Santbal A Saint with a Difference

Author(s): T U Mehta
Publisher: Navjivan Prakashan Mandir

Page 83

Cholera at Viramgam :
Viramgam is a town situated on the border of Saurashtra and Gujarat. The population is mixed, but there are many families of Jains residing there. The whole Jain cominunity is financially happy as elsewhere. In 1945 A. D. the whole town was overtaken by the spread of cholera. It was a man-made disaster as the people seriously lacked in public hygiene and indiscriminately threw garbage and dirt at any place in narrow streets which were full of human excreta. The town had a beautifully carved protection wall and a lake which is constructed by Minaldevi during the Solanki period of history. However, all the carvings of the wall were smeared with dirt and excreta. Even the lake was polluted and the human excreta on the banks of the lake was dissolved in rain water and mixed with the lake water. The whole area was smelling of dirt and dampness. Cholera was an inevitable result of all this.
Santbalji visited this town knowing of the necessity of relief work there. Jain Upashraya, where Jain Saints are supposed to lodge, was prohibited for his stay. So he put up at a house of private ownership. He assessed the situation and noted that the relief work started by the Government was of providing medicines and injections only. No body was doing anything to touch the root cause of the malady which was the accumulation of layers and layers of garbage and excreta in the damp soil of streets producing poisonous germs, bacteria and gas-street excreta was remaining uncovered.
Next morning people of Viramgam saw Santbal moving from place to place in the open with a bag of dry ash covering open excreta. People were amazed seeing a Jain Sadhu doing this act of public service as the Sadhus, who were nursing steriotype ideas about their duty, never thought even in their dreams that one of them would be doing such service in public. However, some
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