“I may not be born again, but if it happens I will like to be born in a family of scavengers, so that I may relieve them of the inhuman, unhealthy and hateful practice of carrying night soil.”

— Mahatma Gandhi

Gandhi’s Pledge to teach Sanitation to Harijans and Women

During his first homecoming, after three year stay (1893-96) in South Africa, for his first Global Satyagraha against ‘Colour Bar’; “When a plague broke out in Rajkot, Gandhi volunteered his services and visited every locality, including the quarters of the untouchables, to inspect the latrines and teach the residents, better methods of sanitation.”

After his first Satyagraha in India, launched in 1917, to end the atrocities of ALIEN Indigo Planters on Champaran’s long suffering Kisans, when he opened Model National Schools, to educate the poor and predominantly illiterate masses of Champaran in North Bihar, he had deputed his son DEVADAS Gandhi (later Chief Editor of the “Hindustan Times”, to join the teacher team in the first school of Gandhian Concept at Baraharwa Lakhansen in Eastern Champaran, and his wife Kasturba Gandhi to Historic ‘Bhitiharwa’ ASHRAM in West Champaran. Bapu asked her to spread the Gospel of Health and Sanitation among poor illiterate village women.

From “Mahatma Gandhi – His Life in Pictures”.
(First published in 1954, by Publications Division of the Government of Free India).