Begging is always a crime—whether it is
begging for freedom, begging for jobs or begging for money. The beggar
is the man who has acknowledged defeat at the hands of destiny in the
struggle for existence. He is a weakling and a coward. He deserves not
pity but contempt. In time, we realised the futility of the begging
attitude and learnt that by struggle alone we could obtain freedom.
Our begging for service is met with like
contempt by a employer. We are made to feel that governments must be
forced to solve unemployment under active pressure. And when we treat
the beggar in the street in the same spirit of contempt, it will also
cure him of the habit of begging and utter reliance on others.
Of course, all this refers to the
able-bodied beggars, who demand alms in the name of religion or God. It
was an evil day for our country when begging implies religious
salvation. No man has a right to beg who has the ability to earn his
livelihood by the sweat of his brow.
But there is another class of beggars
who stand on a different footing. These are the disabled, the deformed
and the diseased. Being by birth or accident handicapped, they beg for
their living.; but in many cases they are forced to beg on behalf of a
band of the most cruel and heartless employers who make capital out of
their misfortune.
In England, there are Poor Law
institutions maintained by the community. Those who are rendered unfit
for work and have none to support, are removed to the charitable
institutions like the Parish houses generally attached to the church and
kept there as a charge on society. There are also vagrancy law6 that
make begging by the able-bodied a punishable crime. The State looks
after them in homes maintained for the purpose. In socialist countries,
the disabled are guaranteed pensions by the State.
In our country, however, the problem is
always before the public, urgently demanding a solution. On every public
thoroughfare, at the steps of every restaurant, the gates of every
temple—all are crowded with beggars. Familiarity with the sight of the
diseased and the maimed has dulled our human sensibility and paralysed
our conscience. We just look at them and pass on a small piece of coin
into an outstretched palm. We forget that the diseased are very often a
social menace and should be prevented from spreading contagion by
rounding them up as the disabled and the deformed are a social scourge.
The work should be taken up by municipalities and district Panchaeyts
and proper funds should be created for their maintenance. The rich who
live in plenty must come to the help of their unfortunate brethren in
slums and hovels.
The problem of the able-bodied beggars,
however, is vexatious. There are two classes of them. One class consists
of the genuine poor who beg because they cannot find employment.
Governments in the West can stop them from begging, because they accept
partial responsibility for feeding them. But here our governments have
no such responsibility and legislation against these is impossible
because of religious taboo.
But the class of religious mendicants
present a ticklish problem. We hardly know how to deal with them. We
must examine how far it is possible to bring them under religious
organizations,—religious trusts managed by the temples and mosques and
churches. Let funds be collected from those whose religious sense detest
(hate) the parasites and let charity be distributed by them. But the
humiliating habit of begging from door to door must not be encouraged.
And that reminds us of an another class
of mendicants who were once led by that Prince of Beggars, Mahatma
Gandhi. They beg for hospitals, for orphanages, for charitable
institutions. They haunt the streets, they invade the trams, they greet
you in your office with a donation book or collection box; they are
everywhere with their mute appeal on behalf not of themselves, but of
the suffering humanity. They rouse the social conscience. Let us open
our hearts and our purse strings to them generously.