Where is Gandhi when you need him?

In his own time Gandhi was held in contrast to the bloody-mindedness of Hitler and Stalin, and the era of world wars.  Who do we look to today to counter Putin’s brutal militarism?  Gandhi’s was a message of truth, of non-violence, of the power of self-sacrifice, and his influence can be found in the American civil rights movement, in anti-apartheid South Africa, and among the student protestors at Tiananmen Square.[1]

Gandhi can be described as a kind of Nietzschean superman, who transcended all values – including Nietzsche himself – to become a global icon.[2]  He found joy through an ascetic “secret of service” and is now regarded as “Father of the Nation”, so it should come as no surprise that his face adorns the Indian rupee.[3] It is also possible that his is the only bespectacled visage on the official currency of any country.

Perhaps the closest equivalent we have to Gandhi today are our nurses and doctors who have worked unenviable hours over days, weeks and months, for more than two years of the pandemic.  Gandhi himself had fallen seriously ill from the Spanish Influenza of 1918-19, but long before that he found that he had “an aptitude for nursing” which “gradually developed into a passion”.[4]

Here is an extended quotation from Gandhi’s Autobiography where he deals with an early plague, in India, of an unknown date, but likely around 1897, before Queen Victoria’s Diamond Jubilee.[5]  Note his singular respect for the untouchables, and the varying reactions to his service of toilet cleaning by the different castes.

Plague broke out in Bombay about this time, and there was panic all around.  There was fear of an outbreak at Rajkot.  As I felt that I could be of some help in the sanitation department, I offered my services to the State. They were accepted, and I was put on the committee which was appointed to look into the question.  I laid especial emphasis on the cleanliness of latrines, and the committee decided to inspect these in every street.  The poor people had no objection to their latrines being inspected, and what is more, they carried out the improvements suggested to them.  But when we went to inspect the houses of the upper ten, some of them even refused us admission, not to talk of listening to or suggestions. It was our common experience that the latrines of the rich were more unclean.  They were dark and stinking and reeking with filth and worms.  The improvements we suggested were quite simple, e.g., to have buckets for excrement instead of allowing it to drop on the ground; to see that urine also was collected in buckets, instead of allowing it to soak into the ground and to demolish the partitions between the outer walls and the latrines, so as to give the latrines more light and air and enable the scavenger to clean them properly.  The upper classes raised numerous objections to this last improvement, and in most cases it was not carried out.

The committee had to inspect the untouchables’ quarters also.  Only one member of the committee was ready to accompany me there.  To the rest it was something preposterous to visit these quarters, still more to inspect their latrines.  But for me those quarters were an agreeable surprise.  That was the first visit in my life to such a locality.  The men and women there were surprised to see us.  I asked them to let us inspect their latrines.

‘Latrines for us!’ they exclaimed in astonishment. ‘We go and perform our functions out in the open.  Latrines are for you big people.’

‘Well, then, you won’t mind if we inspect your houses?’ I asked.

‘You are perfectly welcome, sir.  You may see every nook and corer of our houses.  Ours are no houses, they are holes.’

I went in and was delighted to see that the insides were as clean as the outsides.  The entrances were well swept, the floors were beautifully smeared with cow-dung, and the few pots and pans were clean and shining.  There was no fear of an outbreak in these quarters.

In the upper class quarters we came across which I cannot help describing in some detail.  Every room had its gutter, which was used both for water and urine, which meant that the whole house would stink.  But one of the houses had a storeyed bedroom with a gutter which was being used both as a urinal and a latrine.  The gutter had a pipe descending to the ground floor.  It was not possible to stand the foul smell in this room.  How the occupants could sleep there I leave the readers to imagine.[6]

Gandhi, Autobiography, c. 1897.
 

 

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[1] Shruti Kapila, Violent Fraternity: Indian Political Thought in the Global Age (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2021), p.  135.

[2] Ibid, p. 143.

[3] Mohandas K. Gandhi, Autobiography: The Story of My Experiments with Truth, tr. Mahadev Desai (New York: Dover, 1983), p. 196.

[4] Ibid., p. 153.  See also p. 213.

[5] Ibid., p. 151.

[6] Ibid., pp. 149,150.