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

Our Inheritance

We are inheritors of a rural civilisation. The vastness of our country, the vastness of the population, the situation and the climate of the country have, in my opinion, destined it for a rural civilisation. Its defects are well known, but not one of them is irremediable. To uproot it and substitute for it an urban civilisation seems to me an impossibility, unless we are prepared by some drastic means to reduce the population from three hundred million to three or say even thirty.

I can therefore suggest remedies on the assumption that we must perpetuate the present rural civilisation and endeavour to rid it of its acknowledged defects. This can only be done if the youth of the country will settle down to village life. And if they will do this, they must reconstruct their life and pass every day of their vacation in villages surrounding their colleges or high schools, and those who have finished their education or are not receiving any should think of settling down in villages.

Young India, 07-11-1929

Back to the village

I have believed and repeated times without number that India is to be found not in its few cities but in its 7,000,000 villages. But we town-dwellers have believed that India is to be found in its towns and the villages were created to minister our needs. We have hardly ever paused to inquire if those poor folk get sufficient to eat and clothe themselves with and whether they have a roof to shelter themselves from sun and rain.

Harijan, 04-04-1946