CONTEMPORARY SOCIAL ISSUES

REPORT ON THE FIELD VISIT TO HRIDAY KUNJ AND SAFAI

VIDYALAYA

SUBMITTED TO,

Mr. SAURABH ANAND

ASSISTANT PROFESSOR OF SOCIOLOGY,

GUJARAT NATIONAL LAW UNIVERSITY

SUBMITTED BY,

MRINMAY KUSHAL,

BATCH 2017-2022

REGISTRATION NUMBER: 17A088

 The bsw family OF
1st years
2nd years
Along with JAYESH BHAI PATEL AND DIKEN and
our very own faculty members
 INTRODUCTION TO HRIDAY KUNJ

Take a Tour

This was Gandhiji’s home in the Ashram. Kakasaheb Kalelkar named it Hriday Kunj.
Gandhiji and Kasturba lived here from 1918 to 1930. Here he met national and international
personalities. He left the Ashram in 1930 with a vow- “not to return to this Ashram till India
became independent”. Inside there are 6 rooms: Gandhiji’s; Kasturba’s; Guest Room,
Kitchen, Store room and Secretariat. There are also replicas and some originals, including
Gandhiji’s Charkha and Writing Desks.

Hriday Kunj is a site of historical importance and can located in the city of Ahmedabad in
Gujarat. It is reputed for having earlier served as a place of residence for the great leader of
the Indian Movement towards Independence. The man was none other than Mohandas
Karamchand Gandhi or Mahatma Gandhi, as he is more popularly known.  Historical records
indicate that MK Gandhi started his experiments of non-violent demonstrations of
Sathyagraha in India’s fight towards freedom from Hriday Kunj. It was from this place where
the Mahatma began his famous salt march back in 1930. Gandhiji was a resident of Hriday
Kunj during the years 1918-1930.
This small house from where MK Gandhi initiated his freedom struggle is considered a
national monument and is carefully preserved at the Gandhi Ashram. This place also served
as haven for untouchables who were unfairly discriminated those days on the basis of caste.
Todaythe ashram at Hriday Kunj, which is located on the banks of the Sabarmati River,
produces a variety of handicrafts, spinning wheels and handmade paper.

INTRODUCTION TO SAFAI VIDYALAYA AND

JAYESHBHAI PATEL

Safai Vidyalaya is the original branch of the Harijan Sevak Sangh, an initiative established by
Gandhi in 1932 to bring greater sanitation through instilling a sensitivity and removal of
untouchability, as well as fostering the engineering and designing of toilets and sanitation
technologies to suit diverse populations and needs across the state and nation.
Today, Safai Vidyalaya resides in a corner of the Gandhi Sabarmati Ashram. It offers health
and nutrition-specific two-day trainings for Anganwadi teachers, one-day trainings for
Sanitation Inspectors, and various workshops for individuals from the villages. Through these
trainings, Safai Vidyalaya serves 5,000 teachers each year.

In addition, this space offers opportunities for “inner sanitation”. Outside the offices resides a
“Toilet Café,” where various members of the Gandhi Ashram ecosystem host events and hold
space for gatherings that allow for inner reflection, receptive listening, and genuine sharing of
stories. In addition, a much-loved “Toilet Garden” sits in front of the building, offering
visitors and guests a visual display of the various ways in which toilets can be designed to
suit different needs.
Not often do we meet people that seem to have that special ability to see right into the center
of our hearts, causing it to expand with the love that we didn’t even know we held.  Jayesh
Patel is one of those authentic beings.  On any given day, you might find him sitting on a set
of muddy stairs in the middle of the slums, lovingly cutting the dirty nails of young children
or you might hear him delivering the keynote at a grand opening for a new organization. But
for him it’s all one and the same; by living in a very powerful state of being, whatever he
finds himself doing is only an expression of service channeled through the alignment of his
head, heart, and hands.  A guest on our Global Awakin conversation, he shared wisdom from
the heart.
“ Jayeshbhai (“bhai” is an endearing term for “brother”) was deeply influenced and inspired
by his father, Ishwar Patel.  He was known as “Mr. Sanitation” in India, had built 200,000
toilets, started 118 organizations including the Environmental Sanitation Institute, but he
never talked about any of it. 

He would tell his son, “Don’t carry these heavy loads to change the world.  Do the work that
is connected to your heart and you’ll become like an instrument of nature.” 

Many would agree that Manav Sadhna is not your typical NGO. More like an incubator of
compassion and love through one’s inner transformation, hundreds of international volunteers
have come there with a results oriented framework for changing the world and left with a
greater commitment to changing themselves.  It started with Jayeshbhai, his wife, Anar Patel,
and their noble friend, Viren Joshi.  They would go out to the street or a slum area and meet
with kids.  Whether they were playing with them, cleaning them, cutting their nails, or
feeding them nutritional snacks, their intention was just to give value by making the kids
smile.  Today Manav Sadhna serves more than 8000 children and women through more than
35 projects that have organically emerged based on the needs and participation of the
community.

The Two Magic Ingredients

If you asked Jayeshbhai how it all came to be, his reply would be simple, bringing to light
two integrated components: the beauty of small and the power of relationships.

“Small is beautiful.  So many times we get caught up with visible impact and we want to see
results and through this, we create desire, stress, and misery.  But if we focus on the power
of small, what we can do in this very moment, impact will naturally emerge if that’s what is
needed in the world.”

The second component involves building relationships instead of projects.

Jayeshbhai elaborates that in order to develop meaningful relationships, we must focus on

understanding people instead of trying to change them.  As soon as we do that, we will
deepen our understanding of who we are and what our relationship with them means. Slowly,
we will see that we are all interconnected, our journeys are intertwined.
A powerful story that Jayeshbhai shared by Neil Patel truly illustrates what might emerge by
focusing on small acts and relationships from a place of compassion.  “Like any other
household, at Jayeshbhai's and Anarben's home, when guests would come over they would
serve them tea. But at some point they asked why should that be limited to just their friends
and acquaintances? So one day Jayeshbhai goes out into a busy public area, asking passers-
by, "Would you like to come to our home and have tea?" And like that Jayeshbhai began
having tea with strangers in his home. One of those strangers was a vegetable seller, who was
carrying a huge heavy parcel of vegetables on her head. As they had tea, Jayeshbhai learned
that she was very poor and had to walk miles with that parcel every morning to sell her
vegetables to be able to earn for her children. Because she was on foot, she would have to
leave her home at 4am to get to the market on time.  Jayeshbhai asked if she would benefit
from having a wooden cart to transport her vegetables, and she said of course. So Jayeshbhai
gets one for her. A few months later she comes back to tell him how much the cart has made
a difference for her, how much time and effort she saves and how grateful she is. And to top
it all off she hands Jayeshbhai Rs.800 to pay him back for the cart! Jayeshbhai is moved by
this, but instead of keeping it he asks the woman to bring back someone else she knows who
would benefit from having a cart, so they could pay forward. The woman brings back a
friend, who then brings a friend of hers, and so on until eventually they had funded 59 carts!
And all of it started from a simple but radical cup of tea. It's a reminder that even a seemingly
small act of kindness can lead to powerful ripple effects that we cannot predict.”

Purity of Intention

At the center of small acts and building relationships lies the purity of your intention. 
Jayeshbhai believes that with purity in our hearts comes clarity in our minds.  Recently, he
was traveling to a village in India and along the way he came across two children.  Both were
cute but were very dirty with running noses.  Jayeshbhai had a sudden impulse to clean one of
their noses but knew they were getting late.  So instead, he reached into his pocket and shared
a chocolate.  Upon reaching the village, they held a prayer and after opening his eyes, that
same child was right there standing near him.  “I don't know how that happened.  I feel that it
was the power of intention. I genuinely believe nature supports good intentions.”  Jayeshbhai
carefully cleaned her nose and combed her hair.  It was such a small act, yet it was imbued
with so much love and compassion.  Afterwards, the spirit of that child became a huge asset
to everyone in his group. Wherever they went, it felt like family and they felt connected to
each other. “When we are guided by pure intention, there is no room for capital “I”.  Not
only are we able to see clearly but nature also supports us.”
 
This purity of intention is also what Jayeshbhai believes transforms consumption into
contribution, ensuring there is enough for everyone.  As Mahatma Ghandi so aptly
expressed, “There is enough for everyone’s need but not enough for everyone’s greed.”  How
does someone like Jayeshbhai internally process so much poverty and destruction?  He
approaches this by truly believing that when work is done with devotion, faith,
and bhaav (goodness and loving coming from within), then that inner sentiment will reach
everywhere and the person will experience a shift within from greed to need and from
consumption to contribution.

As an example, Jayeshbhai shared another story from an afternoon at the Gandhi Ashram.
There he was sitting on the stoop when a woman from the slum community walked up to him
with her little girl.  Moved by her innocence, he was inspired to buy her an ice cream cone,
which she quickly ate, leaving traces of the delicious cream around her face.  It was a picture
perfect moment and Jayeshbhai captured it with a camera.  A few weeks later, the mother of
that child returned to Jayeshbhai completely distraught.  She explained between tears that her
little girl had disappeared and the mother was desperate to find her but didn’t have a single
picture of her that she could show as identification.  The mother requested the ice cream cone
picture that Jayeshbhai had joyfully taken.  She spent the next few years showing the picture
of her child to everyone she met, to the police station officers, to school teachers, to temple
leaders, to everyone.  The mother never gave up.  Then one day, the girl was found.  Without
that kind of faith and bhaav, imagine what might have happened to the girl. 

Who Jayeshbhai is today is the result of years of inner cultivation.  When he first started out,
he didn’t understand his father’s devotion to sanitation but he knew he wanted to serve.  His
first assignment was to clean 125 public toilets.  Jayeshbhai would start out in the mornings
with his father in his brand name clothes and Nike shoes and begin the dirty work side by
side.  Bit by bit, he began understanding that the work his father was doing wasn't just about
toilets. As he started to interact with the community and with the women, and reflect every
evening with his father, Jayeshbahi learned how the work of sanitation was connected with
everything else; it integrated health and hygiene, education, women's empowerment, and
untouchability.  Ishwar Kaka was not trying to solve all of these problems but he was
connecting with the seed that would naturally blossom into solutions, the seed of compassion.

Jayeshbhai continues to focus on the small, build relationships, and approach everyone and
everything with love.  It is very hard to believe that someone who flows so naturally through
life wears so many hats.  In addition to all of the Manav Sadhna projects that he is involved
with, Jayeshbhai is also the President of Harijan Sevak Sangh (dedicated to the untouchable
community), Director of Environment Sanitation Institute, helped start Seva Café (a gift
economy restaurant in Ahmedabad, Gujarat), and is on the board of many organizations such
as India First, Gandhi Ashram, and the School for the Blind. But he views all these
organizations and roles as spaces to find himself through service.
If you ever have the wonderful opportunity to meet Jayeshbhai in your life, don’t ever try to
praise him. As he will throw away all the praise, and keep only your love.

ABOUT THE VISIT

On the 27th of September, 2017 at about 3.00 pm our BSW team comprising of 1 st years, 2nd
years and faculty members went for this visit of Hriday Kunj and Safai Vidyalaya. It was a
great learning curve for all of us as we learnt a lot of new things about our ‘Father of the
Nation’ and also, JayeshBhai Patel motivated to another level and showed us a complete new
picture of life. Hriday Kunj is gave us a deep insight into why Mohandas became Mahatma
and this was possible due to Diken Sir, who was present there to guide us and tell us certain
stories about the Mahatma that we had never heard of. We took a look on all the
compartments of Hriday Kunj and all the replicas and original memoirs from the lives of
Mahatma Gandhi and Kasturba Bai Gandhi kept there. After, Diken Sir gave us all the details
about Hriday Kunj that was possible in the short time, he took us to Safai Vidyalaya, a place
where we would meet JayeshBhai Patel and who would eventually change our thought
process forever. We were welcomed into the land of toilets where everything was toilet
themed. There was the toilet garden and also the toilet café. But what we loved the most was
the session he had with us inside speaking to us. As we entered, we were made to wear
miniature dolls on our arms which we later came to know, symbolized as a remembrance for
us to realize the problems faced by women in India, our mothers, our sisters, our daughters
due to lack of proper toilet facilities. JayeshBhai spoke about how this journey of making
toilets for the people of India started by his father became such an integral part of our life,
how in an Indian household, toilets are disregarded but infact toilets are one of the most
important places and must be at par with temples because temples cleanse our soul and toilets
cleanse our body. Whatever, he spoke on that day was a new inspiration in every sentence.
He also did a very interesting activity where everyone was given a card and a task was
specified on that card and each one of us had to do that activity as soon as possible. My task
to “translate a news article and make my colleagues hear it” and I did my activity that day
itself at night after dinner. Then Jayeshbhai took us on a tour of toilet garden, toilet café and
human waste fertilisation plant. Then, we had a group picture and then we taken to the
Sabarmati Ashram gift shop run by an NGO where no one bought anything as the prices were
too high but it was a good initiative. After that, we all returned together in our GNLU bus.
Coming back, we all felt that this small visit shall always remain to play an integral part in
some point in our lives hence I am thankful to the college authorities for taking us for this
visit.