Ghandi on Marriage Rights

Ghandis protesters marching in South Africa in 1913

I've been reading about Ghandi lately and thinking about non-violence. Yesterday I learned that in 1913, in an effort to expel Indians from South Africa, the government invalidated Indian marriages, making Indian wives concubines and Indian children bastards. Ghandi wrote:

...Mr. Justice Searle of the Cape Supreme Court gave judgment on March 14, 1913 to the effect that all marriages were outside the pale of legal marriages in South Africa with the exception of such as were celebrated according to Christian rites and registered by the Registrar of Marriages.

Indian women protested first, by crossing borders without papers and selling wares without licences. When they were imprisoned thousands of Indian miners went on strike and joined the march.

How different is it today, when the state, motivated by delusions of purity, tries to prevent women from marrying the women they love, and men from marrying the men that they love? By doing so marriage is made - not the sacred love-based union of two hearts - but a cynical tool of the state wielded against those of whom they disapprove.

Can we move beyond the thinking that motivated South Africa in 1913?

Women Passive Resisters with their Children

- Satyagraha in South Africa/Chapter XXXIX | When Marriage is not a Marriage