Self-Respect for the Untouchables

On his return to India, Gandhi found hateful divisions and scars fostered by caste segregation. How can we condemn the British, he noted, when we are guilty toward our own Untouchable brethren? “I regard untouchability as the greatest blot of Hinduism,” he said. In giving sanction to untouchability, Hinduism had sinned, according to Gandhi.

Gandhi took up the torch for the Untouchables. He lived with them. He ate with them. He cleaned their toilets. He attempted to restore their self-respect. He gave them a dignified name​—no longer were they Untouchables, but Harijans, or people of the god Vishnu. “It is necessary for us Hindus to repent of the wrong we have done, . . . we must return to them the inheritance of which we have robbed them,” he wrote.

What was the inheritance of the Harijan, according to Gandhi? Human dignity, the basic inheritance of all people. The Harijan simply wants to be treated as a human rather than an animal, he argued. Who robbed him? According to Gandhi, his fellow Hindus. “The most cruel crimes of which history has record have been committed under cover of religion,” he said. He shamed all of India by refusing to enter the great temples whose gates had been closed for centuries to low-caste Hindu worshipers. “There is no God here,” he told the crowds who gathered. “If God were here, everyone would have access.” Once an obviously well-off missionary came to Gandhi to get his advice on how to help the outcaste people in the Indian villages. Gandhi’s answer was a challenge to Christianity: “We must step down from our pedestals and live with them​—not as outsiders, but as one of them in every way, sharing their burdens and sorrows.”

[Box on page 6]

If You Are an Untouchable

● You either sweep the streets, clean latrines or handle dead carcasses

● You cannot enter into the home of one of a higher caste. Brahmans will not allow you to enter a Hindu temple

● Your children cannot marry out of your caste

● In the cities you are the dispossessed​—living in squatter settlements, desiring the basics of food, shelter and water

Untouchability has been outlawed in India since 1950. Yet a recent survey of about a thousand villages throughout India revealed that, if you were an Untouchable, 61 percent of other people would not let you use their well; 82 percent would not allow you to enter the temple; you would be refused lodging by 56 percent; 52 percent of the washermen would refuse you their services; and 45 percent of the barbers would refuse you a shave