posted by Kamala on Apr 29
Dearest Friends and Family, this is a recent article we wrote and wanted to share the idea with you. Loving You, Aunty Kamala
“We all live under the haunting fear that something may corrupt the environment to the point where man joins the dinosaurs as an obsolete form of life…And what makes these thoughts all the more disturbing is the knowledge that our fate could perhaps be sealed twenty or more years before the development of symptoms.” Dr. David Price, 1959. US Public Health Service.”
It was the in the South Africa days, that Gandhiji earned the title of Maha Bhangi – the Great Scavenger – for his relentless and scrupulous efforts
to keep his physical environment clean and in order. It was a title he claimed to relish much more than that of Mahatma, and throughout his life he never ceased to be involved in social sanitation not only in his communities, but wherever he found himself. He saw cleanliness as indicative of our awareness of Truth, and said:
“Whereas if a man has true religion in him, it must show itself in the smallest detail of life. To me sanitation in a community such as ours is based upon common spiritual effort. The slightest irregularity in
sanitary, social and political life is a sign of spiritual poverty.
It is a sign of inattention, neglect of duty. Anyway the Ashram life
is based upon this conception of fundamental unity of life.”
Gandhi lived at a time when people still used the gifts of the Earth cautiously. A bench or chair made from trees, was meant to last a lifetime, which meant several generations, not 10 years. And it did. This was before the gifts of the Earth were madly churned into breakable trash, within six months of production, so that spending, wild and furious, would still go on, as profits for a few. He lived before the advent of plastic in its multiple forms that we see today.
Plastic is a ’super material’. It has yet to break down, and actually be reabsorbed by the Earth into harmless components. What is now called
`biodegradable plastic’ is something that breaks up into smaller particles. These tinier forms of toxic plastic residuals and chemicals are becoming assimilated into all the molecules of matter and cells on Earth today. And they are sickening all of us, up and down the food chain.
In Gandhi’s time, scavenging meant picking up and disposing of what was discarded upon our commons, the Earth we share, and our waters. Then, waste was essentially all organic materials, that could be burned or buried or easily recycled without harm to anyone. Gandhi didn’t just pick
up human stools, he cleared paths, picked up paper, dead leaves, sticks, twigs, broken earthenware, metal pieces, broken glass, discarded cloths, whatever was out of order.
At present, our planet is literally covered and choking in plastic waste. Not one piece of it will go away for more than 500 years, and we keep making thousands of tons more of it each day. When we burn it, it becomes even more subtle and insidious in its effect upon us. Years of
thoughtless inconsiderate burning and dumping have made every sacred
place, every river, our streets and parks, municipal and public buildings, all reservoirs of trash. In India one sees the wretched street cleaners, struggling to cope with the innundation.
We see it, we step on it, over it, around it, kick it aside and turn our heads and cluck to ourselves. “Why don’t they clean it up ?!” we ask in our
minds. But who is the ” they ” ?
In India children are not taught to handle their waste responsibly. For some reason, in some minds, to have another human being clean up and pick up after oneself is considered more preferable than doing it personally. I have witnessed adults encouraging children to throw or drop litter for a maid to pick up. This social sickness is part of the great damage done to the human mind by Indian Apartheid. A place for everyone, and the bottom place for the sweepers who pick up after you. Holy Mother Amma – Mata Amritanandamayi, tells Indian parents and educators now:
“We must teach children lessons in hygiene right from their childhood. They must be shown how to keep their homes and surroundings neat and tidy, they must be trained not to litter. They must receive this education at home and in school. Lessons in nature conservation must be incorporated into the school curriculum. Practical ways of conserving nature should also be taught. In this way we can enable our children to imbibe lessons in nature conservation and create positive change when they grow up. If the younger generation, which is in a hurry to imitate foreign culture can imitate the foreigners’ environmental consciousness and work ethic, we can make great strides.”
Rich political leadership declares – “India recycles. It has always been our tradition. The Kabbadi wallah picks up the waste and turns a pretty
penny with it.” One has to be pretty myopic not to see that there
are very few pretty pennies to be made out of the mountains of toxic
plastic trash produced daily. Not enough to eat well with, make a
decent house or educate the kids, get an operation, or save for
retirement. Come on, lets get real. Gandhi saw self-deceit as one
of our greatest problems.
Gandhiji saw in scavenging, a fast way out of the social sickness of caste thinking. He saw that scavenging was actually a holy path to the recognition of Truth, what he called God. It enabled one to serve both individuals and society – those who had discarded, and those who lived with the discard, by selfless and disinterested service. A holy path –
for it creates awareness of our indivisible unity, causing us to bow down, again and again, seeking to remove the effects of our brothers and sisters, who also embody the same truth as in ourselves. Scavenging, or trash pick up, is constant bodily and mental prayer, each piece picked up is recollection and reverence of the Great Truth that we are all part of; whose face is pure and unsullied nature. A clean and sweet smelling Earth. Picking up trash, cleans not only our environment, but our minds and hearts as well.
Science and technology have created plastic, along with nuclear waste, but have yet to find a way to meaningfully return it to a harmless material.
When we pick up plastic, we do not solve the problem as of yore – of cleaning the place, for we now have something in our hands that is going to be a problem wherever we put it, whatever we do with it. Given this situation what can we do?
We actually have no choice but to stop producing plastic. And how can you or I, little people, feeling helplessly caught in this huge wheel of
consumer-itis and disposabilty, make a difference? People have written letters, campaigned, started groups, nothing has happened. Things have only gotten worse. Obviously, the people we expect to help, our leaders, and the ‘corporate social responsibility’ part of big business, don’t care. Given this, how can we help them to become aware? The example of the Street Sweepers, the scavengers of Varanasi offers an effective path of action.
In 1983, I was a student in Varanasi. Many of the homes, built on top of each other for centuries, face narrow little alleys – gullys they are called
there – that wind and connect in labyrinthine cobbled pathways. Many houses were made before indoor plumbing, and during times of strong human enslavement. With no back or front yards, the in-house cleaner, removes the dirt and waste, and puts it in a heap outside the front door, in the street. This is the workplace of the Varanasi Street Sweepers. Were it not for massive concerted municipal efforts to keep the gullys clear, they would soon be almost impassable.
It was hard not to see the Sweepers. I saw some people who thought the Sweepers were dirty or untouchable and expected them to defer and step aside from their path when they walked towards them. They bore it all, those Sweepers, men and women, without comment, seeming almost to apologize for their human existence. Their faces were downcast and sullen. They worked very hard, rain and shine, sweeping, scraping, all without gloves, masks, shoes, or even an apron, to pick up the human and animal offal, as well as all manner of filth and trash, mixed with spit, and other bodily and yucky liquids, thrown into the streets. Their tools of the trade: a worn out wheel barrow, a basket, broom and spade, did absolute wonders for the holy city of Varanasi.
One day, they asked for a raise. I don’t know who got the idea, but, it seems, they all quickly agreed that it was a good one. It was flat out denied. One could feel and almost hear the sentiments of power: ” How dare these people! Who do they think they are? ”
But, by then, sweeping had taught them a lot. They had no doubts about their innate equality with the high-nosed who walked by them demanding they shrink away from their presence. They had served well, and they knew it. Their demands were hardly unjust. It was time to help their
high-nosed brothers and sisters remember that they were just that.
I watched with joy and amazement, the unfolding of the Varanasi Street Sweeper strike. They were conscientious, and not mean or vengeful. That attitude is another ethical gift one gets from cleaning up after the
public – an inner humility and patience with the ignorance and arrogance of others. They knew that human health would be endangered if the filth was left on the streets, so they continued to sweep, scrape, and cart the filth from the streets. But they took it to the house and homes of the mayor, the council that had denied them decent wages, and dumped it there instead.
Within less than 2 weeks, a huge pile, one story high filled the street of the elected town leaders. Rats abounded without any inhibitions, scurrying up and down the pile in broad daylight. Stinking muck oozed out from the bottom of the pile, and people tread gingerly on their toes, clutching their clothes close around themselves, mincing along the extreme edges of the heap. The pile grew, and grew. It became settled, packed down. Soon vehicles were forced to go at a precarious angles to get through the street. There were spewy spinouts from wheels that got stuck in the mulching muck. The neighbors of the leader began their pitches to him as did the people on all sides. The Sweepers were conscientious and kept working hard, sweeping, scraping and carting.
Within less than 4 weeks, (and callousness took that long to melt) the Varanasi Street Sweeper strike reached a satisfactory settlement. To my
delight, I now observed that the Sweepers no longer seemed to be
apologetic for their existence. A joy filled their faces, as well as dawned awareness of their own power. They now walked confidently in the streets, and the high-nose shrank from them instead. It was all very refreshing.
So what can we do? And who do we expect to help clean up this Earth? Each one of us has a hand in the making of the pollution of the Earth, and most of us have two hands to help reduce it. Plastic waste out-of-sight is still toxic and polluting. Scavenging provides an almost instant path for ethical awareness and growth, as well as ecological
awareness and social reflection. Padding their pockets, our leaders
haven’t heard the cries of millions of dying birds, animals, aquatic life, they haven’t sniffed the skies. Its time we helped them to see the mess we are in. Our elected leadership can stop the production of toxic plastic by insisting that big businesses stop making plastic. Neither the people nor the Earth wants it.
The Varanasi Street Sweepers have a lot to teach us, as we try to follow the example of the worlds greatest Maha bhangi.
from:
Gandhi for Now! Earth Ethics in Action
Volume 1. Supplementary Readings to Earth Ethics of M.K. Gandhi with teachings from Holy Mother Amma; an introduction.
C. 2010. P.K. Willey. All rights reserved.
References:
1. Price, David E. (1959)“Is Man Becoming Obsolete?” Public Health Reports, Vol. 74:8 (693-99) Found in Carson, Rachel.(1962) Silent Spring. Houghton
Mifflin. NY: 188.
2. CWMG 36:449.
3. Matruvani October 2004: Vol 16:2. pps. 2-3. Amma’s Message.
