UNTOUCHABILITY, WOMEN AND SWARAJ

[Prof. Dr. Yogendra Yadav]

Prof. Dr. Yogendra Yadav

Gandhian Scholar

Gandhi Research Foundation, Jalgaon, Maharashtra, India

Contact No. – 09415777229, 094055338

E-mail- [e-mail];[e-mail]

 

 

 

 

 UNTOUCHABILITY, WOMEN AND SWARAJ

 

 

 

 I gladly publish Suhasini Devi’s letter which the reader will find in another column. Whilst the versatile President of the Congress is well able to defend himself, I am inclined to think that my fair correspondent has over-generalized from her own very brief experience. No statistics are needed to demonstrate the vast strides that the movement for the removal of untouchability has made. The barrier is breaking down everywhere. The higher classes are to be met with in every province ministering to the wants of the suppressed classes in the shape of conducting schools and boarding-houses for their children. It was this phenomenon that the President evidently had in mind when he made the reference in his address. There is however infinitely more yet to be done than has been already accomplished. The question of breaking down the feminine prejudice is most difficult. It is in reality a question of female education. And in this it is a question not merely of education of girls but it is one of the educations of married women.

I have therefore repeatedly suggested that every patriotic husband should become the wife’s own teacher and prepare her for work among her less fortunate sisters. I have also drawn attention to the implications of the suggestion. One of them is for husbands to cease to treat their wives as objects of their enjoyment but to regard them as co-partners in their work of nation-building. We cannot have Rama without Sita. And Sita got her real schooling under the gentle care of her partner during those terrible years of exile and probation. Well, we are all exiles in our own land and need to imitate Rama and Sita to the best of our abilities and opportunity. And in this connection, I cannot help drawing Suhasini Devi’s attention to the fact that Sjt. Iyengar has not only broken down the barrier of untouchability for himself but has carried his wife and family too with him in the reform which perhaps he himself would have thought impossible only ten years ago. The question of inter-dining must be kept distinct from that of untouchability. Exclusion in culinary matters permeates the whole of Hindu society. To confuse it with untouchability is to retard the progress of the latter movement which is aimed at removing the ban on the social service to which the so-called untouchable has as much right as any other human being and on the same terms as the others receive it. There is, too, confusion regarding swaraj. The term swaraj has many meanings. When Sjt. Iyengar says that removal of untouchability has nothing to do with swaraj, I presume he means that its existence can be no hindrance to constitutional advance. It can surely have nothing to do with diarchy or greater and effective powers being given to the legislatures.

Removal of untouchability is a social question to be handled by Hindus. Why should it prevent the Mussalman and the Parsi in common with the Hindu from having the power to regulate the military expenditure, to determine the ratio or to achieve total prohibition or to impose a prohibitive tariff on foreign cloth and protecting the indigenous industries? Real organic swaraj is a different question. That freedom which is associated with the term swaraj in the popular mind is no doubt unattainable without not only the removal of untouchability and the promotion of heart unity between the different sections but also without removing many other social evils that can be easily named. That inward growth which must never stop we have come to understand by the comprehensive term swaraj. And that swaraj cannot be had so long as walls of prejudice, passion and superstition continue to stifle the growth of that stately oak.