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shoulder the whole responsibility. It is a matter of wonderment that when the plague is working havoc in our rural quarters, cantonments, as a rule, remain free. Reasons for such immunity are obvious. In the canton- ments the atmosphere is pure, houses detached, roads are wide and clean, the sanitary habits of the residents are exceptionally sound. Whereas ours are as unhygienic as they well could be. Our closets are pestilentially dirty. Ninety per cent, of our population go barefoot, people spit anywhere, perfrom natural functions anywhere and are obliged to walk along roads and paths thus dirtied. It is no wonder that the plague has found a home in our midst.
Unless we alter the conditions of our cities, rid our- selves of dirty habits, and reform our castes, Swaraj for us can have no value.
It will not be considered out of place here to refer to the condition of the so-cnlled untouchables. The result of considering the most useful members of society as unworthy of being even touched by us, has been that we let them clean only a part of our closets. In the name of religion we ourselves would not clean the remainder, for fear of pollution, and so, m spile of personal cleanliness, a portion of our houses remains the dirtiest in the world, with the result that we are brought up in an atmosphere which is laden with disease germs. We were safe so long as we kept to our villages. But in the cities we ever commit suicide by reason of our insanitary habits.
Where many die before their death there is every probability that people are devoid of both religion and its practice. I believe that it ought not to be beyond us to banish the plague from India, and if we could do so,
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