Why was sanitation so important to Gandhi?

Cleanliness and sanitation remained a central theme of Mahatma’s teachings. Gandhi compared cleanliness to godliness and even put sanitation above political freedom. Gandhi knew in absence of adequate community sanitation and cleanliness standards, the large population of the country could be at a life-long disadvantage because of related illnesses and malnutrition. This article takes you on a walk down memory lane to assess the relevance of his idea of sanitation in present-day India

As we celebrate the 150th birth anniversary of Mahatma Gandhi along with the completion of five years of Swachh Bharat Mission that was inspired from his idea of sanitation, we must celebrate his idea of sanitation along with several other contributions in building the new India.
Since the launch of the SBM-Gramin and SBM-Urban in 2014, more than 100 million toilets have been built in the country; over 5.9 lakh villages, 699 districts, and 35 States/UTs have declared themselves Open Defecation Free (ODF).
If we go by the numbers, it is a phenomenal success in a short span of five years. The success of the programme has to go through the test of time and see how many of these toilets are still functional and how many people are still using these toilets. The success of this program does not just depend on the infrastructure but also on public habit. For this, we should not stop there but keep making people aware of the importance of sanitation and the health implications, if we are lacking in it. Since independence, India has lost thousands of young lives because of poor sanitation and lack of clean water in villages and slums in cities. In the present time, when we talk about sanitation, it is not merely related to cleanliness but also linked to economics. It is not rocket science to understand that better sanitation standards will result in longer productive life-spans of our population and reduced expenditure on medical facilities.

Gandhi’s focus on sanitation
Mahatma Gandhi had mentioned in his works that he had realised early in his life that the prevalent poor state of sanitation and cleanliness in India and particularly the lack of adequate toilets, in the then largely rural India, needed as much attention as was being devoted toward attainment of Swaraj.
When Gandhi was in South Africa, he assisted the authorities in Durban when the plague was reported to be imminent and had undertaken “house to house inspection” of the Indian community. Gandhi started his movement for sanitation in India in 1915 after he came back from South Africa.
Indian population has grown 7 to 8 times since then and the demography of the country has changed, more cities have emerged, and socio-economic structures have been modernising and moving towards the global standards of developed countries. The complexities of sanitation problems and waste management have also changed.
In those days, his movement on sanitation largely covered provision of sanitary latrines in homes and the safe disposal of human waste as manure, rural sanitation, and the social issue of ‘untouchability’. Gandhi also stressed on waste recycling. He defined waste or dirt as “matter displaced”, and persisted that, as far as possible, all wastes should be appropriately recycled as useful resources. The situation may have changed but his idea of sanitation remains relevant event today. At the conceptual level, Gandhi was remarkably modern and remains equally relevant today. He interlinked the issues of sanitation, cleanliness and hygiene with the issues of waste generation and its management.
Swachh Bharat Mission is just one step forward in the direction of managing waste and keeping India clean. India has a long way to go to become efficient in handling its municipal waste as the waste generated in the country is going up drastically and the landfill sites are becoming mountains of garbage in almost every big city. The government has also launched various manuals to handle biodegradable wastes, non-biodegradable wastes, construction and demolition wastes, and ‘hazardous’ wastes (e.g. hospital and medical wastes) but their strict implementation needs to be enforced in small towns and cities.

The road ahead
The celebration of his birth anniversary was marked by a series of announcements. Prime Minister of India Narendra Modi announced that plastic is a major threat to all of them, so we have to achieve the goal to eradicate ‘single-use plastic’ from the country by 2022. This is a welcome move and will surely help in keeping the country clean.
The Department of Drinking Water and Sanitation (DDWS), Ministry of Jal Shakti, GoI launched the 10 Year Rural Sanitation Strategy (2019-2029), which focuses on sustaining the sanitation behavior change that has been achieved under the Swachh Bharat Mission Grameen (SBM-G), ensuring that no one is left behind, and increasing access to solid and liquid waste management.
All of us need to join hands together to build the nation he dreamt of. And, these efforts and initiatives should not be limited to celebrating his 150th birth anniversary but it should become part of our daily lives and only then, we can pay an honest tribute to the Father of the Nation.

“To my great grief, I discovered insanitation, both moral and physical…There is a defilement of the mighty stream [the Ganges] even in the name of religion,” he wrote. Thoughtless ignorant men and women use for natural functions the sacred banks of the river where they are supposed to sit in quiet contemplation and find God. They violate religion, science and the laws of sanitation“

Gandhi shared his experience of Kumbh Mela in one of his articles for “Young India,” an English weekly he edited from 1919

“I learnt 35 years ago that a lavatory must be as clean as a drawing-room. I learnt this in the West. The cause of many of our diseases is the condition of our lavatories and our bad habit of disposing of excreta anywhere and everywhere. I, therefore, believe in the absolute necessity of a clean place for answering the call of nature and clean articles for use at the time“

In May 1925, in an edition of “Navajivan,” a weekly newspaper, he wrote about the importance of keeping lavatories clean

“An ideal village will be so constructed as to lend itself to perfect sanitation…The very first problem the village worker will solve is its sanitation. If the worker became a voluntary scavenger, he would begin by collecting night soil and turning it into manure and sweeping village streets. He will tell people how and where they should perform daily functions and speak to them on the value of sanitation and the great injury caused by its neglect. The worker will continue to do the work whether the villagers listen to him or not.”

In 1937, Gandhi’s response to a letter from a villager living in Birbhum, West Bengal, was published in Harijan, another weekly publication. The villager had asked the definition of an “ideal village”

“What is so distressing is that the living quarters of the menials and sweepers employed in the viceroy’s house are extremely dirty…I shall be satisfied only when the lodgings of the ministers’ staff are as neat and tidy as their own.”

Gandhi spoke in a speech in New Delhi on September 1946