SOUTH AFRICA: Martyrdom Requested

Manilal Gandhi, 58, son of the late Mohandas Gandhi, stepped into South Africa's tense racial controversy last week. He announced that he would fast for 14 days and would then notify Prime Minister Malan when & where he proposed to break certain of the government's racial laws. Said Manilal: "The Malan government's Apartheid [racial segregation] policy is creeping like a fiend into every walk of life."

Manilal will take only water, salt and a little bicarbonate of soda during his fast. His promised breaking of the law will probably take the form of publicly entering a "European" area and refusing to leave, thus inviting arrest.

His father began his political career in 1894, when he became lawyer for a group of Indians protesting against unfair treatment by the South African government. The elder Gandhi, however, did not develop the fast (or hunger strike) as a publicity and political tenchnique until 1918, after he had returned to India. No prominent Indian has gone on a hunger strike since Gandhi's last fast in 1948.