Baba Amte, who passed
away on 9 February 2008, was an Indian lawyer and
social activist who devoted his life to India’s poorest and least powerful
and especially to the care of those individuals who suffered from leprosy. His
work earned him numerous international awards, notably, the 1988 UN Human
Rights Prize, a share of the 1990 Templeton Prize, and the 1999 Gandhi
Peace Prize.
Amte was born into an
affluent Brahmin family and grew up in a life of privilege. After earning
a law degree in 1936, he set up a legal practice. In 1942 he acted as a
defense lawyer for those imprisoned for participating in Mahatma Gandhi’s
Quit India campaign against the British occupation of India. Influenced by
Gandhi’s nonviolent fight for justice, Amte abandoned his legal career in
the 1940s and settled in Gandhi’s ashram in Sevagram, Maharashtra, India,
working among the downtrodden.
After an encounter with a
man suffering from advanced leprosy, Amte’s attention turned to that disease.
He studied leprosy, worked at a leprosy clinic, and took a course on the
disease at the Calcutta School of Tropical Medicine. In 1949 Amte founded Anandwan,
an ashram dedicated to the treatment, rehabilitation, and empowerment of
leprosy patients. The centre came to encompass programs in health care,
agriculture, small-scale industry, and conservation and to serve people with
disabilities.
In addition to his work with lepers, Amte was
involved in various other causes, including environmentalism and religious
toleration. In particular, he opposed the building of hydroelectric dams on the
Narmada River, both for environmental reasons and because of the effects on
those displaced by the dams. In 1990 Amte left Anandwan to devote himself to
this cause, but toward the end of his life he returned to the ashram. Amte’s
sons, Prakash and Vikas Amte, became doctors and continued their father’s
philanthropic work.
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