What the British found quite disgusting during their long uninvited stay in India was that Indians defecated in open fields, squatting. The Western world picked up and echoed this narrative and these toilet practices were painted as decisively inferior. A massive Swachh Bharat mission has now been launched on a war footing and by this year its target is to make India free of this archaic custom of open defecation—which has to go, as it is anachronistic.
To appreciate our old toilet customs, we may dabble a bit with history and geography. What lay at their root was the Indian obsession with avoiding ‘pollution’ and ‘impurities’; the worst were (and are) faeces of humans, including one’s own. Therefore, the farther away from home one disposed of human excreta, the better it was. This meant defecating in the open, which was considered a very desirable cultural habit. Using water to clean oneself thereafter was/is non-negotiable and several classes insisted on a complete bath after the unclean act was over and also changing into fresh clothes.