A sympathy fast
December 4, 2024
Yes, this is three fasting posts in a row, but that’s what Gandhi was doing on December 4, 1932. Last year I was also fasting to mark some of these occasions, but I haven’t been feeling it this time around. Come January, I’ll be changing the name of this Substack for my third pass through the calendar: Leaning toward “The Gandhi Year.”
This story takes place a few months after the Epic Fast, in which Gandhi had successfully demanded Dalits—Hindus without caste; the so-called untouchables—vote alongside the rest of the Hindus instead of being divided into a separate electorate. Still incarcerated in Yerwada Prison, Gandhi had committed himself to abolishing the stain of religious discrimination, and when he heard it was not only being endorsed but enforced at a prison to the south, he felt compelled to get involved.
The issue revolved around a prisoner in Maharashtra, Appasaheb Patwardhan. Gandhi described him as “a great social reformer and a man of character whom any State would be proud to have as a citizen.”1 Patwardhan was also committed to equality among Hindus and worked side-by-side with his Dalit co-prisoners. At some point in November, the prison superintendent banned him from doing so, restricting the sanitary work to Dalits and other low-caste prisoners.
Patwardhan objected, and put himself on a reduced diet in protest. When Gandhi heard about this, he wrote two letters to the superintendent requesting a reversal, and explaining he would begin a complete fast in solidarity with Patwardhan if the matter was not reconsidered. Gandhi was told he would be allowed to do sanitary work if he desired, but nothing would change for Patwardhan; on December 3, he began his sympathy fast.
During the Epic Fast, all of India had been in a uproar, and the government wasn’t interested in repeating the situation. On the morning of December 4, the superintendent asked for a few days to respond, and Gandhi suspended his fast, and similarly encouraged Patwardhan to end his reduced diet.
Gandhi threatened to resume the fast a couple of times, but in February 1933, the British government announced high-caste prisoners would be permitted to volunteer for scavenging work. (Jail superintendents still had discretion to veto it, however.) When the Associated Press asked him why it was so important to him, Gandhi explained he expected “high-caste men to render” all useful services, including “the most necessary service in the world.” He looked forward to the day when “we have ceased to consider it degrading … to do the necessary cleansing.”2
Appasaheb Patwardhan must have remained committed to his goal. In a footnote dated July 4, 1941, the editors of the Collected Works of Mahatma Gandhi say he was “popularly known as the Gandhi of Maharashtra.”
Do you consider cleaning bathrooms to be “low caste” work?
Collected Works of Mahatma Gandhi (Letter to E. E. Doyle, November 28, 1932) p. 28,087
CWMG (Interview to Associated Press, February 13, 1933) p. 28,759