Heart Gift* 12: Take Heart, Baba Amte and Anandwan
I’ve been visiting India most years since I was nine years old. My spiritual home is Anandwan, the Village of Happiness, which is now led by my dear sister Dr Sheetal Amte. The community was started by Baba Amte in 1952 and is largely made up of leprosy afflicted and handicapped people. My father’s friendship with Baba Amte was a huge influence in my life growing up. Baba was the protege of Gandhi and one of India’s most loved social workers. Dad saw him as his adopted father, friend, and greatest role model in life. My father’s ashes are buried under a teak tree a garden called Joie De Vivre next to where Baba and his wife Tai, ashes rest. This is one of the greatest honours imaginable to me.
My Heart Gift today is the story of some of the most important influences in my life — Take Heart, Baba Amte and the Anandwan Community. My father founded Take Heart in 1964 to support vocational education and employment training for physically handicapped people during his 100,000-mile overland expedition in his wheelchair. Take Heart was founded on the principle ‘Work Builds, Charity Destroys. Give them a chance not Charity.’
At the entrance to Anandwan there is a sign that reads:
I sought my soul, my soul I could not see;
I sought my God, my God eluded me;
I sought my brother, I found all three.’
These words summarise the power of the active humanism in Anandwan which has inspired me since childhood. I am sharing with you one of the speeches that I found that my father gave about Take Heart, Anandwan and Baba:
‘Take Heart was established in support of the outstanding work of it’s ‘parent’ Institution, The Maharogi Sewa Samiti, or Leprosy Services Institute, located in eastern Maharashtra, Central India. It is primarily a leprosarium called Anandwan which means Forest of Bliss. I wish to tell you a little about the extraordinary transformation of the ever growing Anandwan community, literally from the pits of despair and agony to the triumph of life reborn, the joy held in creative achievement.
Wherever around the world leprosy has been rife it has been the object of fear and loathing. In Europe they were obliged to use bells to signal their presence and had to avoid passing close to a ‘healthy’ person. They were regarded as the scum of the earth since it was beleiveed that they carried the heinous sins of their fathers.
The situation is no different in India or indeed wherever else leprosy persists. ‘Maharog’- the ‘Great Disease’, runs the dread euphemism. There have been cases, not all together exceptional, of leprosy sufferers being berried or burnt alive; but I shall not dwell on that. Suffice to say that the effect of the revulsion, loathing and ostracism unfolds on the loss of self-worth and personality. Thus most of those who flock or drag themselves to Anandwan appear dead in all but physiological function.
Yet when back in 1964 I visitited Anandwan for the first time, it was in continual amazement — bewilderment — before what I found and saw. I’ll give you an example — there was this long building in the process of construction. At least 50 men and women were at work, all leprosy affected. Hard work but also plenty of laughter, song and banter. I enquired what it was going to be. “Oh, a four-faculty college”, came the reply. This struck me like a contradiction in terms; a college on the grounds of a leprosarium? “But who chose this site?” I prodded. “Us, the leprosy patients, together with Baba Amte.” “And who are the financial sponsors?” I persevered. He laughed, “Nobody from outside, if that’s what you mean. It comes from us, from the institution. Look at our fields and orchards, heavy with crop, visit our crafts and cottage industries with plenty of produce. That’s where it comes from. It will be our gift to the society of the able-bodied.” I was dumbfounded. The colleges are currently attended by well over 2000 able-bodied students. The per acre farm yields at Anandwan are 4 or 5 times higher than the regional average.
Across the years the Anandwan community expanded fast to include, besides the leprosy afflicted, the deaf and dumb, the blind, orphans, the aged, the orthopedically handicapped, some 2500 in all. There are specifically adapted schools for the blind, for the deaf, for children of leprosy patients. 49 cottage industries and craft training centres.
Back in 1951, just before Anandwan was founded, the site was a disused rock quarry, over grown with scrub, the habitat of tiger, panther, wild boar, cobra and scorpion. Into this wilderness in 1951 moved Baba Amte with his wife, two baby sons, six badly maimed leprosy sufferers, a lame cow and a doff taken by a tiger two nights later. They had just the equivalent of £1 in pocket and a few basic tools. They built themselves couple of shacks of branch and leaf and set out digging a well into the hard basalt rock. It was May, the temperature hung around 50 centigrade, 120 fahrenheit.
Today Anandwan has it’s own theatre, library, conference hall, gardens, playgrounds, fountains, flowerbeds. Some of the cardinal principles underlying it’s development are ecological in nature, a broad reliance on environmentally friendly aims and techniques. For example, it recycles the excrement and waste material into biogas and compost that explains both the minimal use of wood and the fertility of the Anandwan fields. A vigorous effort is directed at experimentation and research, the primary aim being the improvement of oiling standards in rural India.
Thus a 50 hectare area of Anandwan was designated for a Agro- Forestry Research Project. Some 27 tree species are grown with a view to ascertaining which varieties are best suited to the prevalent agro-climatic conditions; which ones turn most appropriate to serve the needs of rural communities in terms of fuel, composting, and construction; to determine the optimum biomass with minimum of soil, water and cash inputs. Another research programme culminated in the development of a novel type of unbaked brick which is cheap to produce but stronger and better resistant to the elements than the mud brick common in villages. Yet another project has led to the development of a novel form of domed cottages. These are easy to build, inexpensive, the interior cooler in the summer heat, and remarkably earthquake resistant. But their paramount merit lies in the complete elimination of timber in their construction, a vital environmental consideration. To mention just a few, other research programmes encompass soil reclamation, prevention of erosion, fertility regeneration, and the conservation of the scarcest resource — water.
This brilliant developmental thrust at Anandwan stands at the very cutting edge of India’s social economic upsurge; a phenomenal role reversal from the gutters of hopelessness to the forefront of their country’s uplift. Visitors come flooding in daily. Parties of college and university students, farmers eager to learn and emulate, doctors, officials, engineers, social workers; others just to see, feel proud and inspired.
It is largely Baba Amte who instilled the vision, the motivation, and thrust to this extraordinary transformation. Amte probably is the most loved and revered person throughout India, with literally dozens of both national and international prizes and awards to his name. You know, years ago when I used to address American audiences — and always ad-libbing, none of the disgrace of having to read out my lines in my dotage — well, I was often asked to describe Amte ‘in a nutshell’ — Being a man of remarkable diversity this was quite some challenge. But eventually, I came up with the following:- “A Henry Ford and a Saint Vincent rolled into one.”
The essential realisation of what Anandwan stands for was realised through no other than the power of pure love, of active compassion, of the creativity in giving. And there is no otherworldly aspect to this since Amte, if born a Hindu, does not practice his religion. I ask you, isn’t it all too seldom that we may encounter such manifest transformation in people’s minds and hearts, in their welfare and in the scale of attainment generated by the powers latent in human love and compassion? A profoundly uplifting and inspiring scene to virtually all of us.’
Dad’s words of wisdom on Providence are a motivator for me to continue in his work with Take Heart: ‘Yet I feel that since Providence has helped and guided me so far in this task, it will not fail me now. However, Providence seldom works on its own, so I shall have to try harder than ever before.’
* Heart Gift is a community of people who give from their hearts. You are invited to join to be inspired and, when ready, to share your favorite quote, letter, joke, prayer, advice, music, art piece, story, song, ritual, Grandma’s recipe — anything. We can all help create a more beautiful world when we are Permissionaries — giving each other permission to be authentic, vulnerable and heart led.
