Baba Amte, a follower of Mohandas Gandhi whose dedication to helping the lepers of India brought him the Templeton Prize and many other international awards, died on Feb. 9 at his shelter for leprosy patients in the western Indian state of Maharashtra. He was 93.
The cause was age-related ailments, his eldest son Vikas Amte said.
Baba Amte, who was trained as a lawyer, turned from an early life of hunting, playing sports, driving fancy cars and writing film reviews to working with the poor of his country, but his direction was irrevocably determined by an encounter with a destitute leper.
After that, he gave up his father's huge estate and dedicated himself to the service of lepers. To the end of his life, he worked, marched and protested for better treatment for them and the rest of India's least powerful.
Murlidhar Devidas Amte -- later known by the honorific "baba" -- was born on Dec. 24, 1914, in Hingaighat in Maharashtra, the eldest son of a Brahmin landlord.
Even in his youth, Amte rebeled against injustice and discrimination on the basis of birth, caste and creed.
Despite his parents' disapproval, he often ate with servants and played with lower-caste children.
Amte was inspired by the ideas of philosopher Karl Marx, Chinese leader Mao Zedong (
But he was definitively influenced by Gandhi's ideals of simplicity and truth and his fight against injustice. He spent time at Gandhi's ashram in Sevagram, took part in his movement to get the British to leave India in 1942 and organized lawyers to defend the movement's jailed leaders.
He was also imprisoned.
Seeing grim poverty in and around his father's large estate, he gave up his lucrative law practice in his early 30s and began working with untouchable sweepers and night soil carriers. He let his hair and fingernails grow and took a vow of celibacy.
That vow ended one day when he saw Indu Ghuleshastri quietly slip away from her sister's wedding festivities to help an elderly maid wash clothes.
"I told her parents that I was the suitable groom for her," he said.
The two married in 1946.
Amte and Indu, renamed Sadhna after their marriage, set up a labor ashram near Warora.
One rainy night on his way home, he saw a leper named Tulshiram lying naked by the road.
Horrified by the sight of his fingerless and maggot-ridden body and fearing infection, Amte at first ran home, but he returned when his conscience got the better of him, fed the man with his own hands and gave him shelter for the short remainder of his life.
After that, Amte read voraciously about leprosy and worked at the Warora leprosy clinic.
He took a course on leprosy at the Calcutta School of Tropical Medicine in 1949 and even let his body be used for an unsuccessful experiment in growing leprosy germs.
In 1951, he established his own commune for lepers, called Anandvan, on rocky land in Maharashtra State that was covered with scrubby vegetation and infested with scorpions and snakes.
The nearest well was more than a mile away. With help from his wife, their young sons, six leprosy patients and a lame cow and a dog, he turned the barren place into a thick forest.
Later, 50 young volunteers from dozens of countries would work for three-month stints at Anandvan, which became the nerve center of Amte's relentless crusade.
His goal was to help leprosy patients become self-confident and capable of cooperative and creative leadership.
By the 1950s, with a newly discovered sulfone drug for leprosy available, he began treating patients in more than 60 villages around Warora.
Despite having a back ailment later in his life, Amte took part in long protest marches for causes including environmentalism, religious tolerance, peace and justice.
He was a supporter of India's indigenous tribes and opposed the construction of a "super dam" project on one of India's largest rivers; it eventually destroyed many villages.
To the end of his life, he emulated Gandhi in wearing homespun clothes and living a simple life while working for village industry and the empowerment of ordinary people.
In addition to the Templeton Prize, which he won in 1990, his awards included the 1988 UN Human Rights Prize.
Archeologists in Peru on Thursday said they found the 5,000-year-old remains of a noblewoman at the sacred city of Caral, revealing the important role played by women in the oldest center of civilization in the Americas. “What has been discovered corresponds to a woman who apparently had elevated status, an elite woman,” archeologist David Palomino said. The mummy was found in Aspero, a sacred site within the city of Caral that was a garbage dump for more than 30 years until becoming an archeological site in the 1990s. Palomino said the carefully preserved remains, dating to 3,000BC, contained skin, part of the
‘WATER WARFARE’: A Pakistani official called India’s suspension of a 65-year-old treaty on the sharing of waters from the Indus River ‘a cowardly, illegal move’ Pakistan yesterday canceled visas for Indian nationals, closed its airspace for all Indian-owned or operated airlines, and suspended all trade with India, including to and from any third country. The retaliatory measures follow India’s decision to suspend visas for Pakistani nationals in the aftermath of a deadly attack by shooters in Kashmir that killed 26 people, mostly tourists. The rare attack on civilians shocked and outraged India and prompted calls for action against their country’s archenemy, Pakistan. New Delhi did not publicly produce evidence connecting the attack to its neighbor, but said it had “cross-border” links to Pakistan. Pakistan denied any connection to
TRUMP EFFECT: The win capped one of the most dramatic turnarounds in Canadian political history after the Conservatives had led the Liberals by more than 20 points Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney yesterday pledged to win US President Donald Trump’s trade war after winning Canada’s election and leading his Liberal Party to another term in power. Following a campaign dominated by Trump’s tariffs and annexation threats, Carney promised to chart “a new path forward” in a world “fundamentally changed” by a US that is newly hostile to free trade. “We are over the shock of the American betrayal, but we should never forget the lessons,” said Carney, who led the central banks of Canada and the UK before entering politics earlier this year. “We will win this trade war and
Armed with 4,000 eggs and a truckload of sugar and cream, French pastry chefs on Wednesday completed a 121.8m-long strawberry cake that they have claimed is the world’s longest ever made. Youssef El Gatou brought together 20 chefs to make the 1.2 tonne masterpiece that took a week to complete and was set out on tables in an ice rink in the Paris suburb town of Argenteuil for residents to inspect. The effort overtook a 100.48m-long strawberry cake made in the Italian town of San Mauro Torinese in 2019. El Gatou’s cake also used 350kg of strawberries, 150kg of sugar and 415kg of
RSS