Gandhi’s 1914 Smuts settlement normalized Indian repatriation as policy

Evidence

Non-violent satyagraha failed. There was rioting, arson and bloodshed. Thousands were arrested as they defied the new immigration bill and crossed the border into the Transvaal. Gandhi was arrested too. He lost control of the strike. Eventually, he signed a settlement with Jan Smuts. The settlement upset many in the Indian community, who saw it as a pyrrhic victory. One of its most controversial clauses was the one in which the government undertook to provide free passage to Indians who wished to return permanently to India. It reinforced and formalised the idea that Indians were sojourners who could be repatriated. (In their 1948 election manifesto the apartheid National Party called for the repatriation of all Indians. Indians finally became full-fledged citizens only in 1960, when South Africa became a republic.) — Ambedkar, B R, Annihilation of Caste_ The Annotated…, 263

Categorization

• XREF: The ‘sojourner’ framing of Indians in South Africa parallels how the reader might see caste subjects treated as temporary workers in other settler economies.