THE MAKING OF BABA AMTE ... contd
With his wife's support, Muralidhar confronted his father one last cataclysmic time. He renounced his property and gave up his legal practice. Together they sorted Shram Ashram ("Hermitage of Labour") for inter-caste living and manual work. The ashram was an open house, which anyone was welcome to join. Soon tile commune included a poor Brahmin family that knew something about agriculture, one shoemaker, one umbrella repairer and some harijans. Together they cultivated a small patch of land made brooms country shoes and basic artifacts for daily use and shared their meagre possessions.
Muralidhar threw himself whole-heartedly into organising the social outcastes into unions, cooperatives and societies to improve their abysmal conditions of social and economic life.
He became secretary of 16 such associations.
Indu spent her time tending to the harijan women and children and fending off a plague of poisonous snakes around the cooking area and under the cots. She had to pay a severe price for this this living with outcastes. She was no longer welcome in her parents home. Due to deliver her first child, she could not count on her mothers help.
