Wisdom Song: The Life of Baba Amte

By Neesha Mirchandani

Born into privilege and wealth, Murlidhar Devidas Amte was a maverick who wanted to live life to the fullest. He realized early on that he had to live, not for himself, but for others - or else all his privilege, position and superior personal qualities would be mere tinsel. The pioneering commune at Anandwan, where those affected by leprosy could live with dignity and pride; the Bharat Jodo marches across the length and breadth of India to promote national unity and harmony; the decade-long vigil by the Narmada river in solidarity with those at the receiving end of state-sponsored environmental devastation - Baba Amte did this and much more, coping the whole time with a crippling spinal degenerative disease. The countless lives transformed by three generations of the Amte family are shining testimonials to the magnitude of Baba Amte's vision, and the indomitable spirit that made that vision real. With in-depth conversations with Baba, and interviews with many of his close friends and family, this biography is equally a record of the collective memory of those who have known him best. What emerges is an intimate portrait of one of the few individuals of our times who have embodied the cherished ideals of compassion and selfless service.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Roli Books
• Release date: Apr 1, 2006
• ISBN: 9789351940623

Book preview

INTRODUCTION

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BABA SWALLOWS HIS UMPTEENTH PILL BEFORE DINNER. HE puts on his back brace and walks to the living room, cane in hand. A six-year-old boy comes into the room. He is running circles around Baba with uninhibited glee. ‘Meet my guru, my teacher,’ says Baba, pointing to his godson. ‘He restores my innocence. With him around, who needs medicine?’

Baba Amte is over ninety years old. He is alive because of a pacemaker. His back is broken, his legs wobble, and he has lost all his teeth and most of his gums. He coughs all night, hardly eats, and doesn’t get much sleep. But his mind is alert and his heart is open. As always, his spirit soars – unencumbered by his battered body – ever ready to embrace another dream.

His eyes twinkle with excitement as he explains his vision for south Asia: ‘It can be like the European Union… India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka and Nepal – all these countries can maintain their sovereignty. But we can have a common currency and share our common heritage. After all, our social fabric and economic interests are the same.’ I listen to him paint this ambitious picture of a unified south Asia, and I cannot help but smile. His enthusiasm is infectious. I find my cynicism melting away.

Baba Amte is renowned in India as an action-oriented humanitarian and environmentalist. His legacy can be likened to a rich tapestry where the political, the environmental, the spiritual and the social are woven together. But few even in India know of all the hues and layers in this tapestry. Outside India, only a select few in the international development community have heard about Baba Amte’s daring experiments in social and environmental justice.

A combination of dreamer and achiever, Baba Amte defies definition. He has always maintained that he is not a saint. He has no money or title, and has never been enamoured by political power. In fact, he gravitates toward the penniless, the destitute, the forgotten and the silenced – people rejected by society. In his life, Baba has endured terrible adversity, rejection and failure. But, oblivious of critics and detractors, he just dusts himself off and carries on.

As I write this, Baba’s health remains fragile. But he has touched death’s door so many times, that people around him refuse to believe that he will leave this earth anytime soon. His nephew said to me, ‘We have been hearing this phrase, Baba is serious since our childhood. Now we are used to it. Baba will live on.’ Some feel that faith is responsible for his long life. Some say it is just luck. Others credit his good karma. On Baba’s ninetieth birthday, his family and friends honoured all his doctors and his healers. Sadhana tai, his wife, was at the top of the list. Tai, in her own traditional way, is Baba’s equal partner. The sheer force of her willpower and the strength that she has brought to each of Baba’s endeavours has been vital in making them successful.

I first met Baba Amte in January 2001. I was born and brought up in India, but it was only after I had moved to the United States and settled there, that I learnt about his extraordinary life and work. I knew at once that I had to meet him. At the end of my first whirlwind visit, I was struck by Baba’s inexplicable but very human way of connecting with people. Spending a week or two with the Amtes became an annual event for me.

It was during my yearly visit in January 2004 that His Holiness the Dalai Lama came to spend time with Baba. They laughed, showed their affection for each other, and chatted about the state of the world. On the wall behind Baba’s bed hangs the traditional thangka painting of White Tara given to him by the Dalai Lama – White Tara is an emanation of the Buddha connected with longevity and health. In the past, when Baba has fallen ill, His Holiness sent his personal physician to care for him.

In his book, Freedom in Exile, the Dalai Lama expressed his admiration for Baba:

Baba Amte is an extraordinary person. After a long, vigorous life, during which he has suffered great physical hardship, he is himself virtually a cripple and, because of damage to his spine, he can only stand straight or lie down. Yet he remains so full of energy that I could not do his work, even though I am much fitter. As I sat on his bed holding his hand, and he lay talking to me, I could not help feeling that here was someone who was truly compassionate. I told him that whereas my compassion is just so much talk, his shone through everything he did.

Watching the two of them interact, I realized that while many around the world have access to the wisdom of the Dalai Lama, Baba’s remained India’s secret treasure. To change that, I decided to produce a photo book.

When I returned to the US, I read everything on Baba Amte that I could find. He referred me to his biography by Dr B.G. Bapat and S.M. Shirodkar. I also read the late Father Hans Staffner’s biography of Baba. Baba’s son, Dr Vikas Amte, sent me hundreds of articles, including a very good essay by Rajni Bakshi, Baba Amte’s Vanaprastha. All the reading only inspired me to know more and study more.

I spent the summer of 2004 in India interviewing Baba’s closest family, friends and colleagues. By my following visit in December 2004, I had recorded the oral histories of nearly one hundred people. I quickly realized that many more considered themselves to be part of Baba’s inner circle. People call this phenomenon, ‘Baba Amte ke hazaro haath!’ (The thousand hands of Baba Amte)

Despite my best intentions and well-planned itineraries, the process of discovery was always organic and unpredictable. I would set off to talk to someone about a specific issue and, five hours later, I would walk away with something unrelated albeit more interesting. Some interviewees communicated in Marathi, some in Hindi and some in English – all of them spoke about Baba with passion and eloquence. Sometimes, it wasn’t what they said, but their gestures, their facial expressions, their laughter and their silence that said it all. I wanted to capture it all.

By the time I returned to the US in January 2005, the project had evolved from a photo book to a full-fledged biographical memoir. To the biographical facts, I added other strands – the interviews, Baba’s writings and poetry, material from audio-visual archives, informal chats with Baba over the years, and my own observations.

At one point when I was especially overwhelmed by the enormity of the enterprise, I called Baba’s long-time friend, Count Arthur Tarnowski in England. He reassured me that he had been trying to capture Baba’s essence for thirty-seven years. ‘It’s so elusive. The deeper you go, the more ramifications you find. He’s such a wonderful enigma.’ I knew exactly what the Count meant. We agreed that at the very least, the book could serve as an account of my journey of discovery.

I’m not a writer by profession, and that turned writing this book into one big adventure for me. After the initial uncertainty had subsided, the adrenaline sustained me the rest of the way. In the process, Erik Erikson’s book, Gandhi’s Truth, became a good friend. Erikson’s analysis of Gandhiji could just as easily have applied to Baba: ‘Your identity could be no less than of universal man, although you had to become an Indian – and one close to the masses – first. Your profession could only be that of solicitor for the masses.’

His insights could just as well be applied to Baba’s brand of leadership. He wrote, ‘… the great leader creates for himself, and for many others, new choices and new cares. These he derives from a mighty driven-ness, an intense and yet flexible energy, a shocking originality, and a capacity to impose on his time what most concerns him – which he does so convincingly, that his time believes this concern to have emanated naturally from ripe necessities.’ Baba’s critics most often accuse him of being a publicity seeker, arrogant and an opportunist, but as Erikson noted, is not every version of Gandhi – truthful, kingly, crafty… a projection? And is it not the genius of the leader that he can elicit a variety of such projections, each true and yet none exclusively so?’

Telling the story of Baba’s life, full of twists and turns, is daunting enough, but capturing the nuances of his vision and legacy is so much more challenging. I realize that it is impossible to do complete justice to it. But, within these pages, I have woven together my personal experiences with those of others who have known and worked with Baba at different times in his life. I admire and respect Baba, but I do not see any point in glorifying him, or putting him on a pedestal. His fallibility and accessibility are, in fact, the essence of his charisma. That said, I do not write with the dispassionate pen of a journalist or an academic, but with a thirst to discover and explore his humanity.

Retracing the life journey of a legend, especially if he is a 90-year-old living legend, is a dangerous thing. His life stories are folklore, and many decades later, separating fact from folklore often seems about as easy as separating sugar from syrupy chai. Besides, does the sugar not balance perfectly the slight bitter tinge of the over-brewed tea leaves? Many of the players are dead and gone. As is the case with other well-known personalities, stories have been told and retold many times over the years. At times, I would find myself sorting through thirteen slightly different versions of one particular incident. Which one was the most accurate? ‘The Bible,’ a friend helpfully offered, ‘is the same way. Once dissected, it may not pass the historical litmus test. But as long as the parable has a point, go ahead and include it.’ It was Baba, the ultimate realist, who once said, ‘The Truth is always accompanied by a bodyguard of lies.’

Baba has written many essays and poems. I was curious why he had not written his autobiography. ‘Because the I on my typewriter is still a capital I, that’s why!’ he roared. We both laughed at his honest admission. ‘Even if I had wanted to, I was too busy measuring stones, filling saline, paying for food, and feeding thousands. There was hardly any time to write.’

Late one night, I watched a documentary about the ‘Greensboro Four’ – the four African-Americans in Greensboro, North Carolina, in the United States, who, on 1 February 1960, insisted on being served at a segregated lunch counter meant only for white Americans. The incident led to similar ‘sit-ins’ in states across the southern United States – where segregation of African Americans was legal – ultimately culminating in a more broad-based nonviolent movement for civil rights. One of the four African- American men said he got the courage to act when he saw footage of Mahatma Gandhi challenging the British Empire on TV. He described Gandhiji as a tiny man, wearing only ‘a diaper’. Watching the diminutive Gandhi made him aware of his own inner strength.

Even the strongest among us need role models. Over time, society has sanctified the likes of Mahatma Gandhi and Martin Luther King Jr, often making them inaccessible in the process. Baba, however, remains a refreshingly down-to-earth role model of our time. He does not like being compared to Gandhiji or glorified as a saint. Instead he prefers to think of himself simply as a mechanic with an oilcan who offers help when he sees a breakdown. He continues to inspire many young people to choose the unbeaten path.

In December 2005, as I put the finishing touches to the book, I think back to the first time I met Baba and why he made such an impression on me. In the words of Jack Kerouac:

… the only people for me are the mad ones, the ones who are mad to live, mad to talk, mad to be saved, desirous of everything at the same time, the ones who never yawn or say a commonplace thing, but burn, burn, burn, like fabulous yellow roman candles exploding like spiders across the stars, and in the middle, you see the blue centerlight pop, and everybody goes ‘Awwww!’¹

1 Jack Kerouac On the Road.

part - i

THE MAKING OF BABA AMTE

1

BIRTH OF HOPE IN A TIME OF WAR

1 9 1 4

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BABA AMTE ENTERED THIS WORLD WITH A SILVER SPOON IN HIS mouth on 26 December 1914. As the oldest male child in a patriarchal family of Brahmin landowners in central India, he stood to inherit all his family’s property and wealth. Baba’s father, Devidas Amte, supplemented the income from the sizeable family estate in Goraja village, situated in present-day Maharashtra, with a government job as local auditor. While Baba was born into luxury, the circumstances of his birth were hardly luxurious. His mother was travelling with his father to Chandrapur. En route, Laxmibai started having labour pains, so she got down at Hinganghat and delivered Baba there.

The bouncing baby boy was given the solemn name ‘Murlidhar’ (another name for Lord Krishna), because the dark-skinned, mischievous deity is the kul guru (clan deity) of the Amtes. But his mother, Laxmibai Amte, affectionately nicknamed her first-born Baba, and since then he has been known as Baba Amte.

India was then still a British colony and, at the time, Britain was engulfed in the First World War. For the first time, the adversaries used Industrial Age technologies like airplanes and tanks, rendering this war the deadliest in history thus far. It would claim ten million lives and another twenty million people would be seriously wounded. But even in the thick of this brutal carnage, for a brief moment in time there was a glimmer of hope. On Christmas Eve 1914, just as Baba was waiting to be born on the other side of the world, soldiers along the Western Front unofficially declared a Christmas truce.

Separated by barbed wire, the soldiers began to sing Christmas carols to each other. One soldier remembered the incident: ‘First the Germans would sing one of their carols and then we would sing one of ours, until we started up O Come All Ye Faithful, and the Germans immediately joined in singing the same hymn to the Latin words Adeste Fidéles. And I thought, well, this was really a most extraordinary thing – two nations both singing the same carol in the middle of a war.’¹

In other locations, soldiers climbed out of their trenches to cross the no man’s land and celebrated Christmas together with the enemy. Corporal John Ferguson reminisced, ‘We shook hands, wished each other a Merry Xmas, and were soon conversing as if we had known each other for years…What a sight – little groups of Germans and British extending almost the length of our front!… Here we were laughing and chatting to men whom only a few hours before we were trying to kill!’² Even in the thick of war, enemies found a way to share their common humanity.

Baba Amte came to symbolize the same fragile but powerful humanity displayed by ordinary rank-and-file soldiers who, in defiance of their superiors’ orders, lit up Christmas trees in their trenches, sang their Christmas carols, and crossed the no man’s land to honour the Christmas truce.

1  Winter and Baggett, The Great War: And the Shaping of the 20th Century.

2  Brown and Seaton, Christmas Truce.

2

MAD SON OF A MAD MOTHER

1 9 1 4 – 3 2

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BABA AMTE AND HIS SIBLINGS SPENT MOST OF THEIR EARLY childhood years in central India, growing up mostly in Nagpur. They also spent some time in Amravati. The family spent the annual summer holidays at the ancestral family estate in Goraja village. Difficult to find on a map, Goraja is not far from the sleepy town of Warora. It is in this idyllic and rustic setting that Baba learnt to keenly observe everything – the wings of a butterfly, the birth of a calf, the mores of his caste, the tension between his parents, and the compassion of his mother.

The India of Baba’s childhood was politically and economically colonized by the British. But Baba and his generation would see the sun set on the British Raj in their lifetimes. In fact, as Baba was growing up, Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi was organizing a non-violent resistance movement against British rule in India, based on his earlier successes in South Africa.

But, as a boy, Baba was not concerned with British imperialism. He was more affected by the apartheid-like caste system that regulated the society around him. A high-caste Brahmin boy was not even allowed to let the shadow of a Dalit ‘untouchable’ (or Harijan – the children of god: the name given to them by Mahatma Gandhi) fall on him. Disobeying his father’s strict orders, Baba often fraternized with his ‘low-caste’ playmates. Devidas’s Brahmin sensibilities were deeply offended by his son’s exploits. By his credo, the caste system was divinely ordained and maintained order in society. Like any system of repression, it depended on the strictest punishment for breaking the rules. Apparently, Baba’s father gave him a good beating whenever he caught him red-handed, but his mother protected him as best she could, sneaking her son into the house through the back door and defending his behaviour to his conservative father.

Baba was acutely aware of his mother’s predicament – she was very different from the women in the patriarchal society of her time, and in many respects far ahead. Unfortunately, Laxmibai Amte suffered from mental illness. Her own actions were often frowned upon. As Baba wrote in an essay, My Mother’s Madness, he felt that his mother’s illness was triggered by an error of judgment on his father’s part: ‘My father [financially] helped his aatya [father’s sister] and hid this fact from my mother. He wanted to protect my mother. He thought that she would worry that he was spending too much money. My mother found out anyway, and was deeply hurt. She could not forgive him for hiding this fact from her. Did he think I was so selfish and small- minded? Why did he leave me in the dark? If he had let me be the one to help his aatya, I would have looked good too. I was taking such good care of his home and his family, [she would say]. That’s all it took to make my mother so upset. [Also,] her last child, a daughter, had recently died a month after being born.’

Over the years, Laxmibai’s mental condition grew progressively worse. But somehow, that never interfered with her ability to love her children. ‘Barring her relations with Bapuji, my father, her mental illness had no effect on her relations with me, and my brothers and sisters. In particular, her relationship with me carried a unique affection and depth.’¹

Baba’s favourite children’s book was Shyamchi Aiyee (Shyam’s Mother), a collection of short stories by the visionary writer and tireless social worker, Sane Guruji. Each story delivered a moral lesson based on the wisdom of the author’s mother, who believed it was better to teach her son values by example rather than words. Baba strongly identified with the moralistic fables because they reminded him of his own mother. Baba credits his mother for teaching him compassion and also claims that, ‘the seeds of rebellion entered my veins through her.’

In July 2004, I went to meet Baba’s younger sister, affectionately called Sushi aatya, and talk to her about their childhood. I asked her nephew, Dr Pol, to accompany me. After a little coaxing from him, she opened up. ‘When Baba was a senior in high school,’ she told me, ‘he coached two boys from poor families. Our mother would make it a point to feed and fuss over Baba’s two students.’ Despite her mental problems, Laxmibai Amte’s heart was always full of love for anyone in need. Sushi aatya then whispered conspiringly, ‘My mother was a woman ahead of her time. She wanted all her girls to study; she encouraged us to learn English, and to go out in the world. She even insisted on us learning how to ride bicycles! This was considered unbecoming conduct for a girl back in those days, you know.’

Laxmibai Amte’s condition was compounded by the fact that there was in those days a limited awareness or understanding about mental health as a medical issue. Sushi aatya explained the delicate situation at home as their mother’s health deteriorated, ‘Baba lived on the top floor of our Nagpur house while we lived downstairs. After our mother became ill, the whole environment changed. She was no longer able to take care of the house. Baba helped us [his sisters] tremendously with the housework. He cleaned and scrubbed, cooked and washed, and never once complained about it. He was a fantastic cook; only my mother could cook better than him!’ She had stopped talking and I noticed that there was a faraway look in her eyes. Could she still remember the taste of Baba’s meals cooked some seventy years ago?

~

Baba spent his boyhood in the lap of luxury. It is said that his father did not want him to walk to school, so he went to school in a tonga. But from an early age, Baba had a sensitive spirit. At the age of eleven, he encountered a blind beggar asking for alms when he was on his way to the market to buy firecrackers for Diwali. Baba tells the story best: ‘All of us were excited because it was Diwali. My mother had saved a lot of loose change from her shopping and gave it to me to buy firecrackers. Stuffed full of sweets and feeling that life was grand, I ran towards the market. Then I saw a blind beggar. He sat in the hot sun by the edge of the unpaved road, while gusts of wind raised clouds of dust and garbage over him. Andhalaya paisa de, Bhagwan, [Give one paisa to this blind man, God bless you!] he said to passersby. In front of him, there was a dirty rag and his begging bowl – a rusty cigarette tin. It struck me: alongside my bright and happy world, there was a world of misery and pain. I rushed across and started putting such handfuls of coins into the tin that he held out to me that it almost fell from his hand with the weight. I am only a beggar, young sir; don’t put stones in my bowl, he protested. These are not stones but coins. Count them if you wish, I said. He sat and counted and then