Spiritual Devotion as Social Action: Gandhian Social Engineering in Bharati Sarabhai’s The Well of the People

Abstract

This paper critically examines Bharati Sarabhai’s play The Well of the People (1943) within the theoretical framework of Social Engineering and the Gandhian concept of Daridra Narayana. The play discusses themes such as untouchability, spiritual devotion and social reform within a rural Indian setting. The protagonist of the play, Rani, is an elderly, physically disabled Brahmin widow who saves money for a pilgrimage to Kashi but uses those savings to construct a temple well for the “untouchables” of her village. Thus, she symbolically redefines ritual purity and caste hierarchies. This research adopts ‘close reading’ and ‘textual analyses’ within the frameworks of Alexander and Schmidt’s ‘Social Engineering’ and Gandhian socio-political thought. In pre-independence India, untouchables were not allowed to enter temples and to touch the water from the well in the name of purity. But, in the play, the protagonist builds a temple well for the untouchables with the money she saved for her pilgrimage to Kashi. Her decision reflects the Gandhian principle of Daridra Narayana, which means ‘service to the oppressed is service to God’, thereby transforming spiritual devotion into social action. The study argues that Sarabhai advocates caste reform not through confrontation, but through ethical persuasion grounded in Gandhian ideology. By foregrounding a Brahmin woman as the agent of reform, the play suggests a modern way of leadership which reimagines caste relations through inclusion and social responsibility. Thus, the paper showcases The Well of the People as a literary expression of Gandhian social engineering aimed to address untouchability in pre-independence India.