(GIST OF YOJANA) Staircase to Swaraj
[NOVEMBER-2018]
Staircase to Swaraj
A Young man from central Maharashtra who cleared the ICS preliminary exam met
Gandhi at his Sevagram Ashram to seek his blessings. Gandhi asked ‘why do you
want to be ICS?’ ‘to serve India’, responded the Young man . ‘Going to village
and doing sanitation work is the best service to india,’advised Gandhi. And the
ICS aspirant Appa Patwardhan turned out to be one of the finest freedom fighter,
specialising in the art of ‘Safai’. In the school of freedom struggle, ‘safai’
and ‘swachata, was the test to graduation. Vinoba bhave, Thakkar Baba, JC
Kumarrapora and innumerable youngsters with sparkling brilliance joined the
freedom struggle and took the safari and swachata root to independence.
Development Prerequisite
Development has been a faithful companion of human civilisation. . From a
prehistoric hunter-gatherer to the sophisticated urbane human, we have
improvised life a great deal. Development is seen as a betterment that
innovation brings about in any facet of life. The notion of human development
incorporates all aspects of individuals’ well-being’: food security, clean and
fresh air, safe drinking water, health and sanitation, access to wherewithal and
to ensure all these, quality education and freedom of choice.
Much of these components of development can be classified as physiological
need fulfilment, as Abraham Maslow would put it. As a developing community, we
have taken great pains to build mechanism to take care of one side of the
physiological need, the supply side, to the utter neglect of another side, the
disposal has scarcely been in the scheme of the development agenda.
Truth Realisation
For Gandhi, sanitation was not just a biological requirement; it was a way of
life, an integral part of Truth realisation. His understanding of cleanliness
stems from his realisation of the universal oneness of Truth. Gandhi who
worshipped Truth as God, saw the Absolute, the all encompassing truth as Pure
and hence equated cleanliness with godliness. He accorded ‘sanitation’ the
status of an essential step to freedom incorporating it into the list of
eighteen Constructive Programmes.
The seeker after Truth, saw life as the closest manifestation of Truth,
therefore, he equated life with Truth or God. All the processes that are part of
life and its conduct are also part of the Truth realisation. In this sense,
Gandhi believed, sanitation cleanliness of inner and outer self are means of God
realisation. “We can no more gain God’s blessing with an unclean mind. A clean
body cannot reside in an unclean city.”
Swaraj
Gandhi’s holistic perspective about freedom of Indian led him to understand
the unique place of sanitation in India’s pursuit of swaraj.
Demanding the right of Indian Home Rule, Bal Gangadhar Tilak roared, ‘Swaraj’
was more profound in its implication. He started in young India, “ swaraj is a
sacred word, a vedic word, meaning self-rule, self-restraint and not freedom
from all restraints which ‘independence’ often means.’Self restraint from all
indulgence, not to mention, from littering, not to mention, from littering
public places. He went on further, “Swaraj of my dream is the poor man’s swaraj”,
and the self-restraint needs to sleep up to the the last man. Addressing the
grand audience on the occasion of the inauguration of banaras hindu university,
he referred to the filth that smothered the hole city. “No amount of speeches
will ever make us fit for self-government (freedom). It is only our conduct that
will fit us for it” Cleanliness has been a ‘swaraj Yojana’ for him.
This ‘self-restraint’ he evoked i individual conduct of personnel and public
life, both physical and attitudinal facets of living. Talking on the disposal
mechanism Gandhi stated, ‘Swaraj is not poorna Swaraj, until all the ordinary
amenities of life are guaranteed to every human under it.’
Staircase to Swaraj
Spearheading the freedom struggle, he explained the dimensions of freedom and
highlighted the importance of and highlighted the importance of ‘clean behaviour’
. In this context he stated “before we think of self-government, we shall have
to do necessary plodding”. From the standpoint of health, gandhi temed the
condition of villages as deplorable. “ One of the chief causes of our poverty is
the non-availability of this essential knowledge of hygiene. In this sense he
stated, Swaraj is not ‘freeing India merely from the English yoke… but from any
yoke whatsoever.’ On another occasion he stated, swaraj will be a fruit of
incessant labour and intelligent appreciation of the environment.
An act of Sublime Joy
Gandhi, who saw non-violent living as the best means to worship God and
truth, saw every act that serves life as a way to God, He deemed cleaning as an
act of purification and drew immense joy from it. Pyarelal, Gandhi’s secretary ,
gives an interesting anecdote on this, from Noakhali where Gandhi was walking
the length and breadth to build harmony between Hindus and Muslims. He writes,
“Even for Noakhali, it had been an expectation dewy night, and the narrow
footpath by which Gandhiji wa sto proceed had been rendered extremely slippery
when on the morning of January 19, 1947, he left Bagalkot for Atakara. Twice
col. Jiwan singh accustomed to difficult marches, lost his walking stick to pull
himself up the slippery slope.
The footpath was narrow so that the party could walk on it only in single
file. All Of a sudden the column came to a dead stop. Gandhi was removing
excreta from the footpath with the help of some dry leaves. The footpath had
again been dirtied by some communal urchins . ‘Why did you not let me do it ?
Why do you put us to shame like this?” Manu asked. Gandhi laughed: “ You little
know the joy it gives me to do such things.”
Gram-Rajya
Village, the centre of all primary produce and sustenance, is the heart of
India. I the life of villages rests the life of India, Gandhi believed. Hence,
he equated hind-Swaraj-Indian Home Rule, with ‘Grama-rajya. Visualising villages
of free India, Gandhi stated, That village may be regarded as reformed, which
has every kind of village industries to produce each of her requirements in
which nobody is illiterate, where the roads nobody is illiterate, where the
roads are clean, there is a fixed place for evacuation, the wells are clean..”
Gandhi proposed ‘An ideal Indian village will be so constructed as to lend
itself to perfect sanitation . It will have cottages with sufficient light and
ventilation built of a material obtainable within a radius of five males of it’.
Lamenting over the present despicable state of villages, he wrote,”If sanitation
in villages can be improved, lakhs of rupees will easily be saved and the
condition of people improved to that extent. A sick peasant can never work as
hard as a healthy one.”
