K.R.Narayanan, President of India, speaking on the occasion of the
presentation of the Gandhi Peace Prize for 1999 to Baba Amte
It is both a pleasure and privilige for me to present the
Gandhi Peace Prize for the year 1999 to Baba Amte. I should like to complement
the distinguished members of the jury for selecting Baba Amte for this
prestigious prize and also to convey my respectful felicitations to Baba Amte
on winning this peace prize established in the name of Mahatma Gandhi.
Baba Amte is a living legend of our time
and a shining example of the Gandhian spirit and approach to current and
compelling social problems of the country. By crusading for human dignity and
sustainable development he has sought to arouse the inner vitality of our society
and invest it with sanity, peace and compassion. Inspired by Mahatma Gandhi,
Baba Amte had associated himself with the freedom struggle and courted
imprisonment. Imbibing the values of service to the people from Gandhiji, he
had from his childhood days, identified himself with the lowliest and the lost
in our society. Like Gandhi he devoted himself to the service of people
affected by leprosy and believed as Gandhiji said "leprosy work is not
merely medical relief; it is transforming frustration of life into the Joy of
dedication, personal ambition into self-service". Anandwan, which he set
up for leprosy patients, provides through a creative combination of medical
intervention, rehabilitation and economic regeneration, self-esteem and
self-reliance to leprosy affected people thus translating the ideal of Mahatma
Gandhi to make the victims of leprosy "as much a part of the society as
the tallest among us"
Baba Amte's life and activities have been
animated by the Constructive Programme devised by Mahatma Gandhi for attainment
of independence for India. Starting with leprosy affected people, Baba Amte's
work covered education in health and hygiene, village sanitation, village
industries, communal unity and removal of untouchability and work among tribals
and the youth of the country. He is perhaps the first man in post-independence
India who has so passionately carried forward the Gandhian movement to see the
glow of Swaraj on the face of the common man and woman of our country.
Baba Amte, like Mahatma Gandhi, remains a
remarkably modern man. To promote rural development and the upliftment of the
rural poor, he consulted and took advice from agricultural experts, engineers,
social scientists and administrators and others for evolving schemes for
conservation of energy, development of renewable sources of energy and better
use of land and water resources. He believed that spinning and agro-industrial
activities and generally small and beautiful projects would be "the
spearhead of a silent social revolution fraught with far reaching
consequences". He Introduced at Anandwan and other tribal areas,
rain-harvesting experiments for augmenting agricultural production. It is
interesting to recall in this context that Gandhiji had said as early as 1946
that owing to "our neglect and folly, the year's rains are allowed to run
down into the Bay of Bengal and the Arabian Sea. If all this water was trapped
and harnessed for irrigation purposes ... there should be no famine and food
shortage in India."
Baba Amte, as a passionate and tireless
social activist, has been propagating his ideas among the common people,
especially among the youth of the country He told the youth that "greater
joy in life comes as you invest yourself in others" that youth should be
"drenched with adventure and purpose" and that it is "youth who
carries with him major action in human history". How he organised the
youth of India in the "Knit India Movement" across the East and West,
the North and South of the country, is a saga of our times. He mobilized youth
power for national integration, national reconstruction, for communal harmony
and environmental awareness through non-violent and peaceful means. In seminars
he organised during the "Knit India Movement" he exhorted our youth
that they should not shun any work because work alone will give them
self-confidence. Describing the Narmada Satyagraha as the new battlefront for
the youth action, he said that it was an outburst of Gandhian courage and
concern for the antyodoya". He stated poignantly "Now that the sun of
life is about to set I have set out to catch the rising sun of environmental
consciousness". In our development efforts India and the world have to,
will nilly, come to terms with the ideas of Baba Amte.
I cannot but recall on this occasion the
journey that Baba Amte took to Mumbai and the work he did among the victims of
communal riots and violence in 1992. He then described himself "I am a
Hindu Brahmin; but I am also a follower of Jesus Christ". Baba Amte is a universal
man united with suffering mankind. Who else is there than this noble soul who
is entitled to receive the Gandhi Peace Prize.