Page 88 - GANDHI A Biography for Children and Beginners

GANDHI – A Biography for children and beginners

perpetuate divisions? Many orthodox Hindus were moved to give up their

orthodox attitude to the untouchables. Jawaharlal Nehru's aged mother who

was an orthodox Brahmin took prasad from the hands of 'untouchables'.
Temples, roads and wells were thrown open to the so-called untouchables.

India's great poet, Rabindranath Tagore described it as the Mahatma's 'sublime

penance'. He said the penance was "a message to all India and to the world. It

should be accepted through a proper process of realization. The gift of sacrifice
should be received in the spirit of sacrifice".

Gandhi himself explained the reason for his fast. He was "only against separate
electorates, and not against statutory reservation of seats". He did not want to

be misunderstood. He had identified himself with the "untouchables" from the

time he was about 10 or 12 years of age. In South Africa he had turned his wife

Kasturba out of 'his' house because she had shown reluctance to clean the
commode of a guest who was from the so-called "untouchable" community. He

had threatened to close down his Ashram if its inmates dragged their feet on

welcoming 'untouchables' as equal members of the Ashram community. " I am a

'touchable' by birth but an 'untouchable' by choice; and I have qualified myself
to represent, not the upper ten among the 'untouchables'; but my ambition is to

represent and identify myself with the lowest strata of untouchables, namely

the 'invisibles' and 'unapproachables' whom I have always before my mind's eye
wherever I go; (I) am convinced that if they are ever to rise, it will not be by

the reservation of seats, but will be by the strenuous work of Hindu reformers

in their midst, and it is because I feel that this separation would have killed all

prospect of reform that my whole soul has rebelled against it ... let me make it
plain that the withdrawal of separate electorates will satisfy the letter of my

vow but will never satisfy the spirit behind it. What I want, what I am living for,

and what I should delight in dying for, is the eradication of untouchability root

and branch. My life I count of no consequence... if it (the fast) wakes up caste
Hindus from their slumber, and if they are roused to a sense of their duty, it

will have served its purpose."

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