Google honoured social activist Baba Amte's 104th birth anniversary on Wednesday, December 26, with a doodle commemorating his life helping those with leprosy and his role in the national freedom struggle.
The doodle was created by Vrinda Zaveri and portrayed Amte's life through a series of slides.
Amte was born into a rich Maharashtrian Brahmin family and grew up to become a renowned lawyer. Even in his childhood, he had questioned the caste system and rebelled against not being allowed to play with the children of his house help.
In his 30s, Amte left his firm to work alongside Mahatma Gandhi as a defence lawyer in India's freedom struggle.
A chance meeting with a leprosy patient changed Amte's life forever when he opened the Anandwan ashram for leprosy patients at Warora in Maharashtra's Chandrapur district in 1949. He described the patients as "seeing a rotting mass of human flesh with two holes in place of a nose.... literally a living corpse," according to The Week.
Amte met his wife Indu Ghuleshastri (later called Sadhanatai Amte) during his service to the underprivileged. Together, they expanded the Anandwan ashram across Maharashtra.
One of Amte's great accomplishments was the 'Knit India March' in 1985 when he walked 3,000 kilometres from Kanyakumari to Kashmir at the age of 72 to inspire unity and a sense of togetherness among Indians.
Amte was awarded the Padma Shri Award in 1971. Some of his other commendable awards were UN Prize in the Field of Human Rights in 1988 and the Gandhi Peace Prize a year later.
Amte died of leukaemia in 2004 at the age of 94. His ashrams across Maharashtra are now handled by his two sons and their wives.
