It’s been exactly a year since Indian Prime Minister NarendraModi launched the “Swacch Bharat Abhiyan,” or “Clean India Mission,” to honor India’s independence leader, Mahatma Gandhi on the anniversary of his birth.



The aim of the nationwide cleanliness drive: to clean up the country by 2019, the year that marks the 150th anniversary of the birth of Gandhi, who wanted to make sanitation a priority for India more than a century ago. The current drive aims to end the wide-spread practice of open defecation, build more toilets and improve waste management, among other goals.

Gandhi strongly and repeatedly condemned the Indian practice of hiring people from the lowest rungs of the Hindu caste system, who were once called “untouchables,” to manually clean out primitive dry latrines or collect waste from fields where villagers relieved themselves,  urging his countrymen to clean up after themselves.

Although outlawed, “manual scavenging” continues to persist in India as do other infrastructure failings hindering efforts to improve sanitation in the country. Almost half the population still defecates in the open, and the practice is more prevalent in the countryside where government figures indicate almost 70% of households don’t have access to proper toilets.

Here are some of Gandhi’s thoughts on sanitation and cleanliness as they appear in a 2012 book titled “Music of the Spinning Wheel” by Sudheerna Kulkarni.

1  Sanitation is more important than political independence’

While leading a non-violent movement for India’s independence from the British in 1947, Gandhi spoke about the need to improve hygiene and cleanliness in the country. “Sanitation is more important than political independence,” he said. Last month, in an address on waste management and cleanliness, India’s President Pranab Mukherjee, reiterated Gandhi’s decadesold exhortation.

2 Religion and sanitation

In 1915, Gandhi went to the KumbhMela, a triennial festival that rotates between four Indian cities. That year, it was held in the Hindu holy city of Haridwar in India’s north on the bank of the River Ganges.
After seeing millions of devotees take a dip in the sacred river in attempt to wash away their sins, Gandhi later wrote in “Young India,” an English weekly he edited from 1919,“I had gone there full of hope and reverence. But while I realized the grandeur of the holy Ganga and the holier Himalayas, I saw little to inspire me in what man was doing in this holy place.”

“To my great grief, I discovered insanitation, both moral and physical…There is defilement of the mighty stream [the River 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.”

[Click here to see the filth left behind in the river by millions of pilgrims who attended the KumbhMela in the northern Indian city of Allahabad in 2013.]
Cleaning the River Ganges has been the national priority of the Indian government for years now. In May, under the leadership of Mr. Modi, India’s cabinet approved 200 billion rupees, about $3 billion, for a program aimed at cleaning the Ganga.

3 'A lavatory must be as clean as a drawing-room'

In May 1925, in an edition of “Navajivan,” a weekly newspaper that Gandhi edited from 1919, he wrote about the importance of keeping lavatories clean. “I learnt 35 years ago that a lavatory must be as clean as a drawing-room. I learnt this in the West,” he wrote.
“The cause of many of our diseases is the condition of our lavatories and our bad habit of disposing ofexcreta 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.”

4 Perfect sanitation makes an ‘ideal village’

In 1937, Gandhi received a letter from a villager living in Birbhum, a district in India’s eastern state of West Bengal. The letter writer asked Gandhi how he perceived an “ideal village” and what problems he thought plagued Indian villages.
Here’s his response, as it appeared in a 1937 edition of “Harijan,” another weekly publication, which Gandhi began editing in the early 1930s. “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,” he wrote.
“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.”

5 Sanitation for Ministers and Menials Alike