Maniyanur is one of our famine relief villages. The Harijan part of it consists entirely of half-starved cobblers. Maniyanur is the weekly market place for all the villagers a good distance around, and so the authorities have, as is their rule, fixed up an arrack shop and a big toddy tavern there. Both of them are flourishing.
Our cobbler hamlet too was well in the clutches of the toddy tavern until the year our relief work began. Then, at our insistence, the men took a pledge of total abstinence, and they have on the whole kept their word.
Munian came up to my hut one Thursday, leading a group of his fellow cobbler-villagers. Thursday was their day for taking grain from the Ashram at half price.
“What has happened?” I asked.
“Nothing. They have drunk toddy and we have come for you to inquire into it.”
I was in the midst of writing letters and reminders to organisations.
“If you have paid money for toddy,” I said impatiently, “it means you can spare money for buying your grain at the market and we may now stop our relief. If you like to drink, you may.”
I thought I should impress on them that they were not obliging anyone but themselves by giving up the consumption of liquor.
“Who are the culprits?” I asked.
“Two men” replied Munian.
“Are they here?”
“One of them is here, the other has not come to take his grain today. His wife has come.”
“Is the offence admitted?” I inquired.
“He came home drunk last and was quarrelling with his wife. The whole village knows, and they must admit it,” said Munian.
“What do you say?” I asked the man who was being accused of drinking.
“It is true that I was shouting at my wife last night. But may not a man quarrel with his wife? Don’t such things happen in married life?”
“Tell me whether you drunk toddy or whether the charge is false. If even one of you buys toddy we must stop relief for the whole village,” I said.
“It is false,” replied the man.
“What do the rest say?” I questioned.
And they all said that it was true that the two had quarrelled, but they did not know about the drinking.
“Then how does Munian bring this accusation against you?” I inquired of the man charged. “Does he bear any ill-will against you?”
“Yes, he does,” the man replied, adding, “because I disclosed that grain was being taken out on tickets of absent men who were away for work on the hills.”
“Is that so?” I asked Munian.
“Please ask this old man to say if his son did not drink. He is the accused man’s father and also my father’s brother, and he is father to both of us. Let his word decide the question,” Munian replied.
“Well, old man,” I asked the referee, “did your son drink?”
“He was making noise last night. It is true.”
“But had he drunk toddy?” I pressed.
“No, he had not taken drink, he was only quarrelling and making noise.”
“Let him say it on oath,” Munian interrupted.
They all assented.
I cast about in my mind as to where and how I should administer the oath. I had not the slightest belief that it would make any difference. The old man had already spoken in support of his son, and I said to myself, “let me go through the formality and dispose of the matter.” Eighteen years of patience at the Bar had left little belief in me about oaths and affirmations.
I was inclined on the whole, on the basis of their behaviour and the stories they told on either side, to believe that the charge of drinking in breach of the pledge was false, and that the young man’s allegation that he was disliked for disclosing the villagers’ trick of obtaining grain in the name of absentees, was probably true.
While I was thus turning the business over in my mind, I saw my sandals lying below. I called the old man up.
“You all live by working on leather, don’t you?” I asked.
“Yes,” the old man replied.
“Here is leather that feeds you. Take it up in both your hands,” I said pointing to my pair of sandals.
He took them up.
“Say after me”, I said, “upon this leather that feeds me, and before God.”
“He repeated the words.
“Did your son drink?” I asked the man.
“Yes, he did,” confessed the old man, looking at me with dazed, wide-open eyes.
It took my breath away. Miracles happen sometimes. This one overwhelmed me.
“Will you take your oath too?” I asked the young culprit. I thought he would stick to his denial. He took up the sandals and said, “Yes, I did drink.”
This completed an unforgettable experience.
We fined him four annas. This was paid at once and added to the Relief Fund. I asked all the men to swear, one by one, with the same sandals in hand that they would never again touch toddy. They took the oath. I dismissed them.
There my worn-out sandals lay which these poor people had sanctified and left, mutely saying, “No! you are wrong in losing faith. Truth and reverence are not dead.”
Country sandals are not merely useful things for one’s feet. They embody the bread and the faith of poor cobblers. One has to tread lightly and reverently in them.
(This story first appeared in Gandhiji’s “Young India” in 1929. It was later published in Rajaji’s “Stories for the Innocent” by Bhavan’s Publication.
It is reprinted in Bhavan’s Journal, VOL. XXIII, No 8, November 7, 1976 [PDF below])
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