A representative of the "Daily News" had a conversation on January with Mr. Kellermacher, well-known architect of Johannesburg, who is in very close touch with M. K. Ghandi, the leader of the British Indians, in the Transvaal against the pass law.
Mr. Ghandi, who so unselfishly suffered violence and imprisonment in the passive resistance movement in behalf of the rights of British Indians, has also given up his little fortune of six or seven thousand pounds for social causes like that for which Tolstoy laboured. The hundred acre farm of Phoenix, near Durban, was some time ago handed over by him to tho trustees of the colony, and this son and grandson of Indian Prime Ministers, and eloquent and successful practitioner at the Indian bar is at present penniless.
"He is," said Mr. Kellermacher, "an extremely modest man, as you know, a man of the highest courage, and he is the happiest man I have seen. He lives on a farm of eleven hundred acres near Johannesburg, which by coincidence belongs to me. Only about fifty acres are at present cultivated, the rest is virgin soil, and we have proved a good supply of water through three bore-holes. General Smuts has promised to visit us, and in the next Parliament the law in resistance to which 2500 people have fol lowed Mr, Ghandi to prison will be abolished."
"And what is Mr. Ghandi doing on the farm?"
"He teaches a school of fifteen Indians, and he is a shoemaker. He insists upon doing the hardest and the meanest work upon the land, and he does the work of 10 men, sitting up all night with some one sick, and beginning manual work as early in the morning as anyone. There is no one in the world, I imagine, who carries out so vigorously the principles of Tolstoy, and you must remember that the Hindoo temperament and belief do not tend so much in the direction of work as ours do.
"Mr. Ghandi believes that politics and religion are not activities apart from life, but must be put into active effect in every phase and detail of life. He teaches not by words, but by deeds. Words can be misunderstood, but not deeds. Men who come in contact with Mr. Ghandi gain a new idea of the value of life and of human relationship. He is the one man who fought the cause of his countrymen in South Africa, He did it by throwing away all rights and privileges, and insisting upon sharing the hardest blows that were going. He is doing just the same in the work of the farm."
"Tolstyism," ventured our representative, "must be far more difficult in Africa, where the colour prejudice is so strong,"
"Colour prejudice," said Mr. Kellermacher, "is all rot. There is only misunderstanding with the blacks when you are seeking to get everything out of them that you can. As soon as you take up the attitude that you must not exploit them the colour prejudice vanishes."
Newcastle Morning Herald and Miners' Advocate (NSW ), 14 February 1912
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