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Words_Kate McAuley “Smile! You’re in Sulabh,” demands the plasterboard sign leading to the world’s only toilet museum. It hardly seems necessary. Most visitors have trouble suppressing eruptions of giggles when visiting the Sulabh International Museum.
It’s basic humour, and the museum employees are in on the gag as they talk visitors through the historical evolution of the toilet and sanitation, from the drainage systems developed in the ancient Pakistani city of Mehenjo-daro in 2500BC to how astronauts do their business in zero gravity in contraptions costing millions. The staff delight in using every colourful euphemism you can imagine while showing off Sulabh’s quirky collection, which includes French toilets disguised to look like a stack of English literary works and a Japanese throne that wouldn’t look out of place on the Starship Enterprise.
It was a question that continued to bug Dr Pathak. So much so, that as a young, newly married man, he left his family to go and live with untouchables for three months. It was there that he realised that with the aid of hygienic toilets, which were cheap and easy to build, he could help put an end to public defecation and the awful sanitation that was causing so much illness among the poorest Indians.
When asked about his favourite exhibit, he laughs loudly and reveals a replica of King Louis XIV’s elaborate water closet. “He had a commode built under his throne so he could relieve himself in public.” Giggle. Smile. Blush. Dr Pathak is in on the joke too. |
With a charismatic curator who’s improved the lives of millions, the world’s first toilet museum inevitably inspires juvenile jokes and below-the-belt puns
It’s easy to understand. In most conversations any mention of the loo results in red cheeks and embarrassed chuckles.
It’s not, however, all fun and games. The museum, which was founded by Dr Bindeshwar Pathak, is just a small part of a much larger NGO that has been building hygienic and sanitary private and public toilets across the country since 1970. “I started Sulabh to assist in changing the caste system and to put an end to the scavenger castes – the untouchables – being forced to clean up human waste,” says Dr Pathak. “I went about this mission to fulfil the dreams of Mohandas Gandhi, who also wanted to abolish this system.”
Like most stories of this ilk, particularly those that deal with changing entrenched social attitudes, Dr Pathak has faced his fair share of detractors. “I come from an orthodox Brahmin family. When I was a child I was forced to carry out a purifying ritual after my family saw me with an untouchable. I didn’t understand why they were considered different from us.”
And so, with a toilet system he designed himself, he began Sulabh International, which since its inception has built 1.2 million in-house toilets and 7,500 public toilets nationwide. “Around 10 million people use these toilets every day,” Dr Pathak recounts with pride. To many he’s a hero.
And the museum? “Oh we built that just for fun,” he says. “I got the idea while I was at Madame Tussauds waxworks museum in London. I had such a good time I thought I should build something like it in Delhi, but all I knew about was toilets so this is what we made.”