusual defeatist mood, tells us: we have tried this for ten years, so what is the use of going on. Is this argument to be repeated in the Disarmament Commission? Is this argument to be repeated with regard to the Charter of the United Nations? We have been trying to work with this Charter for ten years; there are great lapses. There are many issues. In fact, it is quite easy to defeat any question by not doing anything for ten years.
Therefore, I would submit that the fact that no progress has been made in ten years is no argument for not considering it again. It is only an argument for making a further effort. I hope the representative of the United Kingdom will come forward and be mindful of the constitutional international responsibilities - of which I will remind him in a moment - and will take a hand in this matter and do something about it, because governments do not die. In general elections they change; and even between general elections some people lose offices. But governments continue.
It so happens that the position of the Indians in South Africa is a matter of treaty obligation announced by a previous Secretary of State for the Colonies, and therefore it is an obligation of Her Majesty's Government. I can quite understand the representative of the United Kingdom saying that Her Majesty's Government has grave doubts about the legality of this question. That is a chronic state of affairs. Her Majesty`s Government is always in grave doubt about the legality of any question.
AS EARLY AS 1875, THE SECRETARY OF STATE FOR INDIA, Lord Salisbury, who afterwards became Prime Minister, announced the policy of Her Majesty`s Government and he said: "Above all things we must confidently expect, as an indispensable condition of the proposed arrangement" - that is, of taking Indians to South Africa, because they could not get agricultural labour in the place - "that the colonial laws and their administration will be such that Indian settlers, who have completed the terms of service to which they agreed, as the return for the expense of bringing them to the colonies" - and let it not be forgotten that the expense of bringing them to the colonies was a charge on the Indian exchequer, for which the British Government was responsible - "will be free men in all respects" - and this was written nearly a hundred years ago - "with privileges, no whit inferior to those of any other class of Her Majesty`s subjects resident in the colonies."
We claim it is a treaty obligation, an obligation which the British Government of the day pronounced at that time. And we have always maintained - right through these negotiations, when the late Mahatma Gandhi took it up in 1906, later in the Cape Town Agreement, and right through all the negotiations - that the South African Government, as the successor of the colonial government, is bound by this treaty obligation.
I submit that Her Majesty`s Government in the United Kingdom has a very serious responsibility in this matter. We are quite prepared to accept the view that, in a public assembly like this, if they abstained quietly we would say nothing. But if they abstain publicly, then we have to make our public protest. I was hoping that my friend, Mr. Noble,(2) would not intervene in this debate, because nothing is more painful to us than to disagree with Her Majesty`s Government.
THE ITEM IS CALLED "Treatment of people of Indian origin in the Union of South Africa". Now it deals with people of Indian and Pakistan origin. At no time has the Government of India or the Government of Pakistan ever sponsored a draft resolution of condemnation. We have strictly adhered to the provisions of the Charter whereby our function is to make recommendations and to enable the United Nations to be a centre of conciliation.
There is no harm in saying that sometimes we have been asked by people why we do not submit a more forceful draft resolution. We have tried various things from the very beginning. The United Nations itself laid down, first, that this was a situation that created bad relations between two member states; and, secondly, that it was a violation of international obligations. It is a violation of international obligations in that it violates treaty rights which we have. It is a violation of every agreement that has been entered into. It is a violation of the practice of discussing these things with the Government of India, which has not been the practice for a very long time, the high-water mark of it being the Cape Town Agreement concluded in 1927.
In 1906 when Mahatma Gandhi appeared in protest against legislation which was then passed - against the Transvaal Asiatic Law Amendment Ordinance - before Lord Elgin, then Secretary of State for the Colonies, he asked for its disallowance; and it was disallowed in 1906. I am sure that no modern government wants to be more regressive than the government of 1906.
Today, however, the position is far from stable. The Government of India comes here not merely in pursuance of the resolution but because the situation has become much worse...
In August 1957, the Observer stated:
"At midnight on 2 August some 3,000 of Johannesburg's non-white citizens became either criminals or homeless by Government decree. Acting under the Group Areas Act, the Nationalist Government had ordered these people to vacate their present homes and business by 3 August in order to render specified areas of the city white. Some, like the Chinese, have no alternative areas - let alone houses or livelihoods - offered to them at all; the Indians had been ordered to the bare veldt at Lenasia twenty-two miles from Johannesburg, which they alone are supposed to occupy; and the Coloureds" - the mixed population - "who, with the Indians, constitute the majority of those to be moved at present, will be forced to live in unspeakable slums vacated under the same Act."
The word "slums" refers to the slums occupied by the Africans, who are the indigenous population. They will be pushed out of the slums in order to enable other people to be put there. There is a double offence in this matter.
"This move, moreover, is only the first of several already decreed, which, when completed, will in Johannesburg mean the forced uprooting of 25,000 human beings, the utter ruination of 1,600 Indian and Chinese businesses worth roughly £8 million and, on the credit side, the achievement of several lily-white squares on the city's residential checker-board."
These people who are being pushed out have helped to build the country. It is all very well to speak about South Africa belonging to one section of the population and the superiority of one race over another. The question is: Who did make this land out of the wilds that it was before? The country originally belonged to the Africans and the Indians did not come on their own. There was a great deal of difficulty at that time encountered by the British Government in India in persuading people to go. Public opinion was against taking these people over. They were promised they would be treated as human beings, and the British Government of the day has a sacred responsibility to stand by it. In view of the special relations that exist between the Union of South Africa and the British Government we would not have complained if the British Government had abstained quietly on this question. But if that Government is going to argue that it should not be discussed, if that Government is going to throw the weight of its powerful opinion in the Assembly against discussion of the item, then our small voice has to be raised in protest.
RECENT LEGISLATION HAS BEEN PASSED, which can be summarised as follows: first, the Suppression of Communism Act, as amended by the Minister of Justice. Nobody need think that it is a very good thing because it is called the Suppression of Communism Act, because it means the suppression of anything the Government does not like. The next is the Passport Regulations Act. Then there are the Native Urban Areas Amendment Act, the Criminal Procedure Act, the Criminal Laws Amendment Act and a large number of other pieces of legislation which I shall not mention. A distinguished judge in South Africa, Justice Broome, once said that the Government of the Union had created so many statutory offences that when an African stepped out of his house he was committing a crime. That is the position.
It is not a question of whether the consideration of this matter will bring amelioration or not. Which representative can stand on this rostrum and say that the capacity of the Assembly to discharge its responsibility under the Charter has come to an end? If he says that, then I believe he has written the first chapter in the winding-up of the United Nations. Therefore the fact that this has not been carried out in the last few years is no reason at all for saying that it should not be considered again.
The Government of India - and I believe I am right in saying the Government of Pakistan - in order to place our position fairly and squarely before all, has, under the resolutions adopted last year, made communications to the Government of the Union of South Africa. We are anxious to come to an agreement with them. We have no quarrel with the Government of the Union of South Africa. We would like to remain on friendly terms with that Government. Both our countries are in the lap of the Indian Ocean, and the time will come when we will have to forget, to live and overcome these difficulties.
It is only fair to point out that the contribution made by the Indian population has been reviewed by the British Government of the period. A commission was appointed as early as 1880. Giving evidence before the commission, Sir J.C. Hulett, an ex-premier of Natal, said:
"The free Indians at present in the colony are an immense benefit, being largely engaged in agricultural pursuits. I do not think the competition of the free Indians has interfered in the slightest degree with the development of the country by European settlers."
It is only fair to say that since that period the Indian people have penetrated to other parts and probably have established businesses, but there have been no complaints that they are in competition with the others. Even if they were in competition, they belong to South Africa - they were born there and some of their parents were born there. Just because their skins are different, who is the Foreign Minister of Australia to come to tell us that we must take a different view about this? We have not said anything about the "White Australia" policy because it was not put in practice in the same way.
THIS IS A MATTER ON WHICH the Government of India feels extremely strongly. Whatever may be the consensus of opinion in the discussions that take place here, we would have no desire to pillory the Union of South Africa, even if the Assembly agreed. So far as our Government is concerned, we shall not subscribe to any resolution which calls for a vote of condemnation. The reason is that the Charter does not provide for condemnation. The Charter does not provide for judgment of member states. The Charter provides only for recommendations for conciliation. We shall abide by the Charter and we ask other people to do the same.
This matter has been before us for a long time, and each time the United Nations has adopted a resolution the Government of India, after allowing sufficient time for the South African Government to take the initiative and finding that it does not do so, has gone out of its way, even though it has no diplomatic mission in Cape Town because we do not want our people to be insulted. We have not asked the South Africans to come to India. We have agreed to negotiate with them in this metropolis of New York, the seat of the United Nations where both parties are members. As regards our relations with the South African delegation, we are personally on extremely friendly terms. We are members of the Commonwealth of Nations; we certainly propose to remain, and, so far as I know, they propose to remain. So none of these things are affected by this matter, but this question of the treatment of Indians in South Africa, and the abstention of a large number of delegations on this question, causes a great deal of pain.
It was the intention of my delegation simply to say that this item should remain on the agenda, but the provocation offered by the Foreign Minister of Australia has led to this kind of statement. The Government of India could not face its own public opinion if it were to abandon the struggle which was begun sixty or seventy years ago, the impetus to which was given by Mahatma Gandhi before he began the passive resistance movement which was finally to be used in our own country in order to bring about the peaceful liberation of our people. We would not forswear our inheritance in that way.
(1) On the inclusion in the agenda of the item on "Treatment of People of Indian Origin in the Union of South Africa".
Source: Official Records of the General Assembly, Twelfth Session, Plenary Meetings, pages 52-55
(2) Commander Allan Noble, representative of the United Kingdom