Baba's Physical Agony:

Baba lay motionless on the cot staring hard at the ceiling, his jaw tightly clenched. He felt as though he were lying in a coffin, awaiting burial. On one end of the bed was a contraption that kept his spine in traction for twelve hours every day. The vigorously physical man, whose energies seemed to recognize few limits, was now told that he might have to spend most of his life lying in bed. Murlidhar Devidas 'Baba' Amte was only fifty. The doctors diagnosed the agonizing pain in his back as a case of severe cervical spondylosis which was causing a progressive degeneration of the spine.

But the man who had turned around and attacked his own fears was not going to be so easily done in. When his body was confined in a prison of inactivity, his mind went flying in search of new possibilities. In any case, his work had reached a plateau. His sons were on their way to becoming doctors. Anandwan was running well on its own and could no longer absorb all of Baba's energies.

Soon the 'coffin' began to seem like a womb in which the rest of Baba Amte's life took shape. He now became preoccupied with building the vision for a New India based on his experiences at Anandwan. By the late-60s it was evident that the government's development programs were never likely to reach the last man. The answer, Baba felt, lay in transforming a society based on subsistence farming into a highly productive agro-industrial system.

While his mind got busy with this new dimension of his mission, the spondylosis continued to relentlessly batter his body. In 1971, friends collected money and sent Baba to London for a major operation on his spine. This kept him in bed for much of 1971 and 1972. His agony was compounded by the need for another operation, performed in Mumbai some years later. These operations allowed Baba to live but left him with a permanent handicap. He would never be able to sit again. He could either lie down or stand, but only for limited periods.

Despite this physical degeneration, Baba's spirit fought back with renewed vigor. There were dark days and perhaps he lost a few battles. But eventually 'my pain and sorrows became the witness to my happiness ... I asked only to be used till I lie down in the company of mother earth.' Thus the 'war' of will turned decisively in favor of victory for Baba's enormous creative energy.

The reflections in that enforced 'womb' made him long for the actual realization of purna swaraj - 'a resurgence in free India of a defiant and aggressive effort at self-development by the silenced majority.' As one of his biographers, Hans Staffner, later wrote in Baba Amte's Vision of A New India:

Baba Amte's success in building Anandwan had a two-fold impact on his mind. It increased his desire to lead India's suffering millions to a resolute effort at self-development and it strengthened his conviction that this could be done by rousing the impoverished masses to a creative awareness.

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