It is a lesser known fact that in 1894, Mahatma Gandhi launched a heroic struggle in South Africa’s Natal province for retaining the voting rights of Indians after the Franchise Law Amendment Bill was introduced in the Natal Assembly to take away their restricted voting rights on specious grounds.
One reasoning was that they never had voting right in India and in case they got it, they would, over time, overwhelm South Africa with their political power. It was also falsely argued that only Muslims among Indians were asking for voting rights so that they would dominate over Hindus as it happened during Muslim period of Indian history. Gandhi’s struggle preceded his 1906 first Satyagraha in South Africa in defence of the rights and dignity of Indians living there.
Echo of Gandhi’s struggle
It is indeed of extraordinary significance that the essence of that struggle for voting rights of Indians is resonating in the struggle of Lok Sabha leader of opposition Rahul Gandhi and other opposition leaders such as Rashtriya Janata Dal’s (RJD’s) Tejashwi Yadav and Dipankar Bhattacharya of the Communist Party of India (Marxist-Leninist) Liberation ((CPI-ML) Liberation) to protect the voting rights of several lakhs of people of Bihar whose names were deleted from voters’ list of the state.
Many feared mass disenfranchisement following the special intensive revision (SIR) of electoral roll launched in the poll-bound state by the Election Commission of India(ECI).
Rahul and others organised the struggle in Bihar after he alleged vote theft in the Mahadevapura Assembly constituency of the Bangalore Central Lok Sabha seat in Karnataka during 2024 general elections. He used lakhs of pages of electoral roll obtained from ECI to charge that it facilitated vote theft to help the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) party win elections. His charges gained huge moment across the country.
Add to it the Voter Adhikar Yatra which was led by Rahul and the other aforementioned leaders in Bihar for 17 days. On September 1, the concluding day of the Yatra, Rahul very strikingly sensitised thousands of people in Patna by his forceful plea that the Vote Chori (Vote Theft) meant theft of rights, theft of employment, theft of education, theft of democracy and theft of the future of the youth.
In likening vote theft to the theft of basic rights and future of the youth, Rahul very persuasively and convincingly outlined the grave implications of stealing of the constitutionally enshrined franchise rights to eligible citizens to their other rights and entitlements which they have legitimately secured.
What Rahul did was eloquently evocative of Mahatma Gandhi’s pronouncements in in his August 1895 report to the Natal Indian Congress that deprivations of Indians of their voting rights would cause an existential threat to them. In a letter to the Natal Mercury, Gandhi wrote on September 15, 1895thatconsequences of disenfranchisement to the Indian community were too dreadful to contemplate.
Even prior to that, in July 1894, Gandhi wrote in his petition to Lord Rippon, principal secretary of state for the colonies, that Indians without voting right would lose, “…self-respect, to remain in the Colony and that such a thing would materially interfere with their business, and throw hundreds of Her Majesty’s Indian subjects out of work”. Those articulations of Gandhi uttered in 1894 are resonating in Rahul’s assertions that “Vote Theft meant theft of rights, theft of employment, theft of education, theft of democracy and theft of the future of the youth”.
So, if the SIR being done in Bihar would lead to massive deletion of names of genuine voters then it would mean that the adverse consequences it has caused to Indians now are akin to what British colonial rulers did to Indians in Natal in 1894 by introducing a Bill for the purpose of disenfranchising them enjoying restricted franchise rights during that time.
It is indeed shocking that India with a glorious record of guaranteeing universal adult franchise right from the day the Constitution came into force is now confronting the dire prospects of depriving thousands of voters of their right to vote because of SIR.
Close parallel between Natal in 1894 and Bihar in 2025
There is a close parallel between what Indians faced in Natal in 1894 and what they are facing in Bihar in 2025 in the wake of SIR. It is well known that the ECI asked people in Bihar to get enrolled as voters under SIR by submitting one of the eleven documents which at first did not include voter id card and Aadhar document.
Later Aadhaar was included in those documents on the directions of Supreme Court. Most of the eleven documents are not available to majority of eligible voters and so they faced dreadful prospects of their names getting deleted from the voter list.
Curiously, in Natal in 1894, British authorities asked Indians to prove that they were voters in India so as to be entitled to it in Natal. Mahatma Gandhi wrote about it in an article ‘The Indian Franchise’ on 16th December 1895 and asked, “Why such a rule for the poor Indians alone?” He added that they would not object to such an arrangement if it were applicable to all including whites who were inhabitants of Natal . He noted that the Europeans would “…find it difficult to get their names on the Voters’ List in the Colony under such conditions.”
He said that in case they were asked to prove their status as voters in the countries from where they came to Natal, Gandhi asserted, “…it would be received with the strongest indignation”.
In 2025, when the ECI shifted the burden of proof on people to prove their citizenship and eligibility as a voter by submitting one of the 11 documents, they expressed “strong indignation”. And thus, opposition political parties led by Rahul Gandhi started an agitation, “Voters’ Right Rally” spontaneously enlisting participation of lakhs of people.
Such a rally is also evocative of agitation started by Mahatma Gandhi in 1894 as it mobilised Indians of all faiths and classes to oppose the Bill to take away voting rights of Indians. He described that Bill as representing “legislative activity, of a retrograde character.”
Description of the SIR by opposition leaders as a form of “Vote Bandi’ captures Gandhi’s words “retrograde’ invoked in the context of Franchise Law Amendment Bill of 1894.
That retrograde Bill became an Act but due to petitions of Gandhi that Indians were removed from electoral roll on racial grounds, the UK Government disallowed it. But it was then altered and racial element was removed by providing for the disqualifications as voters of all Asiatics as such. That became an Act and Indians lost their voting right.
In his book “Satyagraha in South Africa” Gandhi wrote, “There is always a general presumption in favour of the right of the subject. So long, therefore, as the government of the day does not become positively hostile, the names of Indians and others could be included in the electoral roll, the above law notwithstanding.”
Those words are resonating in the struggle of Rahul Gandhi who upholds the general presumption in favour of the right of the citizens and so the Voters’ Right Rally in 2025 resoundingly captures the vision of Mahatma Gandhi who for the first time struggled for the rights of Indians in Natal to vote.