WHAT CONGRESS AND GANDHI HAVE DONE TO THE UNTOUCHABLES : GANDHISM 293
to engage in it, one could understand it. But why appeal to the scavenger’s pride and vanity in order to induce him and him only to keep on to scavenging [1] by telling him that scavenging is a noble profession and that he need not be ashamed of it ? To preach that poverty is good for the Shudra and for none else, to preach that scavenging is good for the Untouchables and for none else and to make them accept these onerous impositions as voluntary purposes of life, by appeal to their failings is an outrage and a cruel joke on the helpless classes which none but Mr. Gandhi can perpetuate with equanimity and impunity. In this connection one is reminded of the words of Voltaire who in-repudiation of an ‘ism’ very much like Gandhism said: “Oh! mockery to say to people that the suffering of some brings joy to others and works good to the whole ! What solace is it to a dying man to know that from his decaying body a thousand worms will come into life?”
Criticism apart, this is the technique of Gandhism, to make wrongs done appear to the very victim as though they were his privileges. If there is an ‘ism’ which has made full use of religion as an opium to lull the people into false beliefs and false security, it is Gandhism. Following Shakespeare one can well say : Plausibility ! Ingenuity ! Thy name is Gandhism.
IV
Such is Gandhism. Having known what is Gandhism the answer to the question, ‘Should Gandhism become the law of the land what would be the lot of the Untouchables under it,’ cannot require much scratching of the brain. How would it compare with the lot of the lowest Hindu ? Enough has been said to show what would be his lot should the Gandhian social order come into being. In so far as the lowest Hindu and the Untouchable belong to the same disinherited class, the Untouchable’s lot cannot be better. If anything it might easily be worse. Because in India even the lowest man among the Caste Hindus—why even the aboriginal and Hill Tribe man—though educationally and economically not very
- Some of the Provinces of India have laws which make refusal by a scavenger to do scavenging a crime for which he can be tried and punished by a criminal court.