5
Apartheid: a crime against humanity
It was India which first brought before the United Nations in 1946 the question of racial discrimination in South Africa. We claim no merit for it because, at that time, practically the whole of Africa and large parts of Asia were still under colonial domination. It was, therefore, India's duty on attaining independence to come to the United Nations and enlist the support of other Member States in the common struggle against colonialism and racism.
I would also recall that the struggle for India's independence owed a good deal to the experience gained by Mahatma Gandhi in South Africa in the organisation and conduct of passive resistance campaigns against unjust laws. It was, therefore, natural that India should have come to the United Nations to internationalise the campaign against racial discrimination. I hope the fact that this was done during his lifetime must have been a source of some satisfaction to Mahatma Gandhi.
May I here recall a few experiences of Mahatma Gandhi in South Africa, experiences which brought him face to face with the ugly realities of racism? At Maritzburg in South Africa he was attacked and forcibly ejected from a railway carriage reserved for whites. At Pardeburg he was brutally assaulted by an armed white policeman for walking on a footpath reserved for whites. At Durban he was nearly lynched by a white mob. At Johannesburg he was beaten nearly to death by a white official. During the Zulu war against the British, Mahatma Gandhi was told by a British doctor that no Europeans would nurse the wounded Zulus, and so Gandhiji organised an Indian ambulance unit to take care of the wounded Zulus.