How many of us knew Baba Amte?
At best, few. And at worst, perhaps no Muslims outside Maharashtra would recall this saint of a man who created a paradise called Annandwan for leprosy patients. During my recent visit to Nagpur, my friend Abdul Ghafoor Parekh drove me to this incredible haven of social outcastes. For nearly half a century, it has become fairly known that leprosy is a curable ailment and those cured of it, could be safely integrated with the society with no prospect of relapse. Yet the social stigma of the crippling scourge continues to haunt all of us. Leprosy patients live a cursed life. They are despised and discarded by their near and dear ones, hated by the society, and banished out of sight by civic bodies.
Baba Amte dedicated his life to a mission to heal back these men and women to health, restore their self-esteem, rehabilitate them into the society and channelize their potential as productive members of the society. Anandwan is materialisation of his dream that he envisioned when he took pity on a leper on the footpath while studying at Morris College in Nagpur. Since then Muralidhar Devidass Amte did not look back.
For Amte there were no lepers any more. They were leprosy patients. He had realised that more than treatment of the diseases, it will be social acceptance of the erstwhile victims of the disease that will test his nerves. He therefore visualized restoring the self-dignity of the leprosy patients as the prime objective of his mission.
The world of medicine, by then, had discovered cure for leprosy, a neurological ailment that affected the terminal parts of the body, mainly fingers, toes, nose and eyelids and rendered them insensitive, gradually twisting them into worn out appendages and corrupting facial features. Says Sadhana Tai, 85 year old widow of Baba Amte, whom we met in Anandwan. no vaccination has so far been developed to immunise human beings against leprosy. Since the disease does not afflict animals, prospects of developing a vaccination appear bleak for the moment. To the horror of his colleagues, Baba Amte offered himself to be injected with the bacteria of leprosy in order that the world of medicine could test its formulations on him. The offer was unacceptable as medical ethics bar human bodies for the purpose.
It is said every normal human being carries the leprosy bacteria bacillus. But only in very few cases they become active and begin to erode the limbs. The young and married Amte, who had finished his studies in 1947 in Nagpur, went to Calcutta in 1948 to study and learn the treatment of leprosy at the Tropical School of Medicine. Anandwan was set up in 1950 with 14 patients brought from three colonies of lepers in Vidarbha. It came up on a 150 acres of land donated by the Government. More land was added in subsequent years and today it is a thriving village of 3,000 people. Of these, a good many are those who have been cured of leprosy and chosen to remain here. This is partly because Baba envisioned this as a settlement for those who may not find social acceptance in the 'civilised world'. Says Sitakant Prabhu, a colleague of Baba Amte: 'Misconceptions about leprosy still abound. Most people believe leprosy to be incurable, contagious and hereditary. It is neither'. The offspring of former leprosy patients who married here, are perfectly normal. They lead normal lives within the commune and study at the local school where no kid shows any trace of the ailment. Yet the fear of the socially stigmatising disease is all pervasive. Once, It is pointed out, Sadhana Tai's help was sought by a local hospital to deliver a child by a woman who was afflicted by leprosy and her husband had abandoned her at the hospital gate. No doctor would touch her.
Baba Amte's caravan was unstoppable. He set up a similar project at Somnath, 220 kms from Nagpur in what is known as rice bowl of Vidarbha, in 1967. Yet another project was set up at Hemal Kasa in tribal area. Prior to Anandwav, a small such settlement had been set up at Ashokwan near Nagpur. All the four projects today have nearly 5,000 residents.
As Baba Amte's sons, Vikas and Prakash grew up, they also joined the mission. And now third generation Amtes are shouldering responsibilities. Dr. Vikas's son Kousto looks after the Anandwan, about 90 kms south of Nagpur near Varora. According to Kousto, Anandwan receives nearly 50 new patients annually. Following treatment and rehabilitation, they become part of the commune and are trained in some vocation such as fabrication, agriculture, dairy farming, horticulture, carpentry or handicrafts. Nearly 1,500 such residents who have been provided accommodation here, eat, live, work and lead their lives in the commune. The wages paid to them are known as honorarium which they deposit in their bank accounts.
The 450-acre Anandwan is a picturesque locale. Monsoon had sheathed it in greenery. Birds chirped amid the luxuriant forests and monkeys hopped about trees when I visited it on July 16. It has a farm to breed emus, an Australian bird. Of the 17 ponds and lakes that dot the landscape, one serves as a crocodile farm. The Government of Maharashtra has given it a gram panchayat status with a government degree college set up nearby.
Sitakant Prabhu, who also acts as the Public Relations Officer at Anandwan, says, residents of Anandwan are suffused with self esteem. And it is seen to be believed. No one stops his work to look at the visitors. None stood folding hands for us. In the carpentry and handicrafts workshop, the men and women at work riveted their gazes at their tool, not even one threw as much as a glance at us. According to him, they brought here 50 such beggars from Bombay to treat and resettle. They soon fled, telling they earned much more by simply begging on the metropolis's footpaths. Obviously, they chose to remain lepers. Baba Amte used to say: We are not working for the people, we are working with people. His words ring true even at the first glimpse at the pulsating life at Anandwan.
As Amte's work progressed, he even set up Sindhi Niketan, a school for deaf and mute and for the blind. Anandwan attracts several teams of NGO activists from Europe during winters who work among the patients, disabled people and those rehabilitated ones. People with twisted limbs serve food at the Atithigruha, the guest house. Some might flinch at the thought of accepting even water. Rest assured, you only need to debunk your own fears.
A staunchly secular person, Baba Amte left nothing that enables people to read anything partisan in his behaviour. Residents are asked to carry out their religious rites within the boundaries of home. He believed in a frugal lifestyle and conservation of natural resources. Hence, workshops in the commune prepare mattresses out of plastic and textile factory waste. Worn out tyres are used at check dams. Rainwater is harvested to the last drop and used for irrigation on a wide scale. Handicrafts workshop churns attractive products from bamboo, reeds, wild grass and dried vestiges of banana trees. Even in death, he willed his body to be buried in order that organic matter returns to from where it came. Shradhavan, his grave is a raised platform where he rests in peace. No bar on approaching it with footwear on. Nor even people are encouraged to offer flowers. An eerie silence pervades its environs.
We stood in prayer for a few moments. Here lies a man lived to uplift the ones who had been trashed out by civilised folks, beyond civic limits. He lies amidst them, reminding us that civility lies in what we do, not in what we think.
