Toilet has a role to play in society
Toilet Gallery of Mahatma Gandhi is in neglect and is continuously desecrated. The 'Toilet Gallery' is located in north Delhi’s Kingsway Camp in the over 80-year-old Harijan Sewak Sangh, a Harijan ashram spread over 27 acres. The ashram was a result of Poona Pact between Gandhi and Babasaheb Ambedkar in 1932.The toilet gallery was created out of Mahatma Gandhi’s vision to spread the message of social empowerment. Gandhi had ideas for the toilet as having a role to play in society. Gandhi engineered a social revolution, some feel.
The gallery has not got its due recognition. It is neglected. Lack of civility amongst the North Indian dishonours the gallery sadly. It is also desecrated, or abused by people.
Gandhi was aware that building of toilets around the country would change society and also he wanted to tell people to use excreta manure for biogas production. Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi is the face of the campaign ‘Swachch Bharat Abhiyan’. His own work has been forgotten by government.
Ashram has a “Dharma Stambh” and a “Sarwa Dharma Sambhav Temple”, both of which were constructed under Gandhi's supervision. Gandhi's work was converted into a tangible form at this gallery by sanitation activist Ishwarbhai Patel.
Complaints to municipality about public abuse has not yielded anything. Ashram doesn't have political backing. It faces a shortage of funds.
Toilet Gallery and the Ashram could be a tourist attraction. The Sangh has a redevelopment plan ready but maps have not been cleared by North Delhi Municipal Corporation.
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".. Gandhiji saw sanitation as a road to social empowerment. He saw creation of toilets as a means to abolish untouchability as sanitation work was something which the society thought should be done by low caste people. .."
".. Patel, driven by the Harijan Sangh’s vision, had already played a major role in establishing the ‘Safai Vidyalaya in Ahmedabad (now Environmental Sanitation Institute) in the 1960s. .."
".. The ashram was born out of the historic Poona Pact between Gandhi and Babasaheb Ambedkar in 1932. But the Sangh campus itself hasn’t fared any better over the several years, slipping slowly into complete obscurity due to “public apathy and lack of political patronage”.
“People know Gandhi’s birth and death places, but not his real battleground, where he engineered a social revolution,” 83-year-old Ram Raj Prabhakar, a former employee of the ashram, said.
Gandhiji despised untouchability and saw manual scavenging as a prime reason for it and he founded the ashram to lend a conducive environment for the uplift of the oppressed classes or ‘Harijans’ as he called them. .."
".. The “Dharama Stambh” with its massive pedestal has inscriptions from the Vedas and Upanashidas, and Buddhist teachings inscribed on them.
“We want to develop, besides a refurbished toilet gallery, a Ayurveda centre and a hospital, revive the vocational training institute that ITI was earlier in the campus, a research and development centre for medicinal plants, among others,” Dass said." .."
".. The campus also has memories attached with Kasturba Gandhi, who stayed here in a ‘kutir’ and where Gandhi also stayed later.
Besides, there is a library and exhibition centre where framed old photographs of Gandhi and people whom he worked with, have been displayed. .."
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This is from January 2015 .
Find this at
http://www.indianexpress.com/article/cities/delhi/gandhis-historic-toilet-gallery-a-picture-of-neglect .
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