Recently, UN Special Rapporteur Leo Heller had said, “Everywhere I went, I saw the logo of the Clean India Mission — Gandhi’s glasses. In its third year of implementation, now is a critical time to replace the lens of those glasses with the human rights lens. The Indian government’s emphasis on toilets should not overshadow the focus of drinking water provision for all and it should not involuntarily contribute to violating fundamental rights of others, such as those specific caste-affected groups engaged in manual scavenging or those who are marginalised such as ethnic minorities and people living in remote rural areas.”

There is a grain of truth in this observation, but instead of taking it seriously, the minister responsible for the implementation is trying to call the observation incorrect. The right-wing politicians in India should understand that though the caste is a national problem, it is also a human right problem. And because it is a human problem it cannot be confined to the frame of nationalism. If our country is to be the truly great upholder of democracy we have to kill the monster of caste.

Interdisciplinary studies have shown that so long as India is not cleaned off the filthy caste mentality, it cannot create clean physical India. The physical geography gets affected by the social geography. Gandhi used his upper caste fundamentalist Hindu lenses to look at the caste and he failed to appreciate it as a human problem. He wanted to patronize India’s discriminated as the children of God (term used for the illegitimate offsprings). The World community was fooled all along with propaganda by India’s upper caste dominated Congress party.

The revolutionary vision of Ambedkar was kept hidden because if the world community begins to see the world through the compassionate eyes of learned Babasaheb, their vision will acquire the clear sight of the humanitarian crisis in India. This is beginning to happen as more and more people are beginning to see through the manufactured delusions about India. This is what the UN rapporteur observed and we have to humbly introspect as a nation if we really want clean India and if we are prepared to clean our minds of the caste filth.

Author – Mangesh Dahiwale

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