INDIA: The Unswept Streets

Like Abraham Lincoln, the late Mahatma Gandhi believed that God loves the common man best. When Gandhi’s followers became the new rulers of India, the lowly untouchables, whom Gandhi had named the Harijans (Men of God), were given some of the highest offices in the land. It became an unwritten law that there should be at least one Harijan minister in the cabinet of each state in the republic. Untouchable children, once forbidden even to draw water from high-caste wells, were offered free education, and public places were forbidden to discriminate against the Harijans. But not all Hindus are as saintly as was the Mahatma. In the safe, secure middle rungs of the age-old caste ladder, there are still some who nurse the ancient class prejudices.

Lower Than Low. Two weeks ago, as part of a week-long celebration of Gandhi’s birth, all India observed an official Harijan Day. Lowly .Harijans all over the nation were feted, embraced and fed sweets by high-caste Hindus. In the city of Jodhpur, two former members of the National Congress decided that a fine proof of patrician humility would be to have high-caste Hindus sweep the streets in a community of untouchables known as the Dholis, or drumbeaters, whose rank is so low that even the street-sweeper Bhangi caste (themselves untouchables) refuse to work for them.

On the appointed day, Lawyer Ranchor Das Gattani and Spice Merchant Tulsi Das Rathi, both members of the upper-middle-class Maheshwari caste, were joined by 100 or more broom-wielding Brahmans and Kshatriyas (who rank higher), to perform their menial task on the Dholi streets. Impressed by their example, the street-sweeping Bhangis agreed to give up their snobbery and do the job themselves in the future. The Dholis responded by offering to beat their drums at Bhangi weddings. When the sweeping was finished, all the castes joined together in a banquet.

That night Gattani and Rathi returned, tired but happy, to their upper-middle-class homes in the Maheshwari district. They were met by a crowd of 300 indignant Maheshwaris who hooted and taunted them with cries of “Bhangi! Bhangi!” Maheshwari storekeepers closed their shops as the pair passed; bystanders tossed stones at them. Late that night, the merchant community held a meeting and read the reformers out of their caste. Next day Gattani’s servant quit, his laundryman said he was too busy to do the wash, and the children’s tutor failed to show up! Gattani’s son dropped a toy in a neighbor’s jard by accident and was shooed away when he went to pick it up. “You are a street-sweeper!” the neighbor’s wife shrilled. “You can’t pollute our home!” “It takes courage,” Gattani told his son, “to become a Harijan.”

If Not Today. Soon a group of Bhangis showed up and offered their help. “You are suffering because of us,” their spokesman said. “We won’t stand it. We’ll refuse to clean the Maheshwari latrines, and that will soon bring them to their senses.” But Gattani refused. “Whatever we have done,” he said, “is according to the Mahatma’s teachings. We don’t have any ill feeling in our hearts. We know that, if not today, then tomorrow, those who are against us will find the correct path.”

By last week many had found the path. A group of 50 Maheshwaris rallied round their old friends and risked excommunication themselves by giving a dinner in honor of the two outcasts in the very hall where Gattani and Rathi had been excommunicated. Meanwhile, in the poorer quarters of the town, the Dholis were beating their drums at Bhangi weddings, the Bhangis were sweeping the Dholi streets, and both were drawing water from Brahman wells.