Going Home - Doris May Lessing [50]
It has also been amended to allow representatives of the Indian Government to live in white areas—provided it is understood that the local Indian community does not do so.
As soon as I arrived I was canvassed for support against an Indian couple, official representatives, who had insisted that their child had the right to go to the local white Government school. One man, a journalist, said sourly: ‘Yes, and as soon as they had their way, and made a fuss, then what? They haven’t even sent their kid to the school. They just wanted to fight on principle so as to make us look silly.’
Later, meeting representatives of the local Indian community, I was told that the parents of this child had had so many anonymous threatening letters that they had not dared send her, for fear of what she might be made to suffer.
The Indians of the three federated territories suffer all the hardships that the Africans do, with minor differences—for instance, they may drink ‘European’ liquor.
I was told they had petitioned Lord Malvern and Mr Garfield Todd for a revision of the colour bars on the grounds that their treatment was inconsistent with Partnership. They got no satisfaction. Easy to see why not: administration, terrified above all of the white voters, would not consider the satisfaction of the comparatively small Indian communities worth losing their seats.
The Indians here, as in the Union, have always been the sore spot of the colour bar. One cannot say of Indians, who have a much older history of civilization than Europeans, that they are barbarous and backward, yet they are treated just as badly, sometimes worse, than the Africans. The excesses of the colour bar are always due to a bad conscience; and it is the Indians who excite particular venom in the white people.
Mrs S., the wife of one of the Indian Government representatives, being advanced in pregnancy and feeling tired, attempted to use the lift in one of the big stores. She was pushed out and made to use the stairs.
A charming and cultivated girl, used to intelligent society in New Delhi, after two years’ residence in Southern Rhodesia, she showed signs of strain. Mr S., however, on the evening I was at their house, told anecdotes about the colour bar with zest.
‘Imagine, what people!’ he said. ‘I want a hair-cut. I am told I can only have a hair-cut if I come in after hours through the back door so that no one can see me. So I do, and then I’m charged extra. Fascinating! Extraordinary! Wonderful!’ And with savage joy he darted off on another expedition to collect evidence of white imbecility.
A trip to a Native Reserve. The office is the same as that which during the war was the Aliens’ Office. I know it well, because during the war I was technically an enemy alien by marriage. I was supposed to report once a week, my fingerprints were taken, and I was not allowed to move without permission beyond 50 miles around Salisbury. My husband was a refugee from Hitler, and passionately anti-Nazi; but this made no difference to officialdom.
This was a very interesting experience: first, becoming an enemy alien because of my signature on a bit of paper; then being policed and restricted in my own town; and then ceasing to be an enemy alien because of another bit of paper. The labels stuck on me in this case were so arbitrary, bizarre and incongruous that I could never quite believe that the thing was happening at all. Now, of course, the law has been changed.
But it was certainly a useful apprenticeship to living in the world today.
The official of the Native Department enthusiastically explained to me the provisions of the Native Land Husbandry Act. Its aim is to break the tribal system, under which land is communally owned and distributed through the Chiefs. Land is now being given on the Reserves in plots of one, two, three, four acres to Africans, provided they have given evidence that they are willing to learn husbandry. And, in the words of my guide: ‘They have to be good types, you know; we