Baba Amte

Baba Amte (born December 26, 1914, Hinganghat, Wardha district, Maharashtra, British India—died February 9, 2008, Anandwan, Maharashtra, India) 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 Brahman 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.