The Essential Gandhi (22 page)

[Untouchability is segregation gone mad. In the Hindu caste, or class, system of Brahmans (the priests), Kshatriyas (soldiers), Vaisyas (merchants and farmers) and Sudras (craftsmen)—the untouchables are outcastes. An untouchable is exactly that: he must not touch a caste Hindu or anything a caste Hindu touches. Obviously, he should not enter a Hindu temple, home or shop. In villages, the untouchables live on the lowest outskirts into which dirty waters drain; in cities they inhabit the worst sections of the world’s worst slums. Untouchables are confined to tasks which Hindus spurned: street cleaning, handling dead animals and men, removing refuse, etc.

To perpetuate caste, Hindus have clothed it in the religious formula of fate. The Hindus believe in reincarnation. You are a Brahman or Sudra or untouchable because of your conduct in a previous incarnation. Your misbehavior in the present life might result in caste demotion in the next. A high-caste Hindu could be born an untouchable, an untouchable could become a Brahman.

Untouchables also were called “pariahs,” “suppressed classes” or “scheduled classes.” Gandhi called them “Harijans—Children of God” and later named his weekly magazine after them. His fight against the system of untouchability was ferocious and lifelong.]

The question of untouchability was naturally among the subjects discussed with the Ahmedabad friends [persons who lived in Gandhi’s Satyagraha Ashram]. I made it clear to them that I should take the first opportunity of admitting an untouchable candidate to the Ashram if he was otherwise worthy.
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“Where is the untouchable who will satisfy your condition?” said a Vaisya friend self-complacently.

The Ashram had been in existence only a few months when we were put to [the] test. I received a letter.… “A humble and honest untouchable family is desirous of joining your Ashram. Will you accept them?”

The family consisted of Dudabhai, his wife, Danibehn, and their daughter, Lakshmi [whom Gandhi later adopted], then a mere toddling babe. Dudabhai had been a teacher in Bombay. They agreed to abide by the rules [of the Ashram] and were accepted.

But their admission created a flutter amongst the friends who had been helping the Ashram.…

All monetary help … was stopped.…

With the stopping of monetary help came rumors of proposed social boycott. We were prepared for all this. I had told my companions that if we were boycotted and denied the usual facilities [such as the public well, because untouchables or those who had been in contact with them would “pollute” it], we would not leave Ahmedabad. We would rather go and stay in the untouchables’ quarter and live on whatever we could get by manual labor.

 … Maganlal Gandhi one day gave me this notice: “We are out of funds.…”

 … On all such occasions God has sent help at the last moment. [A rich Hindu whom Gandhi had not seen before drove up to the Ashram, handed him enough money to carry on for a year, and drove off.]

[There] was a storm in the Ashram itself. Though in South Africa untouchable friends used to come to my place and live and feed with me, my wife and other women did not seem quite to relish the admission into the Ashram of the untouchable friends.… The monetary difficulty had caused me no anxiety, but this internal storm was more than I could bear.… I pleaded with [Dudabhai] to swallow minor insults. He not only agreed but prevailed upon his wife to do likewise.

The admission of this family proved a valuable lesson to the Ashram. In the very beginning we proclaimed to the world that the Ashram would not countenance untouchability. Those who
wanted to help the Ashram were thus put on their guard.… The fact that it is mostly the real orthodox Hindus who have met the daily growing expenses of the Ashram, is perhaps a clear indication that untouchability is shaken to its foundation.…
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Caste distinction is not observed in the Ashram because caste has nothing to do with religion in general and Hinduism in particular. It is a sin to believe anyone else is inferior or superior to ourselves. We are all equal. It is the touch of sin that pollutes us and never that of a human being. None are high and none are low for one who would devote his life to service. The distinction between high and low is a blot on Hinduism which we must obliterate.
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I regard untouchability as the greatest blot of Hinduism. The idea was not brought home to me by my bitter experiences during the South African struggle. It is not due to the fact that I was once an agnostic. It is equally wrong to think, as some people do, that I have taken my views from my study of Christian religious literature. These views date as far back as the time when I was neither enamoured of nor was acquainted with the Bible or the followers of the Bible.

I was hardly yet twelve when this idea had dawned on me. A scavenger named Uka, an untouchable, used to attend our house for cleaning latrines. Often I would ask my mother why it was wrong to touch him, why I was forbidden to touch him.… I was a very dutiful and obedient child and so far as it was consistent with respect for parents I often had tussles with them on this matter. I told my mother that she was entirely wrong in considering physical contact with Uka as sinful.
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Untouchability is not a sanction of religion … scriptures cannot transcend Reason and Truth. They are intended to purify Reason and illuminate Truth.… It is the spirit that giveth the light. And the spirit of the Vedas [Hindu scriptures] is purity, truth, innocence, chastity, simplicity, forgiveness, godliness and all that makes a man or woman noble and brave. There is neither nobility nor
bravery in treating the great and uncomplaining scavengers of the nation as worse than dogs to be despised and spat upon. Would that God gave us the strength and the wisdom to become voluntary scavengers of the nation as the “suppressed” classes are forced to be.…
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 … Hinduism has sinned in giving sanction to untouchability. It has degraded us, made us the pariahs of the [British] Empire.… What crimes for which we condemn the [British] Government as satanic, have not we been guilty of toward our untouchable brethren?

 … It is idle to talk of Swaraj so long as we do not protect the weak and the helpless or so long as it is possible for a single Swarajist to injure the feelings of any individual. Swaraj means that not a single Hindu or Moslem shall for a moment arrogantly think that he can crush with impunity meek Hindus or Moslems. Unless this condition is fulfilled we will gain Swaraj, only to lose it the next moment. We are no better than the brutes until we have purged ourselves of the sins we have committed against our weaker brethren.
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How is this blot on Hinduism to be removed? “Do unto others as you would that others should do unto you.” I have often told English officials that if they are friends and servants of India they should come down from their pedestal, cease to be patrons … and believe us to be equals in the same sense they believe fellow Englishmen to be their equals.… I have gone a step further and asked them to repent and to change their hearts. Even so is it necessary for us Hindus to repent of the wrong we have done, to alter our behavior toward those whom we have “suppressed” by a system as devilish as we believe the English system of the government of India to be. We must not throw a few miserable schools at them, we must not adopt the air of superiority toward them. We must treat them as our blood brothers as they are in fact. We must return to them the inheritance of which we have robbed them. And this must not be the act of a few English-knowing reformers merely but it must be a conscious voluntary effort on the part of the masses. We may not wait till eternity for this much belated reformation.
We must aim at bringing it about within this year … It is a reform not to follow Swaraj but to precede it.
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 … We must first cast out the beam of untouchability from our own eyes before we attempt to remove the mote from that of our “masters.”
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 … I do want to attain Moksha [Salvation, merging with God]. I do not want to be reborn. But if I have to be reborn, I should be born an untouchable so that I may share their sorrows, sufferings and the affronts levelled at them in order that I may endeavor to free myself and them from that miserable condition.…
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I will tell you how it happened that I decided to urge the departure of the British. It was in 1916. I was in Lucknow working for Congress [the name Indians give the Congress Party]. A peasant came up to me looking like any other peasant of India, poor and emaciated. He said, “My name is Rajkumar Shukla. I am from Champaran, and I want you to come to my district.” He described the misery of his fellow agriculturists.…
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The Champaran tenant was bound by law to plant three out of every twenty parts of his land with indigo for his landlord.…

[Gandhi was unable to finish other tasks until early in 1917.] [We] left Calcutta for Champaran looking just like fellow-rustics.…

[A sympathetic lawyer named] Brajkishore Babu acquainted me with the facts of the case. He used to be in the habit of taking up the cases of the poor tenants.… Not that he did not charge fees for these simple peasants. Lawyers labor under the belief that if they do not charge fees they will have no wherewithal to run their households, and will not be able to render effective help to poor people. The figures of the fees they charged and the standard of a barrister’s fees in Bengal and Bihar staggered me.

“… I have come to the conclusion” [said I] “that we should stop going to law courts.… Where the ryots [peasants] are so crushed and fear-stricken, law courts are useless. The real relief for them is to be free from fear.…”

… “We shall render all the help we can,” [Brajkishore Babu] said quietly … “tell us what kind of help you will need.”

And thus we sat talking until midnight.

“I shall have little use for your legal knowledge,” I said to them. “I want clerical assistance and help in interpretation. It may be necessary to face imprisonment, but much as I would love you to run that risk, you would go only so far as you feel yourselves capable of going. Even turning yourselves into clerks and giving up your profession for an indefinite period is no small thing. I find it difficult to understand the local dialect of Hindi … and … I shall want you to translate.… We cannot afford to pay for this work. It should all be done for love and out of a spirit of service.”
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… “Such and such a number of us will do whatever you may ask.… The idea of accommodating oneself to imprisonment is a novel thing for us. We will try to assimilate it.”
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