creative writing on gandhiji and swachhata in 200 words.
Answers
Explanation:
voices were heard after the Prime Minister of India in his extempore speech on the 15th August 2014 on Independence Day spoke of 'Swachh Bharat'. Independence Day speech of the Prime Minister of India carries a message not only for the countrymen but is also a statement to the international community too, being widely reported across the world. The message in the speech was loud and clear. On Mahatma Gandhi's birthday i.e. 2nd October 2014, the campaign was launched with much fanfare. Mahatma Gandhi whom the nation had relegated to archives, came alive on his birthday this year.
Many have appeared on the print and electronic media, holding a broom for a few minutes shown sweeping the already sanitised streets in ’swachh uniforms'. These swachh uniforms remained spotlessly swachh after the ritual was over. The 'elite sweepers' were smilingly sweeping in the company of dozens of other men and women, when photographed. Sweeping public places is a very tedious and back breaking business; it is no smiling business, since sweeping public places brings forth dust allergy, running nose, watery eyes and smelling uniforms. And why our public spirited men and women should sweep only ’symbolically’; why not as a daily routine, if they took the pledge to clean India in earnest and with conviction.
Swachh Bharat scheme is launched with Mahatma Gandhi as its inspiration. I wonder, how many people have read what Gandhi has to say on the subject? This brief write up below is but a glimpse of some of Gandhi's views on cleanliness and how he personally went about doing it with no camera in attendance.
This essay contains several thoughts and anecdotes from Gandhi’s life, extracted from several books, including his Autobiography. This write up may work as a refresher on the subject topic.
The first glimpse of Gandhi’s rejection of Hindu orthodoxy finds mention in his Autobiography, when he questions his mother, who forbade him to touch an 'untouchable'. He was instructed to have a bath if he had touched an untouchable in his school or seek out a Muslim and touch him, for two 'untouchables' cancel each other in impurity. Once, a scavenger by name Uka, whose duty included clearing out night soil of the house hold and clean the court yard came in physical contact with him, which his mother saw from a window. He was asked to go through the ritual of cleansing himself. Young Mohandas remonstrated and argued and quoted passages from scriptures stating that the sacred scriptures did not approve of treating some human beings as untouchables. Though he would have to obediently comply with the orders of his mother or other elders, his inner being never accepted their logic of some being treated as 'untouchables'. He would argue with his elders but he would do their bidding, reluctantly. The rebellious spirit would grow stronger with the advancing years, till it became the voice of his conscience, transforming itself as the voice of the nation. (Reference: Speech at Suppressed Classes Conference, Ahmedabad, Young India (27.4.1921 and 4.5.1921) CWMG 19:570
In South Africa, he took up the cause of the Indians against racial discrimination. He however observed that while the Indian merchants and other free Indians felt humiliated at their ill treatment by the White Europeans, they as a class were no better in their relationship with the illiterate Indian indentured labourers, who were working in semi slavery conditions in the Natal plantations. When Gandhiji took up the Indian cause, he was painfully made aware by the Europeans of the unclean habitats in which the Indians lived and their shabby treatment of their own illiterate brethren.