Social services 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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Social services and Mahatma Gandhi

 

 

Mahatma Gandhi was a one of the best social work. He did social services through constructive works. His ashrams were its laboratories. That this Conference is of opinion that the measures adopted by the Government and certain associations for the education and elevation of the depressed classes have served the purpose of drawing public attention to the existence of degrading social inequality and to their detrimental influence on the general progress of the country. But in the opinion of this Conference, the measures hitherto adopted are quite inadequate to meet these evils. This Conference, therefore, urges upon the Government and Social Reform Bodies (1) to provide greater facilities for the education of the depressed classes, and (2) to enforce equality of treatment in all public institutions so as to remove the prejudice and disabilities of untouchableness. 1 It seems to me then that I cannot do better than draw attention to some branches of social service which we have hitherto more or less ignored. The greatest service we can render society is to free ourselves and it from the superstitious regard we have learnt to pay to the learning of the English language. It is the medium of instruction in our schools and colleges. It is becoming the lingua franca of the country. Our best thoughts are expressed in it. Lord Chelmsford hopes that it will soon take the place of the mother tongue in high families. This belief in the necessity of English training has enslaved us.

It has unfitted us for true national service. Were it not for force of habit, we could not fail to see that, by reason of English being the medium of instruction, our intellect has been segregated, we have been isolated from the masses, the best mind of the nation has become gagged and the masses have not received the benefit of the new ideas we have received. We have been engaged these past sixty years in memorizing strange words and their pronunciation instead of assimilating facts. In the place of building upon the foundation, training received from our parents, we have almost unlearnt it. There is no parallel to this in history. It is a national tragedy. The first and the greatest social service we can render is to revert to our vernaculars, to restore Hindi to its natural place as the national language and begin carrying on all our provincial proceedings in our respective vernaculars and national proceedings in Hindi. We ought not to rest till our schools and colleges give us instruction through the vernaculars. It ought not to be necessary even for the sake of our English friends to have to speak in English. Every English civil and military officer has to know Hindi. Most English merchants learn it because they need it for their business. The day must soon come when our legislatures will debate national affairs in the vernaculars or Hindi, as the case may be.

Hitherto the masses have been strangers to their proceedings. The vernacular papers have tried to undo the mischief a little. But the task was beyond them. The Patrika reserves its biting sarcasm, The Bengalee its learning, for ears tuned to English. In this ancient land of cultured thinkers, the presence in our midst of a Tagore or a Bose or a Ray ought not to excite wonder. Yet the painful fact is that there are so few of them. You will forgive me if I have carried too long on a subject which, in your opinion, may hardly be treated as an item of social service. I have however taken the liberty of mentioning the matter prominently as it is my conviction that all national activity suffers materially owing to this radical defect in our system of education. Coming to more familiar items of social service, the list is appalling. I shall select only those of which I have any knowledge. Work in times of sporadic distress such as famine and floods are no doubt necessary and most praiseworthy. But it produces no permanent results.

There are fields of social service in which there may be no renown but which may yield lasting results. In 1914, cholera, fevers and plague together claimed 4,639,663 victims. If so many had died fighting on the battle-field during the War that is at present devastating Europe, we would have covered ourselves with glory and lovers of swaraj would need no further argument in support of their cause. As it is, 4,639,663 have died a lingering death unmoored and their dying has brought us nothing but discredit. A distinguished Englishman said the other day that Englishmen did all the thinking for us whilst we sat supine. He added that most Englishmen basing their opinions on their English experience presented impossible or costly remedies for the evils they investigated. There is much truth in the above statement. In other countries, reformers have successfully grappled with epidemics. Here Englishmen have tried and failed. They have thought along Western lines, ignoring the vast differences, climatic and other, between Europe and India. Our doctors and physicians have practically done nothing. I am sure that half a dozen medical men of the front rank dedicating their lives to the work of eradicating the triple curse would succeed where Englishmen have failed. I venture to suggest that the way lies not through finding out cures but through finding or rather applying preventive methods. I prefer to use the participle “applying”, for I have it on the aforementioned authority that to drive out plague (and I add cholera and malaria) is absurdly simple.

There is no conflict of opinion as to the preventive methods. We simply do not apply them. We have made up our minds that the masses will not adopt them. There could be no greater calumny uttered against them. If we would but stoop to conquer, they can be easily conquered. The truth is that we expect the Government to do the work. In my opinion, in this matter, the Government cannot lead; they can follow and help if we could lead. Here, then, there is work enough for our doctors and an army of workers to help them. I note that you in Bengal are working somewhat in this direction. I may state that a small but earnest band of volunteers is at the present moment engaged in doing such work in Champaran. They are posted in different villages. There they teach the village children, they give medical aid to the sick and they give practical lessons in hygiene to the village folk by cleaning their wells and roads and showing them how to treat human excreta. Nothing can yet be predicted as to results as the experiment is in its infancy. This Conference may usefully appoint a community of doctors who would study rural conditions on the spot and draw up a course of instructions for the guidance of workers and of the people at large. Nothing perhaps affords such splendid facility to every worker, whole time or otherwise, for effective service as the relief of agony through which the 3rd class railway passengers are passing.

I feel keenly about this grievance not because I am in it, but I have gone to it as I have felt keenly about it. This matter affects millions of our poor and middle-class countrymen. This helpless toleration of every inconvenience and insult is visibly deteriorating the nation, even as the cruel treatment to which we have subjected the so-called depressed classes has made them indifferent to the laws of personal cleanliness and the very idea of self-respect. What else but downright degradation can await those who have to make a scramble always like mad animals for seats in a miserable compartment, who have to swear and curse before they can speak through the window in order to get standing room, who have to wallow in dirt during their journey, who are served their food like dogs and eat it like them, who have ever to bend before those who are physically stronger than they and who, being packed like sardines in compartments, have to get such sleep as they can in a sitting posture for nights together ? Railway servants swear at them, cheat them. On the Howrah-Lahore service, our friends from Kabul fill to the brim the cup of the misery of the third-class travellers. They become lords of the compartments they enter.

It is not possible for anyone to resist them. They swear at you on the slightest pretext, exhaust the whole of the obscene vocabulary of Hindi language. They do not hesitate to belabor you if you retort or in any way oppose them. They usurp the best seats and insist on stretching themselves full length even in crowded compartments. No compartment is deemed too crowded for them to enter. The travellers patiently bear all their awful impertinence out of sheer helplessness. They would, if they could, knock down the man who dared to swear at them as do these Kabulis. But they are physically no match for the Kabulis and every Kabuli considers him more than a match for any number of travellers from the plains. This is not right. The effect of this terrorizing on the national character cannot but be debasing. We the educated few ought to deliver the travelling public from this scourge or forever renounce our claim to speak on its behalf or to guide it. I believe the Kabulis to be amenable to reason. They are a God-fearing people. If you know their language, you can successfully appeal to their good sense. But they are spoilt children of nature.

Cowards among us have used their undoubted physical strength for our nefarious purposes. And they have now come to think that they can treat poor people as they choose and consider themselves above the law of the land. Here is work enough for social service. Volunteers for this class of work can board trains and educate the people to a sense of their duty, call in guards and other officials in order to remove over-crowding, see that passengers leave and board trains without a scramble. It is clear that until the Kabulis can be patiently taught to behave themselves, they ought to have a compartment all to themselves and they ought not to be permitted to enter any other compartment. With the exception of providing additional plant, every one of the other evils attendant on railway travelling ought to be immediately redressed. It is no answer that we have suffered the wrong so long. Prescriptive rights cannot accrue to wrongs. No less important is the problem of the depressed classes. To lift them from the position to which Hindu society has reduced them is to remove a big blot on Hinduism. The present treatment of these classes is a sin against religion and humanity. But the work requires service of the highest order. We shall make little headway by merely throwing schools at them.

We must change the attitude of the masses and of orthodoxy. I have already shown that we have cut ourselves adrift from both. We do not react on them. We can do so only if we speak to them in their own language. An anglicized India cannot speak to them with effect. If we believe in Hinduism, we must approach them in the Hindu fashion. We must do tapasya and keep our Hinduism undefiled. Pure and enlightened orthodoxy must be matched against superstitious and ignorant orthodoxy. To restore to their proper status a fifth of our total population is a task worthy of any social service organization. The bustees of Calcutta and the chawls of Bombay badly demand the devoted services of hundreds of social workers. They send our infants to an early grave and promote vice, degradation and filth. Apart from the fundamental evil arising out of our defective system of education, I have hitherto dealt with evils calling for service among the masses. The classes perhaps demand no less attention than the masses.

It is my opinion that all evils like diseases are symptoms of the same evil or disease. They appear various by being refracted through different media. The root evil is loss of true spirituality brought about through causes I cannot examine from this platform. We have lost the robust faith of our forefathers in the absolute efficacy of satya (truth) ahimsa (love) and brahmacharya (self-restraint). We certainly believe in them to an extent. They are the best policy but we may deviate from them if our untrained reason suggests deviation. We have not faith enough to feel that, though the present outlook seems bleak, if we follow the dictates of truth or love or exercise self-restraint, the ultimate result must be sound. Men whose spiritual vision has become blurred mostly look to the present rather than conserve the future good. He will render the greatest social service who will reinstate us in our ancient spirituality. But humble men that we are, it is enough for us if we recognize the loss and, by such ways as are open to us, prepare the way for the man who will infect us with his power and enable us to feel clearly through our reason. Looking then at the classes, I find that our Rajahs and Maharajahs squander their resources after so-called useless sport and drink. I was told the other day that the cocaine habit was sapping the nation’s manhood and that, like the drink habit, it was on the increase and in its effect more deadly than drink.

It is impossible for a social worker to blind himself to the evil. We dare not ape the West. We are a nation that has lost its prestige and its self-respect. Whilst a tenth of our population is living on the verge of starvation, we have no time for indulging ourselves. What the West may do with impunity is likely in our case to prove our ruin. The evils that are corroding the higher strata of society are difficult for an ordinary worker to tackle. They have acquired a certain degree of respectability. But they ought not to be beyond the reach of this Conference. Equally important is the question of the status of women, both Hindu and Mahomedan. Are they or are they not to play their full part in the plan of regeneration alongside their husbands? They must be enfranchised. They can no longer be treated either as dolls or slaves without the social body remaining in a condition of social paralysis. And here again, I would venture to suggest to the reformer that the way to women’s freedom is not through education, but through the change of attitude on the part of men and corresponding action.

Education is necessary, but it must follow the freedom. We dare not wait for literary education to restore our womanhood to its proper state. Even without literary education, our women are as cultured as any on the face of the earth. The remedy largely lies in the hands of husbands. It makes my blood boil as I wander through the country and watch lifeless and fleshless oxen, with their ribs sticking through their skins, carrying loads or ploughing our fields. To improve the breed of our cattle, to rescue them from the cruelty practised on them by their cow-worshipping masters and to save them from the slaughter-house is to solve half the problem of our poverty. We have to educate the people to a humane use of their cattle and plead with the Government to conserve the pasture land of the country. Protection of the cow is an economic necessity. It cannot be brought about by force. It can only be achieved by an appeal to the finer feelings of our English friends and our Mahomedan countrymen to save the cow from the slaughter-house. This question involves the overhauling of the management of our pinjrapoles and cow protection societies.

A proper solution of this very difficult problem means establishment of perfect concord between Hindus and Mahomedans and an end of Bakr-i-Id riots. I have glanced at the literature kindly furnished at my request by the several Leagues who are rendering admirable social service. I note that some have included in their programme many of the items mentioned by me. All the Leagues are non-sectarian and they have as their members the most distinguished men and women in the land. the possibilities for services of a far-reaching character are therefore great. But if the work is to leave its impress on the nation, we must have workers who are prepared, in Mr. Gokhale’s words, to dedicate their lives to the cause. Give me such workers and I promise they will rid the land of all the evils that affect it. 2 

It has given me the greatest pleasure to begin this part of my tour in this Presidency with this function. The address that has just been read to me thanks me for accepting this invitation. Your thanks are, however, due not to me a prisoner but my jailor, Mr. S. Srinivasa Iyengar. It was for him to dispose of the whole of my time in this place. He has to his heart the removal of untouchability as much as any of us. You have remarked upon the apathy of the young generation towards social service. To a certain measure, I endorse it. It is true that the young generation requires excitement rather than work. But let me also inform you that there are hundreds of people not known to the world, not known to fame, who display ability in social service of a character infinitely more difficult than the service that you have just now described not me. Here, in Madras you have the amenities of what is called civilization. The young men of whom I am talking to you, I have got their names in my mind; have devoted the whole of their time to social service in villages. They are barred from all intercourse with the outside world. They do not see the newspaper. Excitement has no place in their diary. They lived in the midst of people and live the same life they are living. I commend their unknown labour to your attention. Let their service, so whole-hearted and so self-sacrificing; be regarded as a penance for the other part of the young people. And let their self-sacrificing service be also a spur to effort for the rest of the younger generation who have not known what real service is.

In my opinion, in that service lies the best part of our education. I am no enemy of the education that is being imparted in our numerous schools. But in my own scheme of life it occupies but a secondary place. I disregard the value of this education if it does not result in making us servants of the nation. I very much fear that social service that is generally rendered in our towns takes the form, as Gokhale would say, of recreation; whereas, if it should be effective and valuable for the people whom we serve and for the nation, if should be the chief part of our daily business. Social service that savours of patronage is not service. I sincerely tender my congratulations to you for the great work that you are doing. Only it appears to me to be incomplete and admits of great improvement. In my opinion, regard being had to the conditions of this country, no social service is complete without the foundation of spinning-wheel and khaddar behind it. You may laugh at it, if you wish to. But a time is coming when it will be the fundamental maxim of social service that no social servant would be worthy of his name if he is clad in anything but khaddar and who does not know how to spin. I shall tell you why.

You have begun rightly with the service of the lowest strata of society. May I then remind you of the fact, the indisputable fact that the lowest strata of our society do not live in towns but in villages? May I also inform you of the fact stated not by a man like me but by historians that one-tenth of India’s population lives in semi-starvation? And it is also admitted that they do so because for nearly four months in the year they have no occupation. There must be some universal occupation which will be of a universal character. Such an occupation is only the spinning-wheel. Pray do not consider it in terms of the individual but in terms of the nation. And you will find immediately that the sum total of the savings to the nation amounts, not to a few lakhs, but nearly 120 crores of rupees. It is the one indisputable service which carries its own reward. It is impossible to render this service if we go to the people as their patrons.

We can render this service to them; we can ask them to wear khaddar when they see us wearing that khaddar ourselves. The spinning-wheel would fail to attract masses unless we begin today spinning ourselves. And since we have lost the cunning of the wheel, it is impossible for us to take the message of the wheel to them unless we master the science of the wheel and the intricacies of that simple instrument. In that service and that service alone there is no waste of efforts. There is no room for despondency. For just as every blade of grass that is grown by the tiller adds to the wealth of the country, so also every yard of cotton spun in the name of the country adds to the wealth of the country and puts it, even if it is a pie, into the pockets of the starving millions. I, therefore, in all humility, venture to hope that you (addressing Mr. T. V. Seshagiri Iyer, as a leader of this band of workers) will endeavour to study this problem in all its bearings and apply your fine imagination and intellect to the solution of the problem, and I have no doubt that after your studies, you will come to the same conclusion that the great P. C. Ray came to, that there is no salvation for the toiling millions apart from the spinning-wheel. I am working against time today.

My jailor has imposed a heavy programme on me somewhat more exacting than the jailor of Yeravda. There are many branches of social service about which I could talk to you. But I wish to end with merely carrying this message of the spinning-wheel, and I hope that when I have the privilege of meeting you again, I wish to see you all dressed in khaddar, from top to toe. I again tender you my congratulations on the work that has already been done by your league. 3  

Usually, conscription has hitherto been used in modern individualist communities for purposes of national defence or imperialist aggression. In this country, we would adopt conscription universally, for men as well as women, not for destructive, but for productive purposes of national service and social reconstruction. In some countries they allow certain exemptions from such compulsory gratuitous public service, and offer certain compensatory advantages to those who have rendered such service. In this country, too, we may have to use a similar device. To make this new factor in our national economy function effectively and smoothly, we may have to introduce it by stages. But the foundation must be laid immediately. This Social Service Conscription should commence with educated males of 18-25 years of age. Ancillary organizations of boy or girl volunteers comparable to the British Boy Scouts, or the Italian Ballila, might be set up to support the main force of conscript workers. The proportion of educated males in India is about 1 in every 5, and that of educated women 1 in 50. At the age, however, at which conscription should commence the proportion may be appreciably higher, say, 1 in every 3 males, and 1 in every 10 women. The term ‘educated’ is used in a very liberal, or even charitable sense, since it includes all those who fulfil the merest test of literacy in their own language.

It may be expedient to limit the number of conscripts to those of secondary school- leaving stage. Of the 15 lakhs of such young men available in a province like Bombay, barely 250,000 may be found to satisfy the minimum educational qualification, while less than 100,000 may be found to satisfy the higher qualification suggested above. We may well begin the experiment with this latter number. These educated young men of 18 and over must regard the service rendered by them as a sort of personal ten per cent tax, paid in kind, those paying only who have the means to do so, and their superior education being treated as evidence of their ability. The 100,000 educated young men, with whom the experiment may be commenced in Bombay, for example, would be more than ample for our immediate objective, in the 21,484 villages of that province. Nearly 5 educated conscripts would be available for each village. There may be in addition about 25,000 young women who may supplement the effort later on.

The most urgent and immediate task of social service consists in: liquidation of illiteracy and ignorance; (b) spread of elementary knowledge of health and hygiene; (c) aiding and improving village productive organization and occupation. One of the most important sections in the Legislation for Conscription would have to define carefully the tasks to be allotted to the workers. No scheme of conscription should be put into effect, until a comprehensive plan of the work to be done has been prepared and approved for each Province. The social service conscripts, mobilized in India on the plan here advocated, would have to be given special training even more than the military conscripts of Europe, since the latter, in their ordinary elementary schooling, generally receive some element of practical training, too, before they join the colours. In India our educational system provides no such advantage for the average youth. This training organization must be developed in each province out of the existing schools and colleges. The instructors in these institutions, particularly of the higher grade, are by no means overworked, or underpaid.

From the highest to the lowest, in every faculty and branch of knowledge, this profession should be indented upon at least to the extent of one hour per day. Such training should be given intensively for 6 months in the one year of the service. Work should be assigned, or distributed, among the conscripts in accordance with the aptitude and previous training of each individual. Those conscripted in this manner both during training and during the period actually at work will not be paid anything by way of salary. But they must be maintained at public expense, and must be taken from their place of work to their homes, and vice versa, at public expense. This ought not, however, to cost the State such an amount as to be an insupportable burden, nor be out of proportion to the value of the service rendered. All those who willingly, and without any exemption, render such service, as and when it falls due, must at the time of seeking employment for life, be preferred by all public bodies, and even by private employers on pain of losing such patronage or countenance from the State as is now becoming increasingly common between the State and Industry. The basic legislation for such conscription must clearly provide for such compensation.

The advantages of conscription need not be detailed at any great length. In the first place, it would solve, in a great measure, the question of the cost of the indispensable and urgent social service we need in this country. At the same time, it would help to inculcate those habits of disciplined work and of concerted action the so-called team-work which are indispensable in community intent upon making up the leeway that India is suffering from. Finally, thanks to such regimentation the phrase may be used without any fear of misinterpretation an increasing section of the community will automatically acquire those habits of personal cleanliness and healthful living which most people when left to themselves ignore, and consequently suffer in health, temper and efficiency. 4

 

References:

 

1. The Bengalee, 5-1-1918
2. Amrita Bazar Patrika, 2-1-1918
3. The Hindu, 23-3-1925
4. Harijan, 30-10-1937