Messiah Of The Untouchables
Growing up in the lanes of post-partition Delhi, in a refugee family, I recall the sad plight of "untouchables" carrying human waste on their head. Children were trained to stay away from the path of the "bhangin" as she entered the house and, a cloth wrapped around her nose and mouth, carrying waste from our dry latrines. We were too young to realise the misery of these women who earned a rupee or two every month from each house and, at times, some leftover food which was kept near the door for her to pick up. Reading Pathak’s obituaries brought back memories of the shameful scenario that we witnessed every day. Sadly, at that time, the enormity of our sin never struck us, probably because these miserable people never protested ‒ perhaps scared to lose their only source of income. Gandhi ji's movement had obviously not reached them!
Whereas I had silently seen the daily incident and forgotten about it, when Pathak ‒ seven at that time ‒ observed a similar scene in his Brahmin family in Bihar, he decided to do something! One day he had accidentally touched an untouchable woman’s sari ‒ who was from the Valmiki community, people who regularly did the latrine cleaning job. Pathak’s home had no such latrines as all of them went to the fields every morning ‒ women invariably before sunrise ‒ to relieve themselves in the safety of trees and darkness. The woman whose sari he had touched used to come to their house to sell bamboo utensils which she would leave outside the door and collect the money thrown at her. Buckets of water and some gangajal were poured on the utensils before anyone touched them. The sari brush created an uproar; his grandmother summoned a Pundit, for an elaborate ‘purification’ Pooja, Bindeshwar had to bathe in the icy cold Ganges and drink a concoction of ghee, milk, curd, cow urine and cow dung.
He became obsessed with the twin curses of ‘untouchables’ and ‘open defecation’. He spent time at Gandhi’s ashram and became his follower. It was the Mahatma’s dream to liberate the untouchables. Around 1970 Pathak created the concept of inexpensive domestic pour-flush toilets with soak pits. In 1973, a town in Bihar ordered two demonstration units which were appreciated and, by 2020, an incredible 110 million had been installed all over the country. In 1974 he built India’s first public lavatory with 48 seats and 20 bathrooms ‒ the revolutionary ‘Sulabh Shauchalayas’ caught on and today one sees them everywhere. An estimated 20 million people use the well maintained facilities daily. Revenue from the small fee and wall advertisement subsidise more toilets in rural schools which actually encourage girls to attend.
The GOI’s flagship programme ‘Swatchh Bharat’ has carried the domestic pour-flush toilets movement to the national level and more or less succeeded in making the country fully 'open defecation mukt'.
Pathak helped many other social causes too ‒ an outstanding example was the ‘liberation’ of about 10,000 widows of Vrindavan, abandoned by their families, forced to wear only white and live in dingy shelters. He helped their cause with a little money, medical care and help to learn reading and writing and raised them socially by urging them to give up white and wear bright colours.
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