Obituary: RIP the toilet man of India
This article, based on an interview with social entrepreneur Padmabhusan Dr Bindeshwar Pathak, who breathed his last on August 15, 2023, is excerpted from the book The Living Legends of Mithila by Vivekanand Jha.
A messenger who devoutly swore to carry forward the Gandhian agenda of keeping Bharat Swachch, Dr Bindeshwar Pathak, dared to pick up the gauntlet against the heavy odds to establish Sulabh International, an organisation whose very summum bonum was to enable India to live up to the Gandhian dream of ‘cleanliness being the next to godliness’.
In other words, as Mahatma Gandhi had aspired to be reborn as a Harijans so that he could share their pain and their misery (article in Young India), Dr Bindeshwar Pathak risked his own ostracism in his community when he started living with Dalits to share their pain and their misery and consequently developed a vision and foresightedness which ensued a social renaissance in India—significantly contributing to the opening of Sulabh International across the length and breadth of the country.
Besides being the messiah of scavengers for providing them with human dignity, Dr Bindeshwar Pathak is a social reformer and a philosopher whose range of interests varies from attending to the basic needs of human life to dwelling and discovering the existential cause of the world. Hence, it would be in the fitness of the things to say that the seeds of ‘Swachch Bharat’ campaign, which has been spearheaded by the Prime Minister of India, Narendra Modi, was sown in 1973 when a young lad chose to tread the unconventional path full of thorns to rewrite a history for himself and that of the nation, too, little realizing that coming all the way from a small town of Bihar, he would be a global figure about whom a reporter of Los Angeles Times could pay such glowing tributes in such loftiest of terms: ‘If one man upon whom nation has a complete trust in this deceitful times, it is ‘you’ Dr Bindeshwar Pathak’.
Dr Bindeshwar Pathak was born on April 2, 1943, in Rampur in Bihar. His father was an Ayurvedic doctor and his mother Yogmaya Devi was a housewife. Besides, his grandfather was a reputed astrologer. Thus by all parameters, Bindeshwar Babu’s was a respectable family which was the object of envy in the neighbourhood. Nonetheless, even as a child, Bindeshwar Babu could feel the absence of a toilet at his home as his discerning pair of eyes could see the unusual chaos at his home in the early dawn as women members had the compulsion to finish their daily chores before sunrise. Worse still, he could see that many women, who due to obvious compulsions—they could hardly risk relieving themselves during the day time—had to suppress their terrible natural urge till dusk, would often suffer from severe headaches. Little wonder then, even after dusk the women ran the huge risk of confronting the reptiles slithering in the grasses when they wandered outside their homes for relieving themselves. Unsurprisingly then, Bindeshwar Babu felt the toilets were conspicuous by their absence even in the schools he had studied. However, his first sight of the toilet, colloquially referred to as ‘Pykhana’, was the prerogative of a village landlord, which too would smell from a distance. Bindeshwar Babu could see a scavenger woman cleaning the toilet, who was treated by her fellow villagers as an ‘untouchable’. Observing the plight of the untouchable woman scavenger, child Bindeshwar Babu felt deeply outraged; overwhelmed with a sense of revulsion towards the blatant discrimination against a section of society. Filled with extreme pity and Buddha-like compassion, child Bindeshwar Babu, rushed to touch a family member of the lower caste colloquially referred to as ‘Dome’ (Lord Buddha, once while bathing in a pond, beheld the shadow of an untouchable man who, seeing him bathing, instantly tried to run away; Buddha rushed to touch him and embraced him before giving him Diksha before making him his disciple). In a similar vein, Bindeshwar Babu rushed to touch the untouchable man resulting in all hell breaking loose: He was made to pass through an ordeal by fire; made to eat cow dung by his grandmother who was a strict purist, sincerely believed that Bindehwar Babu stood contaminated by such a contact and, therefore, needed to undergo the process of purification. An ordeal began with his grandmother stuffing cow dung inside his mouth while some boys held him tight. His grandmother showed no mercy despite his mother strictly pleading with her to be lenient with her son. Watching this bizarre spectacle child Bindeshwar Babu developed a pathological aversion towards the inhuman and unethical discrimination against a section of mankind as the famous dictum of Mahatma Gandhi rang in his ear: ‘Discrimination against men is a crime against humanity and God’. He made a steely resolve to usher in a change in the social mindset; however, the moot question was: How? He graduated from B.N. College Patna with 1st division and intended to go for criminology as his specialization. The aspiration for criminology took wings because it was a new subject and there was a high demand for its specialist. Bindeshwar Babu always wanted to be a lecturer; however, the turn of events took him to a job in a school and later to a family business selling Ayurvedic medicines. Here he had a painful realization which brought a radical change in his life. It so happened that an acquaintance shied away from being in his company while entering his office. When Bindeshwar Babu sought clarification, the concerned man replied: ‘Look, you are the supplier of medicines and, therefore, I wouldn’t like to be seen in your company’. It struck him like lightning as the words pierced through his heart. He thought to himself that education is the only key to commanding respect in society as Mithila or even Bihar showers respect on educated people alone holding positions in government jobs or teaching in higher education. ‘Swadeshay pujyatay raja, vidwan sarvashwa pujyatay’ (While the king is worshipped in his kingdom, the scholars are revered everywhere) has been the oriental mindset in contrast with the occidental perspective which reveres wealth more than knowledge. He decided to take a plunge again into higher education and consequently applied for studying Criminology at Sagar University. He even got selected for the same.
‘Man proposes, God disposes’, a proverb whose relevance finds its benevolent expression in the glorious life of Bindeshwar Babu who, while being on his way to Sagar University, fortuitously turned his way into Gandhi Shatabdi Samiti. Later as luck would have it, Bindeshwar Babu was transferred to the scavenging cell as a punishment posting. However, the crisis also presents an opportunity and, therefore, a punishment posting turned into an obvious opportunity for him when Bindeshwar Babu decided to build up a close rapport with the Bhangis (scavengers in local parlance). But then those were the real testing time for Bindeshwar Babu: On the one hand, he was into developing an equation with scavengers, while on the other he was getting alienated from his own people. His living with scavengers infuriated his father–in–law so much that he bluntly declared that he had committed a blunder by getting his daughter married to him and that he would detest even his bare sight. Even his Brahmin fellow members would taunt him by calling him a ‘Bhangi’, but as it is rightly said that a ‘journey of thousand miles begins with a single step’, Bindeshwar Babu had rightly or wrongly taken the series of steps and consequently there was no looking back. However, while staying in that untouchable colony, Bindeshwar Babu confronted certain situations which proved to be the watershed in his life. A young bride was made to clean the toilet on the very first day of her entering the in-law’s place. Seeing her in sorrow, Bindeshwar Babu tried to intervene; however, he was bluntly told by the mother–in–law that if she did not do her traditional work, what else she would do for her living? The second incident was even more brutal: A young boy was ravaged by a marauding bull and lay in a pool of blood. As Bindeshwar Babu rushed towards the victim, someone from the crowd chanted: ‘The boy is from the scavenger colony’. Everyone spluttered to a halt; Bindeshwar Babu took that bleeding boy to a hospital who was declared brought dead. These two incidents left their indelible mark in the mind of young Bindeshwar Babu whose heart was convulsed at the ugly tradition which alienates one community from the rest of the others. He took a Bhisma Pitamaha like an irrevocable vow to fight this injustice and to dedicate his whole life to the Gandhian cause of fighting untouchability in society. Bindeshwar Babu staunchly believed that knowledge can be borrowed but its application depends upon the human mind.
Bindeshwar Babu had started applying the technology in Sulabh International which is a twin-pit, pour–flush compost toilet. A deeply sloping toilet pan was manufactured to enable flushing with just a mug of water. The pan is connected to two pits by a Y-shaped channel. This mechanism does not necessitate the usage of a septic tank or any sewer connection. But despite this innovation, Bindeshwar Babu did not find an endorsement by the local administration in Patna. Ramesh Chandra, an IAS officer and an engineer too, outright rejected his innovation by dubbing it as ‘bunkum’. However, the other senior IAS officer, Mr PS Kohli finally endorsed his innovation and allotted him an assignment to make two hundred Sulabh Shauchalayas (toilets) in Patna. Thus in 1970, the government of Bihar agreed in principle to build Sulabh toilets which brought into existence the Sulabh organisation in the form of an NGO. In 1971, when Sulabh was actually granted rupees fifty thousand against an applied fund of rupees seventy thousand, but even before the amount granted could have been actually released, the government fell and the grant got stuck. When Bindeshwar Babu went to meet one Rameshwar Nath Babu, an IAS officer who gave him a lesson of life: He taught him the funda of being a self-sustaining organisation where the Sulabh could charge for the services that it would render. It was a landmark idea which brought a widespread change in the very functioning of Sulabh which ever since then, became a self-sustaining organisation that no longer hankered after the government grants but yet became a self-financing organisation.
Notwithstanding Sulabh having discovered its mooring as a self-sustaining organisation, the woes of Bindeshwar Babu showed no abatement. However, a silver lining was soon visible when Bindeshwar Babu approached Indira Gandhi through an intermediary with a proposal to eliminate manual scavenging. Those were the days when Congress Party’s slogan was ‘Garibi Hatao’ and he sought to draw the attention of the prime minister towards his foolproof plans to eliminate the woes of the poverty-stricken scavengers. Indira Gandhi took cognizance of Bindeshwar Babu’s plea and immediately wrote to the then chief minister Kedar Pandey, who feeling the heat sanctioned the fund of rupees twenty-five thousand. Unfortunately, before the fund could be released, the concerned officer was again transferred, leading to the fund once again getting stuck. The situation was so distressing that Bindeshwar Babu was suffering humiliation from all sides. He could not afford the jewellery that the people from the Brahmin community could afford. Worse still, he had to sell his wife’s little jewellery invoking tears in the eyes of his mother who, too, had to face similar travails when Bindeshwar Babu’s father had to sell his wife’s jewellery. Stuck between the devil and the black sea, Bindeshwar Babu had even contemplated suicide. Where there is a will there is a way, a silver lining came after a dense black cloud when a man by the name of Ramakant Mishra in Arrah allotted him work to construct two Shauchalayas and wrote a cheque for rupees five hundred. So the very first Shauchalya came into existence in August 1973. Still, there was difficulty in selling the ‘two pit’ concept, however, the icing on the cake came when a ward councillor Suresh Prasad Singh asked for converting two of his toilets into Sulabh Shauchalayas. Words spread across the neighbouring town of Buxar, where Bindeshwar Babu’s dream too started taking wing. Sulabh started spreading its tentacles across Bihar and then to the rest of the country.
Once it so happened that the vicinity of the Reserve Bank of India in Patna was being actually used by the errand trespassers for urinals. The Chief Secretary wanted the place to be converted into public toilets to give the place an appearance of the same. Bindeshwar Babu quickly smelled the chance of entering the public domain. He judiciously estimated the calculation of two cubic feet per person per year for the standard two-pit toilet. Although the place could not be converted into public toilets within the deadline, yet, gone was the spectacle of the public displaying the Lotas and mugs for defecating in the open; in its place was a sprawling garden with the blocks for the toilets in the making. This small but significant event won the admiration of the powerful bureaucrats for Bindeshwar Babu who always considers the ‘spirit’ to be better and superior to the ‘letter’ which remains the primary obsession of the hoi poloi.
Later, Bindeshwar Babu took upon the onerous task of giving a decent and dignified life to the scavengers by employing them in Sulabh and even opening schools for their children. Significantly, the women scavengers who were cleaning toilets of the private houses and were looked down upon, even considered untouchables were now doing small businesses and those very people who would look down upon them are now buying their products. These very women scavengers would now visit the dignified people and sit on their sofas and negotiate deals with them. These same women scavengers who were always apprehensive are now bold enough to deal with them on equal footing. This is nothing short of realizing the Gandhian dream of an egalitarian society where the right to dignity is vested in every individual. Bindeshwar Babu’s primary endeavour has been directed towards raising the self-esteem of the scavengers who, because of his bold initiatives, learnt to live like any other citizens of India. Better still, Bindeshwar Babu had gone overboard to take the women scavengers to the five-star hotel for dinner to make them realise that they too had the right and potential to visit these hotels which are usually considered to be the prerogative of the rich and powerful. In one such situation, the general manager of Maurya Hotel came rushing out in protest: ‘Pathakjee, what you are doing? The other customers will not accept this’, he burst forth. However, the same manager offered his apology when they were exiting as there was hardly any complaint. Bindeshwar Babu could spend about Rs three lacs for this purpose which can hardly be matched by anyone in the country and even in the world. Bindeshwar Babu had the audacity to appoint a woman scavenger Usha Chaumar as the president of Sulabh who is meeting dignitaries, accepting awards, and travelling the world! She had even delivered a speech at the UN Trusteeship Council. Moreover, Usha Chaumar brims with lots of energy and confidence to even walk the ramp with some of India’s top models and even represented Sulabh in World Toilet Summit 2007 held at Vigyan Bhavan in 2007.
Bindeshwar Babu finished MA in sociology in 1980; MA in English in 1986 and D lit in 1994. The government of India had conferred upon him Padma Bhushan and he also received the Global Energy award. He also received the Indira Gandhi Priyadarshani Award for Environment. Stockholm Water prize was awarded to him in the year 2009, and the Legend of Planet award by the France Senate ahead of World Environment Day. ‘Antarrashtriya Bhojpuri Samman’ was awarded to him in the year in the fourth World Bhojpuri Sammelan in Port Louis. Bindeshwar Babu pioneered the odour-free biogas and linked Sulabh toilets to fermentation plants. Moreover, his sanitation movement emphasizes cleanliness and prevents greenhouse gas emissions.
Sulabh has become not only a self-sustaining organisation over decades but has attained a turnover of rupees three hundred crores which is a mammoth figure given the fact that it receives no donations from anywhere. Moreover, Sulabh has employed over twenty-five people as associate members on a full-time basis and ten thousand on a project basis. Besides, Bindeshwar Babu has contributed generously towards the marriage of many poor women who could not afford it. The beauty of Sulabh is this: It has no shareholders and, therefore, there is no concept of profit maximization.
Dr Bindeshwar Pathak has been at the forefront of the movement towards advancing the noble cause of Mahatma Gandhi in ensuring India’s cleanliness and bringing equality among her citizens. This Padma Bhushan awardee has been a prodigious son of Mithila to ensure the rise of Mithila on the global firmament. Significantly, the very thrust of the incumbent government on the ‘Swacch Bharat’ campaign is only the culmination of the endeavours which Bindeshwar Babu had set in motion during 70’s to rid India of the maladies of untouchability and bring sanitation across the length and breadth of India. The mammoth task of attaining full sanitation is still to be attained, yet the Herculean job that Bindeshwar Babu had undertaken to reform society as per the vision of Mahatma Gandhi is really legendary. This Maithil Brahmin from an orthodox family could choose such a bohemian life to bring such a radical change in society, was the exemplification of the saga of indomitable courage and a profound conviction of the philosophy of Mahatma Gandhi which enabled an otherwise not-so-resourceful to rewrite history not only for himself but also for Mithila community to which he belongs and of course for the state and the nation. The grand vision of Prime Minister Modi to accomplish the mission of Swachch Bharat is indubitably premised on the solid foundation that Bindeshwar Babu had laid down during his eventful journey spanning several decades to make India really ‘Swacch’ as Mahatma Gandhi would have liked India to be.
