Baba Amte

Amte was born on 26 December 1914 at Hinganghat in what is now Maharashtra, the eldest of eight children of Devidas Amte, an official in the colonial administration. He grew up in considerable affluence. He studied law, taking B.A. and LL.B. degrees, and built a legal practice at Wardha.

Amte was drawn into the independence movement and in 1942 acted as a defence lawyer for leaders jailed during the Quit India movement. He spent time at Mahatma Gandhi's Sevagram ashram and became a committed Gandhian; Gandhi gave him the name Abhayasadhak, or fearless seeker of truth.

An encounter with a man named Tulshiram, who was in an advanced stage of leprosy, redirected his life towards the disease and the stigma attached to it. To demonstrate that leprosy was not readily contagious, Amte allowed bacilli to be injected into his own body.

On 15 August 1949 Amte and his wife Sadhana founded Anandwan, initially a leprosy hospital, in Maharashtra. It developed into a self-sustaining community offering medical care, vocational training and handicraft manufacture, eventually housing several thousand residents alongside schools for blind and deaf children, an orphanage and a university. The parent body is the Maharogi Sewa Samiti.

In 1973 Amte established Lok Biradari Prakalp at Hemalkasa in Gadchiroli district, serving the Madia Gond tribal community with a school, a hospital and a wildlife orphanage. The project has since been run by his son Prakash Amte and daughter-in-law Mandakini, both doctors.

In 1985, aged 72, Amte led the Bharat Jodo (Knit India) march of more than 3,000 miles from Kanyakumari to Kashmir to promote national unity; a second march of some 1,800 miles from Assam to Gujarat followed three years later. In 1990 he left Anandwan to join Medha Patkar in the Narmada Bachao Andolan against the Sardar Sarovar dam, living on the banks of the Narmada for seven years.

Amte died at Anandwan on 9 February 2008, aged 93. In keeping with his environmental convictions he chose burial rather than cremation.

Amte received the Padma Shri in 1971 and the Padma Vibhushan in 1986. Other honours included the Jamnalal Bajaj Award (1979), the Ramon Magsaysay Award (1985), the United Nations Prize in the Field of Human Rights (1988), the Templeton Prize (1990, shared with Charles Birch), the Right Livelihood Award (1991), the Gandhi Peace Prize (1999), the Dr Ambedkar International Award for Social Change (1999) and the Maharashtra Bhushan Award (2004).

He was also awarded honorary doctorates by Nagpur University (1980), the University of Pune (1985–86), the Tata Institute of Social Sciences and Visva-Bharati University, which conferred the Desikottama in 1988.[3][4]