What separates two people most profoundly is a
different sense and degree of cleanliness — Friedrich
Nietzsche

Cleanliness is the symbol of dignity, health and
safety. Proper hygiene and sanitation are also the indicators of social and
economic development. Mahatma Gandhi took cleanliness to the level of
spirituality. He had a firm belief in the proverb: ‘Cleanliness is next to
godliness’. He wrote, “We can no more gain God’s blessing with an unclean body
than with an unclean mind. A clean body cannot reside in an unclean city.”

At the age of 12, he spoke in terms of social reform
when he told his mother: ‘Uka (a sweeper) serves us by cleaning dirt and filth,
how can his touch pollute me? I shall not disobey you, but the Ramayana says
that Rama embraced Guhaka, a Chandal (a caste considered untouchable). The
Ramayana cannot mislead us.” In his reckoning, cleanliness did not mean mere
sanitation and hygiene. He warned that an unlean mind is far more dangerous
than an unclean body and surroundings. Indeed, his meticulous visualisation of
Swachh Bharat was three-pronged — a clean mind, a clean body and clean
surroundings. His perception of the concept was succinctly summed up when he
wrote that “‘I will not let anyone walk through my mind with their dirty feet”.

He criticised many Western customs but repeatedly
admitted that he learnt extensive lessons on sanitation from the West and
wanted to introduce that type of cleanliness in India. Till January 29, 1948, a
day before he was assassinated, he considered cleanliness as one of the most
important public issues. In 1937, he received a letter written by a villager of
Birbhum in West Bengal, asking him about his concept of an ideal village, and
the problems that plagued Indian villages. In response, he wrote: “An ideal
village will be so constructed as to lend itself to perfect sanitation. The
very first problem the village worker will solve is its sanitation.” In 1941,
he wrote a booklet titled Constructive Programme — Its Meaning And Place for
Congress workers which, in his own words “may otherwise and more fittingly be
called construction of Poorna Swaraj or complete Independence by truthful and
non-violent means.” He listed as many as 18 programmes and placed village
sanitation in the 6th position. On 28 January 1948, he advised the Congress
party to go into voluntary liquidation and form the Lok Sevak Sangh, and even
drafted a constitution for the members of the proposed Sangh — “He (people’s
worker) shall educate the village folk on all measures for prevention of ill
health and disease among them.”

His observations signify the importance of
cleanliness in Gandhian thought and philosophy. He placed the issue on the
public platform for the first time by defending the sanitation system of Indian
traders in business locations in South Africa, as a petitioner on behalf of the
Indian and Asian community. After spending two decades in South Africa, he
returned to India in 1915 and toured the country extensively to garner facts on
public issues. He always travelled in the third class and was appalled by the
insanitary conditions in the train compartment. Appalling too was the insanitary
condition around the great Vishwanath Temple at Varanasi.

Not that Indians are generally indifferent to
personal hygiene. In an article in Harijan, Gandhi wrote that Indians probably
lead the world in terms of personal hygiene. But he was shocked at our
behavioural aberration regarding cleanliness. We keep our home scrupulously
clean, but when it comes to cleaning public places or our surroundings, the
position is just the reverse. We do not hesitate to litter a road or public
place. Gandhi wrote in his Constructive Programme: “A sense of national or
social sanitation is not virtue among us. We may take a bath, but we do not
mind dirtying the well or the tank or the river by whose side or in which we
perform ablutions. Lack of collective responsibility has turned our villages
into dump yards.”

According to Gandhi, sanitation of public places is
as important as personal cleanliness. He wrote: “ With our dirty habits
(defecating in the open) we spoil the banks of our holy rivers and prepare
breeding grounds for flies. As a consequence of our criminal negligence the
same flies which sit on human excreta, come back and sit on our bathed bodies”.
To end the practice of defecation in the open, he advocated the use of trench
latrines. To restore the dignity of the untouchables, he relentlessly condemned
the Indian practice of hiring Harijans to manually clean the dry latrines or
collect waste from fields. He apprehended that if this inhuman practice
continued, human scavengers, as a caste, would forever be condemned to do so.

Gandhi was a practical idealist. He never did or
said anything that he had not practised. He himself learnt scavenging in South
Africa. As he said: “Everyone must be his own scavenger. If you become your own
bhangi (sweeper), not only will you ensure perfect sanitation for yourself, but
you will make your surroundings clean and relieve those whom you call bhangis,
of the weight of oppression”. He had formed a bhangi squad in the Congress, to
which even Brahmins were once inducted.

Indeed, we have failed Gandhi. Cleanliness was an
integral part of the struggle for freedom that he led.  “Sanitation,” he once observed, “is more
important than political independence.” He dreamt of a clean India. He appealed
to the country do away with the practice of manual cleaning of human excreta by
scavengers. But the inhuman practice persists in independent India. After
independence we have merely transformed the sanitation campaign into government
schemes, reducing them to a matter of targets, structures and numbers. We have
focused on tantra — the setting up of physical infrastructure and systems — and
ignored tatva, indeed the values of cleanliness to be inculcated among the
people.  Even 70 years after
Independence, the sanitation scenario is depressing. Littering, open defecation
and pollution and contamination of drinking water are common and rampant. The
Mahatma’s dream of a clean India remains unfulfilled.

Gandhi had raised the issue of sanitation to the
sphere of spirituality. While launching the Swachh Bharat Mission on 2 October
2014,  Narendra Modi had suggested that
“A clean India would be the best tribute India could pay to Mahatma Gandhi on
his 150th birth anniversary in 2019.” Cleanliness is the first habit that
should be learnt since childhood. The country needs to be cleaned for the
protection of the environment, for our safety, and for the healthy future.

In the words of Benjamin Disraeli: “Cleanliness and
order are not matters of instinct; they are matters of education, and like most
great things, you must cultivate a taste for them.”

–By Jaydev Jana

The writer is a retired IAS officer.