First, we have to find the museum.
After a 30-minute Delhi metro ride, starting on the Violet line and then transferring to the Magenta line, and after closely consulting Google Maps, we’re pretty sure we got this. It’s a museum, so signs are everywhere, right? Not so much. The metro gates lead us outside, and then we’re on our own.
Our Hindi is limited, we’re only a few months into our year of living in India. It’s getting hot and uncomfortable. We’re in an area of Delhi we’re not familiar with. Some very kind people gesture and point, and we go down an alley. But that’s not right either. Then we find a guard who asks if we are trying to find the museum. Success!
We were looking for the Sulabh International Toilet Museum, established in 1992, and run by Sulabh International, an India-based social service organization working to promote human rights, environmental sanitation, non-conventional sources of energy, waste management and social reforms through education, according to their website.1 In our few months of living in Delhi, we have visited the National Museum, the National Gallery of Modern Art, and the Nehru Museum and Library. If it’s a Delhi-based museum, no matter how big or small it is, we are trying to see it. The toilet museum is free, open seven days a week, and offers guides, at no charge, to walk you through the space and explain its mission and collection.
The museum aims to tell the history of sanitation and hygiene, charting the evolution of toilets in different places and time periods.2 Despite tackling such massive topics, the museum itself is quite modest. Taking up only one large room, it is still an illuminating journey through history and culture. Though the pictures, signs, and exhibits have clearly spent time in the Indian heat, they are well cared for and informative.
Once you enter the museum, there is no sign posted telling you where to begin. You are free to start wherever, although an immediate draw is the museum’s collection of unique and historical toilets. There are Victorian-era painted toilets, a literal throne made of varnished wood, and eco-friendly toilets made to be portable and used by hunters and soldiers. The toilets are gorgeous and fascinating, but there’s so much more to the room.
After a few minutes of gawking at the walls, overwhelmed by the sheer volume of information before our eyes, Sulabh sends a friendly docent to walk us through the museum, explaining the history of sanitation in India and around the world. It’s clear from the beginning that the volunteer docents are passionate about their jobs and the museum.
The guide walks us through ancient toilets of the world and the logistic difficulties of sanitation in India, from rural areas to densely populated forts. A range of methods have been used, from underground to overground pits to complicated sewage systems. As time went on, toilets became more of a priority and a status symbol, hence the lavishly decorated ones on display.
The museum is impressively comprehensive. From the actual construction of toilets around the world—materials, location, differences between royal sanitation and rural—to containment of waste during the Black Death, sketches of Leonardo Da Vinci’s flush toilet, ancient techniques for sanitation and etiquette still in place today, and even poetry, we have never felt more entrenched in the subject. Everything is interspersed with plaques declaring the museum “most unique,” “most interesting,” and incredibly well-attended. Between the history provided, as well as a section on modern toilets and the toilet’s role in humor, it is easy to see why.
Any twelve year old, or someone with a twelve year old’s sense of humor, will tell you that toilets are a rich source of humor, and Sulabh does not shy away from this. In fact it embraces the jokes. International cartoons and advertisements cover an entire wall, detailing the puns and giggles surrounding toilet humor, as well as knick-knacks and toys.
A nearby section showcases modern innovations in toilet technology, like self-cleaning public toilets or toilets that disappear below ground when not in use. Highlights from this section include a house built to resemble a toilet and a restaurant in Taiwan where patrons sit on toilets (thankfully not in use) and the food is served out of miniature toilet bowls. The section concludes with toilets of the rich and famous (stars, they’re just like us!) as well as a look at the toilets found in palaces, yachts, and the International Space Station—at $19 million, it’s been dubbed the costliest toilet ever constructed.
Although they’re comfortable laughing about it here, the problems surrounding sanitation in India are significant. Open defecation is a common sight, even in a large city like Delhi, but it is much more prevalent in rural villages, especially in the country’s north.3 Some Indians view open defecation as both physically and spiritually cleansing—the time away from one’s house, the walk, the communion with nature. But the cleaning of latrines themselves is often debilitating and humiliating, not to mention dangerous, and is left to members of the perceived Dalit (once referred to as Untouchables) castes.4 The situation is improving, but despite Sulabh and other NGO and governmental missions, open defecation is still an issue in many areas. According to a 2014 World Health Organization report, 597 million people in India practice open defecation.5 Even as India’s economy grows and the nation occupies a larger presence on the international stage, open defecation persists.6
After being thoroughly schooled in the history of sanitation, our docent takes us to the more practical aspects of the museum, in which he clearly takes well-deserved pride. Outside, on a sunny Delhi day, we get the lowdown on their low-cost toilet solutions, several models of efficient and easy-to-clean toilets that last between 5-10 years depending on the family size using them. Sulabh has trained masons and other skilled workers to install these toilets in rural villages across India.
We’re shown the effluent treatment system, the products of which can be used to fertilize and water gardens, one of which is at the museum complex. In drought-stricken areas, access to another source of water safe for agriculture and cleaning of public toilets, especially at a low cost, is rare, so this technology could save lives.
Sulabh operates over 8000 public toilets in India, 200 of which are linked to treatment facilities where the products of waste, biogas, are repurposed to produce fuel for lighting and kitchen use. Through years of experimentation, Sulabh has discovered methods of treatment to make the biogas both safe and less offensive to the public. Indeed, it’s difficult to imagine the origins of energy in this lovely garden, lit by small torches, with an unobstructed view of the Delhi sky.
As we leave, we consider that at least part of the reason for our visit was jocular curiosity, which Sulabh embraces, but while you’re encouraged to giggle, you are also encouraged to look at your neighborhood, sewers and drains and pigs rooting around, as you walk to the metro station. For such an immense and important topic, Sulabh tackles it with an exhaustive expertise and an open heart.
- “About Us,” Sulabh Toilet Museum, accessed August 27, 2019, http://www.sulabhtoiletmuseum.org/about-us/
- “About Us.”
- Diane Coffey and Dean Spears, Where India Goes: Abandoned Toilets, Stunted Development and the Costs of Caste (Noida, Uttar Pradesh: HarperCollins Publishers India, 2017), 49-64.
- Anand Teltumbde, “No Swachh Bharat without Annihilation of Caste,” Economic & Political Weekly 49 (November 8, 2014): 11–12.
- Cherly Travasso, “India Plans to Track Use of Toilets in Rural Areas to Encourage Their Use,” BMJ: British Medical Journal 350 (Jan. 5, 2015): 154; Coffey and Spears, Where India Goes, 9.
- For more on the relationships between caste, sanitation, and the politics of purity and cleanliness, see Dipankar Gupta, “Caste and Politics: Identity over System,” Annual Review of Anthropology 34 (2005): 409–27; Damaris Lüthi, “Private Cleanliness, Public Mess: Purity, Pollution and Space in Kottar, South India,” Urban Pollution: Cultural Meanings, Social Practices 15 (2010): 57–85.
