Annie Besant, prominent freedom fighter and founder of the Theosophical Society, in an essay published in the Indian Review, 1909, making a case for segregating Untouchable children from the children of purer castes in school: Their bodies at present are ill-odorous and foul with the liquor and strong-smelling food out of which for generations they have been built up; it will need some generations of purer food and living to make their bodies fit to sit in the close neighbourhood of a school room with children who have received bodies trained in habits of exquisite personal cleanliness and fed on pure food stuffs. We have to raise the Depressed Classes to a similar level of purity, and not drag the clean to the level of the dirty, and until that is done, close association is undesirable. Eight years on, in 1917, the Indian National Congress chose her over Dr. BR Ambedkar to preside over a meeting that passed a resolution to abolish untouchability. Strange are the ways of politics.
Posted on: Sun, 18 May 2014 13:00:20 +0000
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