Village Service and Mahatma Gandhi

[Prof. Dr. Yogendra Yadav]

Prof. Dr. Yogendra Yadav

Senior Gandhian Scholar, Professor, Editor and Linguist

Gandhi International Study and Research Institute, Jalgaon, Maharashtra, India

Contact No. – 09404955338, 09415777229

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Village Service and Mahatma Gandhi 

 

 

The students should devote the’ whole of their vacation to village service. To this end, instead of taking their walks along beaten paths, they should walk to the villages within easy reach of their institutions and study the condition of the village folk and befriend them. This habit will bring them in contact with the villagers who, when the students actually go to stay in their midst, will by reason of the previous occasional contact receive them as friends rather than as strangers to be looked upon with suspicion. During the long vacation the students will stay in the villages and offer to conduct classes for adults and to teach the rules of sanitation to the villagers and attend to the ordinary cases of illness. They will also introduce the spinning-wheel amongst them and teach them the use of every spare minute. In order that this may be done students and teachers will have to revise their ideas of the uses of vacation. Often do thoughtless teachers prescribe lessons to be done during the vacation?

This in my opinion is in any case a vicious habit. Vacation is just the period when students’ minds should be free from the routine work and be left free for self-help and original development. The village work I have mentioned is easily the best form of recreation and light instruction. It is obviously the best preparation for dedication to exclusive village service after finishing the studies. The scheme for full village service does not now need to be elaborately described. Whatever was done during the vacation has now to be put on a permanent footing. The villagers will also be prepared for a fuller response. The village life has to be touched at all points, the economic, the hygienic, the social and the political. The immediate solution of the economic distress is undoubtedly the wheel in the vast majority of cases. It at once adds to the income of the villagers and keeps them from mischief. The hygienic includes insanitation and disease. Here the student is expected to work with his own body and labour to dig trenches for burying excreta and other refuse and turning them into manure, for cleaning wells and tanks, for building easy embankments, removing rubbish and generally to make the villages more habitable. The village worker has also to touch the social side and gently persuade the people to give up bad customs and bad habits, such as untouchability, infant marriages, unequal matches, drink and drug evil and many local superstitions. Lastly comes the political part. Here the worker will study the political grievances of the villagers and teach them the dignity of freedom, self-reliance and self-help in everything. This makes in my opinion complete adult education. But this does not complete the task of the village worker. He must take care and charge of the little ones and begin their instruction and carry on a night school for adults. This literary training is but part of a whole education course and only a means to the larger end described above. 1

The work of the parties should be more in the nature of sanitary service, survey of village conditions and instruction of the villagers as to what they can do without much, if any, outlay of money to improve their health and economic conditions. If we seek to make villages self-dependent to the utmost extent possible, there is not much scope for sale, in the villages visited, of articles made in other villages, except where it is clear that villagers do not or cannot make such articles in their own villages. Village service as conceived by the A. I. V. I. A. has a unique mission. Town parties go out to villages to clean, instruct and purchase. Parties of villagers can be organized to go to towns to sell articles made in their villages and demonstrate their usefulness. This village movement is one of decentralization and restoration of health and comfort and the skill of the artisan to villagers. 2 Does a man need the solace of a mortal when he knows he has that of the Immortal God? Please tell those who may raise the question that the village service is nobody’s monopoly. The A. I. V. I. A. steps in where no one else is working along the same lines. 3

As I write these lines instances of those workers who for want of character or simple living damaged the cause and themselves recur to my mind. Happily instances of positive misconduct are rare. But the greatest hindrance to the progress of the work lies in the inability of workers of quality of supports themselves on the village scale. If every one of such workers puts on his work a price which village service cannot sustain, ultimately these organizations must be wound up. For the existence of payments on the city scale except in rare and temporary cases would imply that the gulf between cities and villages is unbridgeable. The village movement is as much an education of the city people as of the villagers. Workers drawn from cities have to develop village mentality and learn the art of living after the manner of villagers. This does not mean that they have to starve like the villagers. But it does mean that there must be a radical change in the old style of life. While the standard of living in the villages must be raised, the city standard has to undergo considerable revision, without the worker being required in any way to adopt a mode of life that would impair his health. 4

I hope to reach there on the 11th instead of the 12th. I shall listen to the story when I come there. Or perhaps by that time the cloud might have cleared. Therefore I wish to say nothing about the discord. Do what you can to settle it among yourselves. You have written to me saying that I have thrust on you the burden of winning over Lilavati, Balvantsinha and others. If I had put on you the burden of village service for which you and others are in Segaon, you would have been able to carry it. But this very distinction that you have made is not proper. We have resolved that village service is not different from overcoming anger, etc. The equation would be: To win over Lilavati and others is to overcoming anger and that is equal to serving the villages. But so long as you regard them as two separate things, they will remain so from your point of view. I have, however, solved this problem, too. As I have already told you and Balvantsinha, you can have separate arrangements for your meals, etc. You will have to deal only with me. You should spend all your time in the service chosen by you. After careful thinking, you rejected the suggestion. And I also see that you were right in doing so. Nobody has ever been able to serve by living in this manner. We are not born independent. From conception to death we are and will remain dependent on others. But I will not go into all this philosophy here. We will discuss it when we meet and find time. 5

If rural reconstruction were not to include rural sanitation, our village would remain the muck-heaps that they are today. Village sanitation is a vital part of village life and is as difficult as it is important. It needs a heroic effort to eradicate age-long insanitation. The village worker who is ignorant of the science of village sanitation, who is not a successful scavenger, cannot fit himself for village service. We can get our work done through the institutions of the Kasturba Trust, for their work is not anything different from village service. Yet we should not include the Trust in it. When I placed that resolution before the Charkha Sangh the Kasturba Trust was not in my mind. I had only the A.I.V.I.A. and the Hindustani Talimi Sangh in view. My idea was that the heads of these Sanghs should meet together and co-ordinate their activities from the point of view of all-round village service, and influence one another morally without any of them disturbing any of the others in its day-to-day work.   The other question asked is whether the funds of the Charkha Sangh can be used for giving training to khadi workers in other branches of constructive work, such as agriculture, animal husbandry and Nayee Talim, in order to equip them for all-round village service. My answer is no. Funds collected for one institution cannot be spent on another. According to the constitution of the Charkha Sangh its funds cannot be used for any purpose other than khadi. Therefore expenditure on training in agriculture and animal husbandry should be borne by the institution concerned. Otherwise it will lead to confusion. If money belonging to one institution has to be advanced as loan to another institution, it should be done on proper security and on a reasonable rate of interest. The job of a trustee is difficult and dedicate. I have been a trustee of various institutions for over fifty years and every institution under me has flourished. The secret of my success is not my Mahatmaship but my business sense and the meticulous care I show in maintaining accounts. The success or otherwise of a public institution ought not to depend on the brilliance of an individual or individuals but on the purity of its management and the soundness of its business policy. If you are cultivate these money will come to you of it. 7

 

References:

 

1. Young India, 26-12-1929
2. Harijan, 22-3-1935
3. Letter to Krishnadas , March 28, 1935
4. Harijan, 11-4-1936  
5. Letter to Munnalal G. Shah, June 2, 1937
6. Harijan, 18-8-1940
7. Khadi: Why and How, pp. 158