{"id":5705,"date":"2015-01-22T01:04:00","date_gmt":"2015-01-22T01:04:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/dwarkaparichay.com\/blog\/2015\/01\/giraffe-heroes-india-baba-amte\/"},"modified":"2018-06-13T18:05:13","modified_gmt":"2018-06-13T12:35:13","slug":"giraffe-heroes-india-baba-amte","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dwarkaparichay.com\/blog\/giraffe-heroes-india-baba-amte\/","title":{"rendered":"Giraffe Heroes India – Baba Amte"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Under the guidance of  Sh. Vijay Saluja, GH\/India\u2019s new Director<\/b>, Giraffe Heroes India (GH\/India) aims to bring Giraffe vision, strategies and tools for change to the 1.3 billion people on the Indian subcontinent \u2013 making it potentially by far the largest Giraffe global affiliate launched to date.<\/p>\n

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\nGH\/India will tell the inspiring stories of the country\u2019s heroes, motivating others to become heroic too. GH\/India will also offer practical tools citizen activists need to succeed, as well as Giraffe civic engagement programs in schools, helping young people build lives as courageous and compassionate citizens serving a vibrant India.<\/p>\n

Dwarka Parichay being media partner for the Giraffe Heroes India program, starting a series of inspiring stories of heroes in India. <\/b>This will definitely motivate others and more Giraffe Heroes will join the GH\/India brigade.<\/p>\n

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\nCheck for criteria & nomination form for a Giraffe Hero India.<\/b><\/p>\n
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Amte, Murlindhar<\/b>
\nAs a Brahmin in India, Murlindhar Amte was born for a privileged life, at a comfortable distance from people of the lower castes. But after becoming a lawyer, a film critic, a pal of early Hollywood luminaries and vice-president of his municipality, he suddenly made a dramatic course change.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n
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Baba Amte<\/b><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n

\nIt happened when the town\u2019s garbage collectors went on strike. Amte was helping collect trash when he came upon a heap of garbage that moved. When he saw that the heap was a leper, Amte fled in horror. During the sleepless night that followed, Amte realized that he had fallen short of the name Gandhi had given him, when he was a younger man: \u201cFearless Seeker.\u201d In the morning, he gave up the law and his writing, found the leper and nursed him until the man died.<\/p>\n

In those days the fear of catching leprosy was so great that Indians would not even stand in a leper\u2019s shadow. Lepers were at the absolute bottom of the castes. Amte, the Brahmin, decided to devote his life to them, using his savings to buy land and start a commune where lepers could live and be cared for. Amte, his wife and two young sons arrived on their 25 rocky acres with six lepers, 14 rupees and an old cow. They named the place Anandwan, \u201cthe garden of joy.\u201d <\/p>\n

Amte and the lepers tilled and fed the rocky soil until it was rich and productive. More and more lepers arrived when they heard about this place where they could find a home and useful work. \u201cWork builds, charity destroys\u201d is the motto of Anandwan. Within a few years the commune was self-sufficient in everything except salt, sugar and kerosene and grew to include over 2,000 lepers, plus hundreds of people who were blind or otherwise disabled. <\/p>\n

\u201cBaba\u201d (father) Amte became a physician, specializing in tropical medicine, so he could give commune members the best possible care. His sons and their wives later became physicians at Anandwan as well. <\/p>\n

Under Amte\u2019s guidance the lepers built a hospital, a school, a vocational center, a nursery and an old folks\u2019 home at Anandwan and two colleges in neighboring towns. As medical treatment of leprosy advanced, Amte expanded into other areas where he saw needs, including forestry and enviornmental projects to stop India\u2019s deforestation.<\/p>\n

Gandhi\u2019s example set Amte on a 5,000 kilometer walk after religious conflicts climaxed in an attack on a Sikh temple in the Punjab. Amte walked to remind the nation that they were one nation, despite all differences among them.<\/p>\n

Commended as a Giraffe when he was in his 70s, Amte was still advocating for the poor, for the outcasts and for the preservation of the earth. Even though a spinal problem prevented him from sitting up, he did not absolve himself from his own admonition: \u201cResponsibility is not transferable.\u201d<\/p>\n

UPDATE
\nWhen Amte was 86, he left Anandwan, the community he had founded, to lead villagers in central India in resisting the construction of dams that would flood their lands. His sons and daughters-in-law, all physicians, continued to provide care at Anandwan. In later years, Amte returned to Anandwan, confined to bed due to a back condition. He continued to write, talk and counsel, from his bed. He died of leukemia, in 2008. He was 94.<\/div>\n

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Under the guidance of  Sh. Vijay Saluja, GH\/India\u2019s new Director, Giraffe Heroes India (GH\/India) aims to bring Giraffe vision, strategies and tools for change to the 1.3 billion people on the Indian subcontinent \u2013 making it potentially by far the largest Giraffe global affiliate launched to date. GH\/India will tell the inspiring stories of the country\u2019s heroes, motivating others to become heroic too. GH\/India will also offer practical tools citizen activists need to succeed, as well as Giraffe civic engagement programs in schools, helping young people build lives as courageous and compassionate citizens serving a vibrant India. Dwarka Parichay being <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":29856,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[1882,1879,16],"class_list":["post-5705","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-update","tag-giraffe-heroes","tag-update","tag-vijay-k-saluja","has_thumb"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dwarkaparichay.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5705","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dwarkaparichay.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dwarkaparichay.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dwarkaparichay.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dwarkaparichay.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5705"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/dwarkaparichay.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5705\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":51326,"href":"https:\/\/dwarkaparichay.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5705\/revisions\/51326"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dwarkaparichay.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/29856"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dwarkaparichay.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5705"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dwarkaparichay.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5705"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dwarkaparichay.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5705"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}