With great attention and with ever-increasing amazement I am still reading the autobiography of Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi.
The man was born a few years before Winston Churchill. In many places, however, it seems as if Mohandas’ way of thinking dates back much further. But in other places it absolutely does not.
One of the most remarkable aspects of Gandhi’s life was his intense involvement in South Africa. During a long part of his life he was more concerned with the fate of people who came from India and sought social progress in South Africa than with the masses of very poor people in India itself.
And Gandhi undertook to defend legal migrants and raised the issue of illegal immigration …
I quote from page 274:
Every day I had complaints like this: ‘The rightful ones are not admitted, whilst those who have no right are smuggled in on payment of 100 pounds. If you will not remedy this state of things, who will?’
I shared the feeling. If I did not succeed in stamping out this evil, I should be living in the Transvaal in vain.