Baba Amte

Murlidhar Devidas Amte, better known by his stage name Baba Amte, was an Indian social worker and activist who lived from 26 December 1914 to 9 February 2008. He is well recognised for his work in the rehabilitation and empowerment of leprosy patients. He has won various honours and accolades, including the Padma Vibhushan, the Templeton Prize, the Ramon Magsaysay Award, the Gandhi Peace Prize, the Dr. Ambedkar International Award, and the Jamnalal Bajaj Award. He is frequently referred to be India’s modern Gandhi.

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About Baba Amte

Murlidhar Devidas “Baba” Amte was born on December 26, 1914, in Hinganghat, Maharashtra, into a prosperous Deshastha Brahmin family. Devidas Amte, his father, was an employee of the district administration and revenue collecting divisions of the colonial Indian government. Baba is the moniker Murlidhar Amte adopted as a child. Sadhanatai Amte, his wife, adds that he became known as Baba because his parents called him by that name rather than because “he was recognised as a saint or a saintly person.” Amte was the eighth child and the oldest. Being the oldest child of a wealthy landowner, he enjoyed a carefree childhood full of sports and hunting. He started hunting bears and deer at the age of fourteen and had his own gun. When he reached driving age, a Singer Sports car with panther-skin-covered seats was handed to him. Despite coming from an affluent family, he was always conscious of the widespread class inequalities in Indian society. He used to add, “Families like my family have a certain callousness.” He rebelled against the heavy barriers that were put up to keep people from witnessing the suffering in the outer world.

Death

Amte passed away from ailments associated with ageing at Anandwan in Maharashtra on February 9th, 2008. In keeping with his beliefs as an environmentalist and social reformer, he chose burial over cremation.

Dedicated Works of Baba Amte

He became a lawyer and established a prosperous profession in Wardha. He quickly got involved in the fight for Indian independence, and in 1942 he started representing Indian leaders who were being held in prison by the colonial authority due to their participation in the Quit India movement. He visited the ashram founded by Mahatma Gandhi in Sevagram for a while and adopted Gandhism. He put Gandhism into practice by using a charkha to spin yarn and by dressing in khadi. Gandhi gave Dr. Amte the moniker Abhay Sadhak (Fearless Seeker of Truth) after learning that he had protected a girl from the obscene remarks of some British soldiers. However, he became terrified after coming into contact with a living corpse and Tulshiram, a leprosy patient. Amte, who had never been afraid of anything prior to that episode and had previously engaged in combat with British soldiers in order to defend the honour of an Indian woman, as well as been challenged by Warora sweepers to clean the gutters, trembled in horror at witnessing Tulshiram’s suffering. Amte sought to instil the idea that a society cannot effectively aid leprosy victims unless it is rid of the misconceptions and “Mental Leprosy” linked with the disease. He once gave himself an injection of a patient suffering from bacilli to disprove the notion that the illness was highly contagious.

Leprosy patients back then faced social shame and were shunned by Indian society. Amte made an effort to refute the widely held assumption that leprosy was highly contagious; in an effort to do so, he even consented to have bacilli from a leper injected into him. However, Baba Amte and his wife prioritised the care and treatment of individuals suffering from the dreaded disease leprosy and mainstreamed them. They lived among the affected and saw to it that they received excellent medical care, which put an end to their disease’s misery. He set up small-scale handicraft manufacturing and vocational training for the patients who had been treated and recovered, and he procured items made by them. He struggled and made an effort to dispel the misconceptions and stigma associated with treating leprosy as a sickness. In Maharashtra, Amte established three ashrams for the care and rehabilitation of leprosy patients, people with disabilities, and members of the underprivileged general population. He established a leprosy hospital at Anandvan under a tree on August 15th, 1949, along with his wife Sadhna Amte. Leprosy patients received medical attention as well as a life of dignity working in small and medium-sized enterprises like handicrafts and agriculture. Amte established the Lok Biradari Prakalp in 1973 to assist the Madia Gond tribe in the Gadchiroli District.

Baba Amte is also engaged in other socioeconomic cause initiatives. For example, in 1985, he started the first Knit India Mission for Peace by walking more than 3,000 miles from Kanyakumari to Kashmir at the age of 72 to promote unity among Indians. Three years later, he organised a second march by travelling more than 1,800 miles from Assam to Gujarat. He also took part in the 1990 Narmada Bachao Andolan, abandoning Anandwan and residing on the Narmada River’s banks for seven years. Amte committed his entire life to a variety of different social issues, including the Narmada Bachao Andolan, the Quit India movement, and efforts to educate the public about the value of ecological harmony and wildlife preservation. Baba Amte received Padma Shri from the Indian government in 1971.

Anandwan

Anandwan, which means “Forest of Happiness” in Sanskrit, is an ashram and a community rehabilitation centre that was primarily founded for leprosy patients and the disabled from underprivileged sections of society. It is situated about 5 kilometres from Warora in the Chandrapur district of the Indian state of Maharashtra. Baba Amte, a well-known social activist, created it in 1949. Despite being located in one of Central India’s most underdeveloped districts, Chandrapur, the project, which is run by the organisation Maharogi Seva Samiti, has helped thousands of disadvantaged individuals, including those with leprosy, orthopaedic disabilities, vision and hearing impairments, and primitive tribal members, improve their ability to support themselves. Lok Biradari Prakalp and Somnath, a village for leprosy patients who have recovered, are two of its further projects. Anandwan was created by Baba Amte to be an independent ashram. In terms of bare necessities, residents are now self-sufficient. The ashram also features a number of small-scale, home-based businesses established by the residents that bring in money to pay for extra needs. Additionally, Baba Amte moulded Anandwan into an ecologically conscious society that practises recycling waste, conserving energy, and avoiding the use of natural resources that may otherwise result in their depletion. Two hospitals, a college, an orphanage, a school for the blind, a school for the deaf, and a technical wing can be found in Anandwan today. The principal administrator of Anandwan is Dr. Vikas Amte, the oldest son of Baba Amte.

Narmada Bachao Andolan with Medha Patkar

Amte moved away from Anandwan to live near the Narmada River in 1990. There, he joined the Narmada Bachao Andolan (“Save Narmada”) movement, which opposed the unjust eviction of locals and environmental harm brought on by the building of the Sardar Sarovar dam on the Narmada river.

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Dedicated Works of Family Members

Amte and Indu Ghuleshastri (later called Sadhanatai Amte) were wed. She contributed equally enthusiastically to her husband’s social work. Both of their daughters-in-law, Mandakini and Bharati, as well as their two sons, Vikas and Prakash Amte, are physicians. Each of the four committed their entire life to social service and causes related to those of the elder Amte. In the underdeveloped region of Gadchiroli in Maharashtra, Prakash and his wife Mandakini run a school, a hospital, and an orphanage for injured wild animals, including a lion and several leopards. The village of Hemalkasa is home to the Madia Gond tribe. After their marriage, she quit her job as a government physician and relocated to Hemalkasa to begin the projects. Dr. Digant and Aniket, their two sons, both dedicated their careers to the same causes. Mandakini and Prakash were given the Magsaysay Award for Community Leadership in the year 2008. Vikas, the eldest son of Amte, and his wife Bharati oversee activities at the hospital in Anandwan and coordinate them with satellite initiatives. A university, an orphanage, and schools for the blind and deaf are all located in Anandwan. Over 5,000 people live at the self-sufficient Anandwan ashram. Amte later established leprosy ashrams called “Somnath” and “Ashokwan”.

Baba Amte and Gandhism

Amte lived a simple life and adopted Gandhi’s philosophy. He wore khadi clothing produced on Anandwan’s looms. He adopted Gandhi’s vision of a self-sufficient village economy that empowers those who appear to be powerless and implemented it successfully in Anandwan. He was a key player in the fight for India’s independence using nonviolent methods. Amte also used Gandhi’s teachings to combat the government’s corruption, incompetence, and shoddy, short-sighted planning. Amte, however, never denied God. He once asserted that since there are millions of worlds, God must be quite active. Let’s finish our work independently.

Awards and Commemorations to Baba Amte

Honourary Titles to Baba Amte

Famous Quotes of Baba Amte

“I don’t want to be a great leader; I want to be a man who goes around with a little oilcan and when he sees a breakdown, offers his help. To me, the man who does that is greater than any holy man in saffron-coloured robes. The mechanic with the oilcan: that is my ideal in life.” – Self-description provided to British Journalist Graham Turner

“I took up leprosy work not to help anyone, but to overcome that fear in my life. That it worked out good for others was a by-product. But the fact is I did it to overcome fear.”

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