Solemn Duty 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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Solemn Duty and Mahatma Gandhi

 

 

The worker who teaches the peasants of his village these rules will increase the life-span of the residents and will have taken a great step towards prevention of diseases. This is the most difficult task of all because there are few who take interest in it. Even so, it will have to be attended to some day. One cannot go wrong in the performance of this solemn duty. However little the effort, the fruit will be in proportion. He who wishes may start the work and he will find that he is able to improve the health of the village within a year. 1 The Taluka Parishad had committed itself to a very serious and solemn duty and has taken a grave responsibility upon its shoulders. We trust that in this sacred work of regenerating the country, the Patels of Bardoli will do their duty to the utmost. Many of them have expressed their readiness to give up their posts. We hope that from now on every Patel will look upon himself no longer as a Patel in the service of the Government but as a Patel in the service of the community. We, therefore, expect that their letters of resignation will be placed in our hands without delay. 2

The experience of countries which have tried prohibition is that the people have become better and that the country has not been financially ruined. No ruin, no financial crisis will befall India if prohibition is introduced in India. It is the solemn duty of every one of us to see the use of drink wiped out of the land altogether if we possibly can. If I had the power and if I could have my way, I would do so today. 3 If you will only remember that you are the servants of the people of Mayavaram and not their masters and that you are entrusted with the solemn duty to keep the town in perfect sanitation for the benefit of the people, you will start with a shovel in your hand and set about keeping the water pure and preserving sanitation on the land given to the poor. You have got in your midst so many schools maintained by you; give them a holiday and ask the students of those schools to go about cleaning the streets and also telling the people themselves to keep the streets clean and the water pure. Surely our learning and all the lessons that we receive on sanitation in schools are useless, unless we reduce them to practice in our daily life; and I urge you not to say to yourselves that our people will not listen to these appeals and will not change their habits. The place where I was myself born had terribly impure dung heaps in the streets about fifty years back. But there came to that place an administrator; and, be it said to his credit, he was an Englishman. He removed the dung heaps in a day and there was no protest to his doing so from any of the people. Nor did he use his official authority to impose his imperious will on an unwilling people. But he reasoned with the people, bore down all opposition and carried out his reforms. I have cited this instance before you because I am a determined opponent of this British administration but we have yet got to learn much from the Britishers in the matter of sanitation. I ask you to shake off your lethargy, to take your courage in your hands; and you can easily carry out this reform. 4 

In the third place Gandhiji asked them to consider if untouchability should not go even now. God had made no distinctions between the savarna or the avarna, between the Hindu and the Mussalman, in respect of the sweep of the havoc. For Hindus there was no crime more hideous than that of untouchability. If they did not give up this age-old sin, blot out all distinctions between the high and the low, and thereby purify themselves, he for one had no doubt that worse disaster was in store for them in the future. The sin of untouchability had corroded their entire social system. It was the spirit and the mentality behind this curse of untouchability that was responsible for the countless divisions that divided them and separated them into so many warring groups. To root out this sense of high and low and universalize the principle of human brotherhood was their solemn duty in the crisis that confronted them. If they did that they would have truly learnt from the earthquake. 5

 

References:

 

1.  Navajivan, 2-11-1919
2. Navajivan, 2-2-1922
3. The Hindu, 6-9-1827
4. The Hindu, 15-9-1927
5. The Searchlight, 23-3-1934