TOWARDS ELIMINATION OF STIGMA & UNTOUCHABILITY: A Case for Leprosy

© 2019 Indian Journal of Medical Research, published by Wolters Kluwer Medknow for Director-General, Indian Council of Medical Research “Gandhibhai, do not come near us, we are lepers,” cried a group of people, being approached by Gandhiji on seeing that they were reluctant to join the crowd when he was addressing a gathering at Natal (South Africa) on the occasion of the founding of the Indian Congress. This was just his second experience with Leprosy and it was a shocking incident to him when he listened to the travails of this group of people. They were alone in their suffering and had been rejected by their own families. Gandhiji invited them to his home and cleaned their wounds, gave them food to eat, and heard their life stories and how they survived in the open living in the ruins some distance from the village. He treated not just this group of people but many others. This started one of the other satyagrahas of Gandhiji, the satyagraha to heal and not just treat. Gandhiji was a big crusader against leprosy and his concern for this disease was initiated from his own home at Porbandar. At the impressionable age of 13 years he had come into close contact with a man named Ladha Maharaj who used to recite verses from the Ramayana to Gandhiji’s sick father. Ladha Maharaj, it was believed, had been completely cured TOWARDS ELIMINATION OF STIGMA & UNTOUCHABILITY A Case for Leprosy