About we Indians keeping the outside places in our communities clean

[KRS]

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Folks,

I came across this 'togue in cheek' article with a personal view on the subjects. I have always wondered why we do not keep our surroundings clean, especially in India. Is this statement first of all true? If so, is this inborn? If not, why are our cities/villages generally not clean?

http://publication.samachar.com/pub_article.php?id=4472316

Are Indians filthy foreigners?
Jug Suraiya Wednesday June 17, 2009



In the wake of racist attacks on Indians in Australia, and a consequent backlash to such assaults, a large number of anti-Indian Australian Facebookers have accused Asian immigrants, particularly those from the Indian sub-continent, of being dirty and unhygienic in their public behaviour. In short, they’ve accused Indians of being literally filthy foreigners.


We Indians dirty? What utter rubbish. But it’s not the first time such a charge has been made. Last year it was the British who rubbished us. Tory MP Lucy Ivimy was reported to have said that Indians don't know how to dispose of their rubbish and are congenital litterbugs. Though she later apologised for her remark, Ivimy's accusation provoked dudgeon among Indians in not only Britain but, even more so, in India. Us Indians? Creating a mess wherever we go? What a load of garbage.


Unlike people in the West and other so-called developed societies we Indians are scrupulously particular about all matters pertaining to hygiene management and waste disposal. Take the example of household garbage. What do they do with it in these so-called advanced countries? They store it -- as though these scraps of leftover food, vegetable peelings, egg shells and other guck were precious jewels -- in a special container made for the purpose and generally kept in the kitchen. How thoroughly disgusting. Imagine keeping rotting refuse in the kitchen, which after the puja room is the most hallowed sanctum sanctorum of the Indian household.


A barbaric notion totally inimical to 5,000 years of Indic civilisation and culture based on the totems and taboos of ritual pollution. Which in turn is based on the concept of what has been called inappropriate context. For instance, it is appropriate to wear shoes to go outdoors, but it is inappropriate (ritually polluting) to wear shoes indoors, more so within a place of worship. Similarly, keeping ritually polluting garbage within the kitchen and defiling its symbolic purity is an emphatic no-no. So what to do with the muck? Simple. Throw it out of the window. That's what windows are for, apart from letting in air and light.


The scrupulous cleanliness of us Indians is attested to by the assiduity with which we expel all forms of rubbish, garbage, junk and litter from our homes and places of work and dump such offending and offensive matter where it rightly belongs: on our public streets and thoroughfares.


This is what less anciently civilised communities can't understand about us: the cordon sanitaire that we draw between our pure, pollution-free personal space (our homes, offices, etc) and the public space of the outside world at large (i.e. anything and everything beyond the sacrosanct confines of our homes, offices, etc) which we rightly use for the purpose it has obviously been designed, namely to be the natural receptacle of all our filth and rubbish. That the 'outside' India of our public space is unmitigatedly dirty and squalid only testifies to the fact that the 'inside' India of our personal domains is squeaky-clean and spotless.


There is a profound chasm, not just cultural but spiritual, between us and societies and individuals who are obsessed about 'outside' (and therefore irrelevant) cleanliness at the expense of 'inner' salubrity. It is this basic misapprehension of the uniquely Indian concept of sanitation that causes outsiders to trash us. Which they are once more planning to do at the forthcoming G8 meet where the US and Japan will try to arm-twist India into accepting emission norms for industry.


This western phobia about carbon emissions is incomprehensible to the Indian mind. Carbons are dirty things, right? In which case why are people so hung up about emitting them (i.e. getting rid of the darn things, like chucking garbage out of the window)? But people like Al Gore (and now our very own R K Pachauri) carry on something fierce about carbon emissions and how horrid they are (all the more reason to be shot of all that nasty carbon and dump it where it properly belongs: in the global public space known as the environment).


Prime Minister Manmohan Singh is proposing to go to the G 8 summit, where presumably he will try to educate the US, Japan and other misinformed parties about the right and proper manner in which to deal with industrial emissions and all that rot. Will someone open the window, please?




Regards,
KRS

 

[happyhindu]

Very nice question KRS-ji.

Am told that an indian and a newyorker argued and both finally agreed that indians tend to litter more than the average american who litters on the lanes adjoining wall street.

I came across a few non-indian asians who beleive indians are by nature litter-prone. To support their arguement they gave the example of a 'little india' that is supposed to be really dirty. Not sure if i can say they are wrong. But then i cite the example of non-indian asians who spit everywhere and urinate in lifts. I suppose its all about the individual.

Indians, culturally, are different. In the remote past, they slept on hay, then came the straw-mats, which i used to sleep on as a child at times, before moving to beds. But now i have returned to sleeping on mats, usually without a pillow, because bones are said to align better on hard surfaces like the floor. Man, by nature, i suppose is an outdoor animal, designed to live like an animal, in tune with nature than against it. They did not clean up their surroundings, or create a concept of what is considered 'clean' for a long time.

What we see now is perhaps a clash b/w old and new. People want to live in cities the same way they used to live as in villages. They really litter, because they have no awareness of what bugs can do. Surat got cleaned up only after a round of plague. Till plague happened, it was considered a really dirty city.

In the past, there was this well-developed idea of sanitation, with well-planned towns and cities; but then why do have roads smelling of urine now, tehre are roadside dwellers whose kids defeceate on the sides of the roads. Are we suppoed to tolerate it. Then there are people who can cough on other people's faces as though it is their birth right. They will proceed to buy mallipoo to adorn themselves with but will throw unwanted plastic bags, right there on the road. Paper, after eating fried groundnuts, is thrown right there, on the road. You can find cow dung on the road. Dogs piss on roads as well. If there is ritual pollution, then all indians, including me, should be blamed for showering each time we return home after shopping in places like t.nagar, etc.

Instead of building new cities, we dump ourselves into old cities and towns that were built to handle a limited population; and became a burden to the places we live in. Sure sir, we are considered dirty by many people, for a fair reason.

 

[kunjuppu]

krs,

once again, i think, this is another example, that we wish to lean on our distant mythical past to excuse for our somewhat dilapidated present. only that i am surprised that it is coming from jug.

jug used to write great pieces in the old illustrated weekly and those articles were refreshingly candid as opposed to this one, which i think, reeks of a wounded ego coupled with a sense of loss of dignity.

this is what i think about our fastidiuos outlook towards the concept of cleanliness - ritual or otherwise.

barring kerala, where cleanliness, even among the poorest, i think, is a source of pride, all over the rest of india, we wallow in dirt.

we may keep our homes clean, but throw out the kuppai, outside on the street. this is our own community middle class.

we give our clothes to the dhobi to wash, knowing well, that wherever the poor man does the cleaning, is the same place, that he performs his ablutions.

out of sight, we do not care what happens.

spitting. we can compete with the chinese, as to who spits the most outside of the house. some of us, even do it within.

we let our fellow humans, carry our bucket waste, even in this 21st century. we have our fellow humans, go down the drains, without a gas mask or protective garment, exposing their bodies to noxious fumes and harmful bacteria.

we all take pride in dipping in the ganges, right alongside a half burnt human body and the sewage of varanasi in our nostrils and mouth.

we pride of 'madi' but in the same breath, would not think twice of squeezing and kneading our food with our hands and shoving it down the throat of unwilling kids.

we talk of orthodoxy, but would not touch garlic or cauliflower, but tomatos, potatoes and chillies are ok. all these were brought to india by the portuguese, from the americas.

and finally, where do we blow our nose? and how do we dispose of the snot? and do we clean our hands? or we go on, as if nothing has happened, and go on to partake of food or shake hands with another human?

litter someone?

thank you.

ps.. all of the above, is not our monopoly alone. anywhere outside of western europe, north america, japan, singapore or australia/new zealand, what i stated in the post, i think, are the norms. atleast we are in majority company.

 

[sapr333]

krs,
jug used to write great pieces in the old illustrated weekly .

Chief,

Trust me, you must be a genious!!

You pushed me back to my primary school days, where my uncle used to buy one for my grandpa that bunch of paper (bound without staple pin),sporting it as a great gift, and enjoyed watching my senile pedagogue grandpa, reading and discussing with his village folks, about the articles inside, as if it was a prized one to be stored in his attic....... as if it was imported from England(Not USA)..Oh my, I remember him, busy keeping safe all those editions, in his steel almirah/almira(spell chek pls) and locking it up along with his readers digest collections..

Off late, when I reached my age, it was Pritish Nandy/Kushwant singh..By that time I got a grip of my grandpa's tradition, this magazine has wound up Lock-stock-n-Barrel... Nostalgic indeed...

Btw, Shri.Kunjuppu, I admit, whenever I read your posts, I ensure my websters is right there next to me..(btw, you miss out paragraphing). Sir, pls share me the secret of your finest vocabulary..Thanks in advance.

 

[happyhindu]

Sapr, i have been asking kunjuppu-ji to write about his life in canada. i wud love to read it. on a lazy afternoon, just read, dream and travel...

 

[sapr333]

Sapr, i have been asking kunjuppu-ji to write about his life in canada. i wud love to read it. on a lazy afternoon, just read, dream and travel...

I would love if Shri.KRS/Kunjuppu/Praveen/HH jot something on the thread 'Travelogue- Ancient temples and monuments...Thanks in advance for you all

 

[sapr333]

Holy hygiene is not the same as medical hygiene....

Water in Ganges commands highest purity, inspite of all the floating dead corpses..And it cant be compared with French alps Evian bottled water!!

You cant walk in to the Sanctum sanctorum with a newly bought sanitized, UV treated BATA shoes... Something unholy here even for a Jewish synagogue...

Someone is pretty well ok with scooping the human-excreta with bare hands.. But if you spit on his face, its definitely a filthy issue..

A bit of confusion...

 

[kunjuppu]

Holy hygiene is not the same as medical hygiene....

Water in Ganges commands highest purity, inspite of all the floating dead corpses..And it cant be compared with French alps Evian bottled water!!

You cant walk in to the Sanctum sanctorum with a newly bought sanitized, UV treated BATA shoes... Something unholy here..

Someone is pretty well ok with scooping the human-excreta with bare hands.. But if you spit on his face, its definitely a filthy issue..

A bit of confusion...

i agree.

but i have to confess, the thoughts of the mixed effluents went through my mind, when i dipped myself umpteen times in the ganga, a few years ago... all the shraddhhams for my parents, grandparents, ancestors, kaakkais and kuruvis.

however, it was one of the few trips to india, that i did not fall ill, and the wags in my family attributed it solely to the periyOOr's blessings

our concept of ritual purity, while dirtying our hands physically, is a concept that i am yet to comprehend. one of these days, maybe...

by the way, you are flattering me too much. my head is swollen as it is, and does not need any more urgings. look also at the lack of any response to my thread about tamil tribes, which i started on your request.

i try to parse every 2 or 3 sentences usually, to enable easy reading. not necessarily, paragraphic, in the 'wren and martin' tradition.

the love of english is entirely due to my high school english teacher. mr. perry.

he was an anglo indian, an eccentric bachelor, skinny, old, balding, white mustache and ties, bitten away at the ends.

even the mules of our class used to sit, silent and stunned, when mr. perry used to read out loud shakepeare in their original text. that is how much, he imparted the gift of a language.

mr. perry had a deep voice, which he used with great skill and modulate it to represent the various characters of the plays. if we close our eyes, we can easily imagine a stage full of characters.

such was his elocution skills. he was much imitated, but never rivalled.

mr. perry loved hot chocolate, which was not available in india of the 1960s. bourn vita was a poor substitute, he used to complain.

on my first return from abroad, circa 1975, i had bought two tins of cadbury's pure chocolate for him. sad to say, when i searched out for him, i found out that he had died in the inbetween years.

mr. perry. possibly the best teacher i have ever had. whichever heaven he now resides, he has the eternal gratitude of almost 100% of my class. a teacher par none.

thank you.

 

[hariharan1972]

what, kerala/keralities are apostles of cleanliness !

imho it's a cartload of unsubstantiable partronage.

there may be any number of keralities who may have set exacting standards of personal cleanliness, but to generalise it to the whole state of kerala is unnecessary partronizing.

a quick visit to guruvayoor temple would reveal the truth. and i am sure the sabari mala visitors can also vouch for the "cleanliness" of keralities.

when i visited kannur, a decade ago, it was stinking. i have seen a few keralities whose personal cleanliness was nothing to write home about.

my father used to say a phrase in sanskrit, i vaguely remember , roughly translated into 'kerala not known for acharam'.

in india we dont have civic sense and cleanliness for us unfortunately ends at our gate when we step outside.

 

[kunjuppu]

i erred.

i was on the point of qualifying my statement thus 'based on kerala of my youth'.. and this was many many moons ago .. iremember a kerala, which was cleanliness personified.

also, it is just an impression of fond remembrance, reinforced by statements from my maternal grandmother, who in many ways, was ways ahead of her time.

i would tend to demur, that i am patronizing. prejudiced? maybe? after all, kerala a la north malabar is my roots.

koda mulla poovum, malayali peNgalum.. always cause flutter in my heart.

i learned malayalam script with my forefingers tracing them over sand, thus drawing blood. and wilfully so, per my grandma, as this would forever etch them in my mind.

i come from a pattikkaadu in north malabar, which had pretentions of a valiyur nagaram. there were two local temples that we patronized.

the loganaar kaavu, was spare, dark and sparsely clean, with what appeared to be hundreds of oil lamplights. every month, promptly, the namboodri chekkan, who was cropped, and the priest assitant, used to deliver delicious nei paayasam, eagerly looked forward.

the other temple was the local bhagavathi. the inner sanctum sanctorum was very small, with barely enough space to pranaam yourself before the all fierce goddess.

what was magnificient, was the huge, open courtyard. every year, without failing, used to happen, the thaali pili - the festival of the virgins. our maid used to participate regularly.

my grandma told me that it was for the malayaalchis (as opposed to the brahmins), among my initiatations to the brahminism of our faith.

the ceremony was more function than piety, but awesome nonetheless.

i confess all these are memories a lifetime ago. things get hazy and romanticized over years. so to hari's youthful perceptions, these might appear the remarks coming from a chauvinistic malayalee. i can empathize with that. but........

i think there is always a credible explanation for what we say. it is just that we do not always say it clearly. communication may be after all, the root of all misunderstandings. ne pas?

the public places in kerala might have gone downhill since these eon of years.

which is sad. one thing that i remember, and this could possibly be the cause for the cleanliness concept i remember, could be the copious rainfalls. water after all, is the ultimate cleanser.

there is also another viewpoint, which i might venture to pen here.

in chennai, we used to witness, some really, soddy looking guys, mostly from andhra. when i casually made an observation, about their outward appearance, i remember, my dad, cautioning me, against judging their position in society based on how they presented themselves, and may be these guys were millionaires.

any sign of flaunting their wealth could probably bring trouble to themselves and their families.

my brother in law, who used to live in bihar, always concurred on this view.

so, after all, we as a society might indeed be the cleanliest society within the four walls, but to the world we project dirt and dust, for we do not want to invoke jealousy or envy.

which in the ultimate of things, though opposed to the general perception of cleanliness, as defined universally, might still be an unique bharath desi answer to the ever preposterous enquiry of us:

are we sudhham? clean sudhham? physically sudhham? ritually sudhham?

we have all the answers. some, we wish to share with the world. others, we wish to caretake. for in those secrets, lie the path to our salvation. or so believe,as handed down by our ancestors. or not?

why is gayathri whispered at the onset of upanayanam from a father to his son? not to our daughter? not to anyone of another caste? is this monopoly to the gateway of heaven? our exclusive heaven?

bhagvaane enney ratschi!!

thank you.

 

[happyhindu]

Enjoyed this much Kunjuppu-ji.

My ammamma (grandmum) remembers her area in chennai being clean when she arrived there are a bride some 65 years ago. They moved out of that place some 20 years ago. It got impossible to live tehre by then. i went there last year. It was impossible to wade thru without feeling sick, with all that automobile smoke, thick layers of dust, s**t on the road and all.

Sometimes i have really wondered at some typical southie sensibilities like a little girl wearing a worn out torn paavadai but with a big maanga maalai. so the importance was for the gold ornament, but not for the clothing. perhaps we tend to be savers, investing in the bigger things but overlooking at the everyday mundane things. Perhaps the sensibility of cleanliness is also effeced that way - like giving importance to certain personal things, but overlooking all else the chalta hai way. i mean after we return home, why do we care about the road outside..

 

[kunjuppu]

Chief,

Trust me, you must be a genious!!

You pushed me back to my primary school days, where my uncle used to buy one for my grandpa that bunch of paper (bound without staple pin),sporting it as a great gift, and enjoyed watching my senile pedagogue grandpa, reading and discussing with his village folks, about the articles inside, as if it was a prized one to be stored in his attic....... as if it was imported from England(Not USA)..Oh my, I remember him, busy keeping safe all those editions, in his steel almirah/almira(spell chek pls) and locking it up along with his readers digest collections..

Off late, when I reached my age, it was Pritish Nandy/Kushwant singh..By that time I got a grip of my grandpa's tradition, this magazine has wound up Lock-stock-n-Barrel... Nostalgic indeed...

Btw, Shri.Kunjuppu, I admit, whenever I read your posts, I ensure my websters is right there next to me..(btw, you miss out paragraphing). Sir, pls share me the secret of your finest vocabulary..Thanks in advance.

first to happy hindu a reply: happy, life in canada is like life anywhere. it is how interesting we make it.

every day is a gift. tomorrow must be looked forward to as it must be better than today, which in turn is better than yesterday.

every day, every breath, is a gift, very specially so, when we are healthy.

ok ok, one of these days, i will let you start a thread on life (abroad) and we can banter about those grasses that are green on the other side of the fence.

back to sapr... the illustrated weekly reached its zenith, i think, with khushwant.

to be sure, it was light weight journalism, but of a refreshing kind. he introduced the various ethnic groups of india to the others. it was fascninating to find out about dogras or chitpavan brahmins.

our own iyers featured in it too.

i think it was mv kamath, who was before khushwant. he was a bore editor. i too shed a few tears when i found that the weekly had wound up.

a even better high quality humour magazine was shankar's weekly. it was patterned after the british punch magazine (which too is late).

shankar had a doll museum in delhi which i visited 1972. he had collected dolls from all over the world. i wonder if it still exists.

but the weekly was shankar's pet. his life story itself is a fascination - a penniless malayalee coming to delhi, surviving by his wits, smart and enterprising enough to start an english humour weekly and open a doll museum, all during the 40s/50s when south indians were a rarity in delhi and to top it off, delhi went through the trauma of partition.

a true malayali, shankar was a leftist and fellow traveller, ie a hypocrite to the hilt . his children attended the best private schools, and went to u.s. to study and settled down there. like some of my own erstwhile communist relatives.

oh the hypocracy of these crypto communists.. i have lost count of their names. what spoilsports they are!

but, i sniff and sense the germination of another topic ! for someone else to open in a new thread (!)...

ps.. sapr, i do apologize if i have to drive you to the dictionary. that is not good writing on my part. the english language is rich enough for me to search and discover its simplest representatives, eloquent yet baringly open and naked to savour.

the simplest words giveth the most pleasure.

thank you my friend.

 

[KRS]

Dear sapr333, Srimathi HH Ji and Sri kunjuppu Ji,

Very fine postings.

But, let me digress back to the intent of my thread.

Do we, as people have an issue with the communal hygeine?

Are we litterbugs?

Are we selfish towards our own immediate family's welfare that we do not care about our neighbour's?

If so, why? If not, why the results in our neighborhoods in India?

Regards,
KRS

 

[sapr333]

We are kind to the animals more than anyone in the world.. So rats,cockroaches,ants got the doberman status in our Indian households. Why would I get annoyed if they crawl over me in a train/toilet/hotel room? If my dalmation could play with me, why not these innocent creatures too.. Unlike dog, they only scare me, but dont make me bleed and resort to anti-rabies injection.. So according to me, dogs is a violent anti-gandhian animal, and hence it needs to stay outside, and we call it as stray dog. Having said that Im kind to dog too..Cos I know, our fellow indians are also kind to animals, and for sure they will feed the dog. All dogs in india are fed by the public, like how communists of Russia fed its people.


We used cow-dung to plaster the walls and floors.. Believed it to be an ayurvedic germicide..Also enjoyed sleeping in that dung coated floor, sun dried our foods/harvest. Our nostrils were cultivated to accept bovine dung's smell as, fragrance (SC Johnson Co failed to take off in India).. When an animal excreta could occupy sanitizer,room freshner and enamel paint (only one colour available please) status in our house hold, definitely we are not going to get disturbed, by the littering of human excreta found all around the lanes and railway tracks. After all, its our own fellow humans excreta, why should I get disturbed ? Brotherhood ideology in action!!


We will not bury the dead.. Cos, we dont want to disturb the mother earth and pollute the ground water.. So,all dead animals/carcasses are for public display..You dont need to buy tickets to visit this zoo of dead-animals.

Reason :-
AA) We are kind to animals...Leave the carcass to sky, so that, animals of lower order-food chain can have their break fast free, out my generosity...

BB) Hey dead doggie! I am a man, and I'm not responsible for cremating any 'lower' species. Then how will I do for you... btw, Just now I had blown out a huge money in settling my great -great-grandfathers funeral.. Let your fellow dogs/cats buy a match box and lit that carcass.Thanks to child labour, match box is very chep here..Hey Doggie, you can easily afford, go buy a Wimco match box, and cremate your fellow stray dog. For pyre wood, you dont need to spend money,right under you feet are the litter papers.. Try those polythene covers on your left.., it substains the flame amidst the blowing wind and emit good smoke like an incense stick.... Doggie!! Wait wait!! Dont lit now. Keeping looking at the Sun, and once it touches the top, start your action..Yeh, let Ragu Kalam time pass!!

May be,some day, if an orangutang dies, I may offer a funeral, cos he is atleast my closer cousin in genetics.



I think all our foreign diplomatic offices/Embassies, before issuing a visa to a tourist, should run a crash-course/ Viva Voice on these subjects....

1) How to bravely face a cockroach tickling you in the train. May be teach some Kathakali also to fight against bed-bugs.

2) Art of fishing out a 'swimming house-fly' on the freshly served steaming coffee. This chapter is not applicalbe to our embassy in China/Taiwan/Thailand,

3) Street Navigation techiniques against barking stray-dogs. Twitch like Elvis Presley!!.

4) Yoga will be handy to contol olfactory senses & mind ,while crossing the street,dotted with human excreta and dungs

5) Littered streets with plastic - Use it as an opportunity to learn about great re-cycling technology of India.. You may not find them in the evening.. We have rag-pickers..

Who said we are flithy? We are Incredible Indians!!

 

[sapr333]

This article share a different perspective..Pls ck out..

http://www.lshtm.ac.uk/art/hygiene/danger.html


It concludes this way..

Dirt transgresses body boundaries, threatening sickness, disorder, decay and death. By accusing the poor,Immigrants, the marginalised or the refugee of being dirty; fear of transgression of the body politic is raised. Disgust and fear of disease and disorder are engendered. This is the dangerous side of hygiene; a side that needs to be understood and cast out before our societies can become healthy in all senses of the word.

 

[chandar]

Folks,

I came across this 'togue in cheek' article with a personal view on the subjects. I have always wondered why we do not keep our surroundings clean, especially in India. Is this statement first of all true? If so, is this inborn? If not, why are our cities/villages generally not clean?

http://publication.samachar.com/pub_article.php?id=4472316

Are Indians filthy foreigners?
Jug Suraiya Wednesday June 17, 2009



In the wake of racist attacks on Indians in Australia, and a consequent backlash to such assaults, a large number of anti-Indian Australian Facebookers have accused Asian immigrants, particularly those from the Indian sub-continent, of being dirty and unhygienic in their public behaviour. In short, they’ve accused Indians of being literally filthy foreigners.


We Indians dirty? What utter rubbish. But it’s not the first time such a charge has been made. Last year it was the British who rubbished us. Tory MP Lucy Ivimy was reported to have said that Indians don't know how to dispose of their rubbish and are congenital litterbugs. Though she later apologised for her remark, Ivimy's accusation provoked dudgeon among Indians in not only Britain but, even more so, in India. Us Indians? Creating a mess wherever we go? What a load of garbage.


Unlike people in the West and other so-called developed societies we Indians are scrupulously particular about all matters pertaining to hygiene management and waste disposal. Take the example of household garbage. What do they do with it in these so-called advanced countries? They store it -- as though these scraps of leftover food, vegetable peelings, egg shells and other guck were precious jewels -- in a special container made for the purpose and generally kept in the kitchen. How thoroughly disgusting. Imagine keeping rotting refuse in the kitchen, which after the puja room is the most hallowed sanctum sanctorum of the Indian household.


A barbaric notion totally inimical to 5,000 years of Indic civilisation and culture based on the totems and taboos of ritual pollution. Which in turn is based on the concept of what has been called inappropriate context. For instance, it is appropriate to wear shoes to go outdoors, but it is inappropriate (ritually polluting) to wear shoes indoors, more so within a place of worship. Similarly, keeping ritually polluting garbage within the kitchen and defiling its symbolic purity is an emphatic no-no. So what to do with the muck? Simple. Throw it out of the window. That's what windows are for, apart from letting in air and light.


The scrupulous cleanliness of us Indians is attested to by the assiduity with which we expel all forms of rubbish, garbage, junk and litter from our homes and places of work and dump such offending and offensive matter where it rightly belongs: on our public streets and thoroughfares.


This is what less anciently civilised communities can't understand about us: the cordon sanitaire that we draw between our pure, pollution-free personal space (our homes, offices, etc) and the public space of the outside world at large (i.e. anything and everything beyond the sacrosanct confines of our homes, offices, etc) which we rightly use for the purpose it has obviously been designed, namely to be the natural receptacle of all our filth and rubbish. That the 'outside' India of our public space is unmitigatedly dirty and squalid only testifies to the fact that the 'inside' India of our personal domains is squeaky-clean and spotless.


There is a profound chasm, not just cultural but spiritual, between us and societies and individuals who are obsessed about 'outside' (and therefore irrelevant) cleanliness at the expense of 'inner' salubrity. It is this basic misapprehension of the uniquely Indian concept of sanitation that causes outsiders to trash us. Which they are once more planning to do at the forthcoming G8 meet where the US and Japan will try to arm-twist India into accepting emission norms for industry.


This western phobia about carbon emissions is incomprehensible to the Indian mind. Carbons are dirty things, right? In which case why are people so hung up about emitting them (i.e. getting rid of the darn things, like chucking garbage out of the window)? But people like Al Gore (and now our very own R K Pachauri) carry on something fierce about carbon emissions and how horrid they are (all the more reason to be shot of all that nasty carbon and dump it where it properly belongs: in the global public space known as the environment).


Prime Minister Manmohan Singh is proposing to go to the G 8 summit, where presumably he will try to educate the US, Japan and other misinformed parties about the right and proper manner in which to deal with industrial emissions and all that rot. Will someone open the window, please?




Regards,
KRS

We Indians have no regard for safety & sanitation, we think if I clean my room and throw the dust outside my room/house it would be cleaner and I critice the Muncipality for not keeping the street/road in a clean manner.
Today most of our houses do not have wet & dry garbbage bin and we dont throw them separately. This is due to the fact our upbringing and no regard for the society;s safety Hygenuine.

 

[kunjuppu]

Dear sapr333, Srimathi HH Ji and Sri kunjuppu Ji,

Very fine postings.

But, let me digress back to the intent of my thread.

Do we, as people have an issue with the communal hygeine?

Are we litterbugs?

Are we selfish towards our own immediate family's welfare that we do not care about our neighbour's?

If so, why? If not, why the results in our neighborhoods in India?

Regards,
KRS

krs,

maybe the concept of hygeine improves with wealth?

the richer the country, there is more emphasis on public hygeine. can this arguement hold water?

the other side, are there rich countries, that ignore hygeine. even among the newly rich countries and cultures that we normally do not exactly associate with cleanliness?

i have been to the emirates. all of them are impeccably clean, the dirt shouldered by the immigrant semi slave labour. is it the same with saudi?

singapore is a classic example of enforced cleanliness through a high handed approach. years ago, my teenage son slipped in a piece of gum at a public place there, and a perfect stranger approached him and cautioned him against being seen by the police.

a few years ago, at beijing, not only was i impressed by the construction but also by the amount of spit on the streets. only paris could beat this amount of filth, but then there it is dog turd.

even in the west, i can see public hygeine breaking down. compound that with heat, and it breaks pretty damn quick.

was it not in darwin australia in 2005 public sanitation broke down as an aftermath of the earthquake? so, in the light of disasters, maybe cleanliness is afterall a function of wealth?

all generelazation including this one is faulty.

we used to leave around the corner from the slums. on occassions, to seek out the maid or the rickshaw man, i have visited it. what always surprised me, was how clean and neat, the slums were.

it is because, they threw all their filth at the door corners of the maadi veedu people. their children soiled our front yards and street corners.

at the time, this was a constant source of irritation to the house ladies of the neighbourhood. there were among us boys who used to chase those defecating kids.

i would always resist this wild chase. i am glad i did. for somewhere there, deep in my heart, i felt justice applied. crude but quick.

these days, whenever i visit chennai, i am forever bombarded with the high cost of maintaing and holding on to cleaning maids and even more about the maids' arroganace etc etc.

i nod, and nod, but in my heart, i suppress a big yahoo... the wheel has indeed turned its full cycle. and perhaps a wee bit more!

thank you.

ps.. my neighbour hood was an ethnic mix: not all the maadi veedu were brahmins. we had good amount of other castes and also christians in fair numbers. the neighbourhood was predominantly catholic. it just proves, that no matter who lives in maadi veedus, the attitudes are the same towards the cheri people.

 

[sapr333]

Another school of thought is....

Cleanliness is the effect of awareness about Public Hygiene... Hygiene is rooted in Health/life ... For eg, the rise of cleanliness developed in the 18th century is mainly due to the impact of epidermics due to unhygenic conditions.

Yes, some arguments go around saying, richer are clean.. Not necessarily true.. AC first class trains, where mostly the elite/top civil service officials travel... at the end of the journey, the toilets are fully soiled and walls dotted with tobacco stains.People are not bothered to keep-press the flush button for few more seconds.. Why one should take that pain, after all I have washed mine perfectly, Im clean and pure..Thats it...

Pan stains in Indian flight toilets is still a common thing... A house keeper of a star hotel told me, its very easy to idenity, if an Indian/Asian had just checked out of a room. Till he stays in, he nags the HK boys for evey small petty petty cleaning and ensures his environment remains clean.But while he cheks out, he empties all the wastes of his travel bag , littering it on the carpet floor.. Yeh, he is clean, and demanded high level of cleanliness from housekeeping, cos he is a rich man who paid money , but he is not bothered about others cleanliness. Its a very natural thing to see,a rich man stopping the Merc, and hosing the walls... His car is of course clean & Hygience, but is not bothered about the hygiene/health of others.

In general, we as individuals are clean.. We take shower daily twice and let the water drain on the lane and make others un-clean. Since evey one does this act,chain works actively, the entire country looks filthy, and intern, indians are looked down upon as filthy men.Matter of fact every Indian is clean&Pure but consistently knowingly/unknowingly every one is made un-clean by fellow indians.

We Indians are dirt pushers. We play Volley ball with dirts, dont basket it. No wonder we Indians (Average asians) rank very low in WHO health index..

So, we are a bit of selfish people I would say..... In turn make the place unhygenic , subsequently leading to the poor health care,diseases,epidermics.... Which leads to poor life expectancy and death of our fellow citizen... Who cares... Because, basically, we 'Dont Value Human Life"...

Had we have the concept of 'Value for human life', we may not hose the wall, cos we know it will atleast do discomfort to other by its foul smell ( keep aside microbes).. The learned people, who knew already, that littering leads to un-hygiene and there by leads to epidermics and death, still continue littering, cos they are also not bothered about 'Value for Human life', inspite of knowing the damage they are doing.

Yes, we terribly lack the sense of 'Value for Human Life'.... A single man dying out of 'Bird flu' or Anthrax hits the 'Flash News' in western Televisions.. Out here, every day, 2 people die of unmanned rail-gate accidents, 4 children die of malnutritions, or 500 die in winter seasons for want of warm clothes..No one is bothered... Sept '11 is still a big memorial day for an average american.. But we had 100 such incidents happenened in India, who cares, life goes on..Ask an Indian when the Tsunami happened..forget date and month, atleast the year? Why should I know, ask the quizz master Siddharth Basu... Anyway, Im alive, why ..should I care about the other dead person or for that matter the one on death bed too...


So in my school of thought, lack of 'Value for human life' is the cause for all these filthy conditions in India.

 

[kunjuppu]

could not but help referring the public to this today's comic strip, that i read regularly.

perhaps, there are audiences in parallel worlds discussing the same things?

http://comics.com/ben/

thank you.

 

[sapr333]

Thought of making it ease....(courtesy: Shri.Kunjuppu)

 

[KRS]

Dear Sri kunjuppu Ji sir and sri sapr333 (you did not want any more adjectives),

I think that our hygeine in India is tied to what the 'knowledgeable' ones not sharing with our brethren. A case in point is a vendor selling Palapzham slices on the street. There was a time when this was done near open sewers, with the eager flies that just visited the sewer to land on the fruit slices. I lost an aunt who partook in a juicy slice that was contaminated this way.

But, today I see some vendors protecting their wares from such maladies, with an insect proof netted domes.

But this has to be differentiated from our community's attidude about hygeine. Seems very selective still to me.

Regards,
KRS

 

[sapr333]

Not a taunting though!! We never believed 'Diversity In Participation'..

Our Ministry of Defence headed by Kshatriyas failed miserably for last 2000 Years, only to voluntarily surrender to the invading armies..

And now, our Ministry of Health & Hygiene headed by Sudras too are on the bad shape.. Aussies are calling us filthy Indians..

 

[happyhindu]

Dear Sapr,

I do not know if the classing of people into "kshatriya' existed even 200 years back. There were very many warrior tribes.

And "indians" did not fail miserably for last 2000 years. We failed because we did not have war technology and the cunningness of the british. Nor did we have the ability to back-stab, and unleash utter destruction to the extent that the mughals / muslim armies did.

 

[Brahmanyan]

Dear Sri KRS,

I do not take seriously the writings of many of the Journalists, who attract readership by exaggerations of flippant issues.But I venture to write now, since, this is an issue about which I have been thinking for years.

Attitude of people living in this vast sub continent towards various social issues cannot be generalised that easily. Cleanliness is one among them. I do agree that most of us though give a lot of effort to personal cleanliness, do not care that much about cleanliness of our surroundings. The reasons are many. But I would consider lack of awareness and abject poverty as some of the main reasons. It is not the same in all parts of the Country. In Kerala the people give more importance to Cleanliness (both personal and external) than other parts of the Country. Similarly in olden days I have seen clean Agraharams in many parts of Tamil Nadu and Kerala.

Clearing of waste is a social issue, to be faced collectively by the people and Government.. We have various agencies from Panchayats to Municipal Corporations and equally many rules and enactments for keeping our surroundings clear. But none of them work seriously or enforced . They are satisfied by "tokenism". According to my thinking we in India enjoy too much of freedom in the name of democracy. There is absolutely no self discipline or fear of law among the people. The Nation is expanding its economic activities to gain quick money without proper planing of infrastructural base for eventualities. The result is what we see today.

Thus, unfortunately, I have to answer an affirmative Yes to the questions raised by you.

Regards,

Brahmanyan.