Page 76 - JyotipunjEng

95

disability to the society, and considered all such disabled
children as his own; and we can seldom find such merciful
people as Pappaji was; he extended his mercy and emotion to
everybody suffering in this way. This school of Pappaji in Rajkot
is a living memorial of his pity and mercy.

Pappaji was affectionately attached to this deaf and dumb
school. Sometimes it appeared that he loved the school more
than his family members.

The viewpoint of Pappaji towards the disabled is the
practical form of the Sangh’s doctrine. How should our society
feel for the disabled? If there is a disabled person in a family,
his responsibility does not lie on the family alone. If the family
alone has to fight this calamity, if it has to suffer from it, if it has
to sacrifice everything of its own for it, we cannot call it a healthy
sign for any society. A healthy society is the one that considers
all disabled people as its own who are suffering from some
deformity or disability by birth, and the responsibility to look
after such people lies not on the family alone; rather the entire
society should come out collectively to carry out this
responsibility.

If the healthy society took over the responsibility of a
disabled person, the people of his family and other people of
society would become happy, and they would not take it as a
burden. You must not show pity or mercy for the disabled, but
you must look at them with dutifulness. They are not the subject
of sympathy, they are the subject of sensitivity. There should be
homogeneous pity and emotion; the society should feel the pity
as a disabled person feels. The feeling that the world is mine is
equally shared by a disabled person too. This emotion of his
should be respected, this emotion of his should be cultivated,
and if the society falls back in doing so, it would be considered
disabled – we ought to think so.

The shortcoming or disability of a body organ cannot be
considered a handicap, it is erroneous to think so. If I cannot
feel the situation and agony that a disabled person is passing
through, I must be a disabled person myself despite having
healthy legs, hands, eyes and nose – we are bound to think this