Historical Development of Low-Cost Flush Toilets in India

Gandhi, Gandhians, and “Liberation of Scavengers”

抄録

This article elucidates the historical process of the development of low-cost flush toilets in contemporary India, as a part of the project for the “liberation of manual scavengers.” This article focuses on the specific social movements led by M. K. Gandhi and his followers or co-workers, called Gandhians, from both socio-cultural and technological aspects. Gandhi attempted to focus on the dignified notion of scavenging work. He exhorted to improve the working environments in which scavengers had engaged to eradicate the untouchability. The Gandhians intended to change the structure of toilets in which one would be totally separated from their own waste. Gandians finally introduced twin-pit pour-flush toilets into households. This process brought modern sanitation discourse and knowledge spread to the public about the cause of discrimination against “scavengers” coming from their insanitary working condition, rather than from ritual pollution. In the end, the development process of the low-cost flush toilets by Gandhians, as the project for the “liberation of scavengers,” paradoxically embodied Gandhi’s original claim of untouchability as a “rule of sanitation” into a practical level.