Harijan Industrial School 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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Mailing Address- C- 29, Swaraj Nagar, Panki, Kanpur- 208020, Uttar Pradesh, India

 

Harijan Industrial School and Mahatma Gandhi

 

Gandhiji said that he was glad to remain in their midst even for a few hours. If they were wise and prudent, they ought to keep the premises of the institution spick and span. He saw a number of cobwebs in the roofing and also pits in the compound. The residential students should see that these defects were removed. The management was paying a heavy rent of Rs. 40 per mensem for the building and if the students made a wise use of the place, they could get that amount out of it. Another thing he noticed was that there was no spinning and weaving. If they took to spinning and weaving, say, at least, for an hour a day, it would doubly benefit them. They could make their own cloth and sell also the extra cloth woven by them. Those who were in control of this institution should consider whether it was practicable to adopt his suggestion. He would like the inmates to remember the two things he had mentioned. 1

I congratulate myself that I am here to give away the certificates to the first batch of students leaving the school which was established in 1936. But the fact that they have won the certificates throws a good deal of responsibility on their as well as my shoulders mine because my blessings, which are being given from the depth of my heart, must bear fruit. That only time can show. Shri Viyogi Hari will have to maintain contact with the boys who are going out today. It will have to be a contact as close as that between parents and children. The parents’ interest in the children is all the more when the children go away from them for work in distant places. He will keep me informed of your progress. 1 This appeared under the title “Among Harsijan Boys” by Mahadev Desai, who explains that Gandhiji presided over the first convocation of the school which imparted a system of education-cum-manual training comprising carpentry, tailoring, leather work and paper-making. The Hindustan Times, 28-7-1939, reported that Viyogi Hari, Superintendent of the school, read out the report, and that Gandhiji, before his speech, gave away certificates to all the 21 students and then presented some spinning-wheels made by the institution to those who had distinguished themselves in spinning. The responsibility will be no less yours to be worthy of the training you have received, of the clean life you have lived, and of the uplifting contacts you have formed here. My blessings will be no use if you will not fulfil your trust. Your responsibility is enhanced by the fact that you will go out as representatives of Harijans and you will have to reflect in your life there the life you have lived here. Your contribution to the destruction of untouchability will be in proportion to the cleanness and purity of the life you live and the service you will render to your community. Hinduism, you will remember, cannot live if untouchability remains, and you will have to make yourselves volunteer workers in the sacred cause. Shri Viyogi Hari said that it was difficult to make the tailoring department self-supporting. There must then be something wrong with the training given. Every craft is being taught, or ought to be taught, on a self-supporting basis. You students ought to ascertain from time to time from Viyogiji whether the work you turn out is paying enough and if not where in lies the defect. Only then will you be able to make your school an ideal industrial school. If you pay for your training through your work, you will never have difficulty in after life in earning your bread. Those who leave the institution ought to get work wherever they go; and if those who are fully qualified fail to get work, it is the duty of the industrial school to find work for them. Let no one think that they get here an inferior kind of training fit only for the poorest people. The training they receive is in my opinion superior to what the most well-to-do boys receive elsewhere. It will depend on you to show by the work you do that it is in no way inferior to similar training imparted by any other institution. It is my firm opinion that useful as the other activities of the Harijan Sevak Sangh are, its educational activity in a home like this is the most useful. For if this institution throws up even a few boys of sterling worth who would give themselves to the service of the Harijans, they will solve the problem of untouchability in a most substantial manner. May you live straight and clean lives, and thus be the representatives not only of the Harijans but of the millions of non-Harijans who want to serve the Harijans. 2      

Gandhiji recalled his visit to the School a few years ago, and expressed his pleasure to be present there again and see their work. He hoped that though there were practical difficulties, the trained boys would do their best to settle in villages and see that the work they had learnt was also taught to the villagers. Urging the removal of untouchability completely, he said that the workers connected with Harijan uplift should banish from their minds any notion that the people for whom they worked were untouchables, and establish closer contact with them. Referring to the School, Gandhiji said that at present there were 50 boys undergoing training. This was not enough. They should see that hundreds of boys were benefited by the school. The public on their part should extend financial help to such institutions freely and fully. Gandhiji also made a fervent appeal to Harijans and others to learn Hindustani along with the study of their mother tongue. He reminded them of the visit of Swami Vivekananda to Madras a few years back and the advice he had given them to study Sanskrit. Gandhiji hoped that some of the Harijans would aspire to become Sanskrit pundits. The work which the Harijans were taught in the school, Gandhiji said, was not merely intended to eke out their livelihood; it should also enable them by their conduct to make the higher castes feel that they were equal to them in all respects, and not untouchables. If they went out doing good work, speaking good things and leading a good life, nobody would call them Harijans. Gandhiji hoped that God would guide them and the institution along the right path. 3

 

References:

 

1. The Hindu, 23-1-1937
2. Harijan, 5-8-1939
3. The Hindu, 3-2-1946