Cleaner than thou?

Divorce between intelligence and labour has resulted in criminal negligence of the villages. And so, instead of having graceful hamlets dotting the land, we have dung-heaps. The approach to many villages is not a refreshing experience. Often one would like to shut one’s eyes and stuff one’s nose; such is the surrounding dirt and offending smell. If the majority of Congress-men were derived from our villages, as they should be, they should be able to make our villages models of cleanliness in every sense of the word.

But they have never considered it their duty to identify themselves with the villagers in their daily lives. A sense of national or social sanitation is not a virtue among us. We may take a kind of a bath, but we do not mind dirtying the well or the tank or the river by whose side or in which we perform ablutions. I regard this defect as a great vice which is responsible for the disgraceful state of our villages and the sacred banks of the sacred rivers and for the diseases that spring from insanitation.

Nurture and nourish our Nation

We must identify ourselves with the villagers who toil under the hot sun beating on their bent backs and see how we would like to drink water from the pool in which the villagers bathe, wash their clothes and pots, in which their cattle drink and roll. Then and not till then shall we truly represent the masses and they will, as surely as I am writing this, respond to every call.

We have got to show them that they can grow their vegetables, their greens, without much expense, and keep good health. We have also to show that most of the vitamins are lost when they cook the leaves.

Harijan, 0l-03-1935

If I was a dictator…

If I was appointed dictator for one hour for all of India, the first thing I would do would be to close without compensation all the liquour shops, and compel factory owners to produce humane conditions for their workmen and open refreshment and recreation rooms where these workmen would get innocent drinks and equally innocent amusements

Young India, 25-06-1931

Havoc in smoke!

Tobacco has simply worked havoc among mankind. Once caught in its tangle, it is rare to find anyone get out again….Tolstoy has called it the worst of all intoxicants.

In India people use tobacco for smoking, snuffing and also for chewing….lovers of (or seekers after) health, if they are slaves to any of these evil habits, will resolutely get out of the slavery. Several people are addicted to one, two or all the three of these habits. They do not appear loathsome to them. But if we think over it calmly, there is nothing becoming about blowing off smoke or keeping the mouth stuffed with tobacco and pan practically the whole day long or keep on opening the snuff box and take snuff every now and then. All the three are most dirty habits.

Excerpt from ‘Key to Health’ - Pages 39-42