In this week's issue of The Economist (Vol. 386 No. 8569), an obituary was published on Amte Baba, otherwise known as Murlidhar Devidas Amte - the criminal lawyer who could charge as much as 50 rupees (in mid-1940s) for talking 15 minutes. Inflation-adjusted, this figure is phenomenal... approximately 1000 rupees, perhaps even more, in modern-day India.
The monetary power - implied above - is applied to reflect propensity of the rich guy who scavanged... As a Brahmin Hindu, Amte Baba broke a fundamental doctrine - Brahmins DO NOT touch the untouchables. He did. He even educated the lepers in a societal style.
He was not alone. Baba Amte's wife left her sister's wedding to help the servants clean dishes.
Amte Baba's philosophical musings: "Where there was fear, there was no love; and when an action was not done in love, it had no value."
On that note, here is a distinguished piece from beloved Gurudev... Songs of Offering:
Where The Mind is Without Fear
"Where the mind is without fear and the head is held high;
Where knowledge is free;
Where the world has not been broken up into fragments by narrow domestic walls;
Where words come out from the depth of truth;
Where tireless striving stretches its arms towards perfection;
Where the clear stream of reason has not lost its way
into the dreary desert sand of dead habit;
Where the mind is led forward by thee into ever-widening thought and action-
Into that heaven of freedom, my Father, let my country awake. "
The monetary power - implied above - is applied to reflect propensity of the rich guy who scavanged... As a Brahmin Hindu, Amte Baba broke a fundamental doctrine - Brahmins DO NOT touch the untouchables. He did. He even educated the lepers in a societal style.
He was not alone. Baba Amte's wife left her sister's wedding to help the servants clean dishes.
Amte Baba's philosophical musings: "Where there was fear, there was no love; and when an action was not done in love, it had no value."
On that note, here is a distinguished piece from beloved Gurudev... Songs of Offering:
Where The Mind is Without Fear
"Where the mind is without fear and the head is held high;
Where knowledge is free;
Where the world has not been broken up into fragments by narrow domestic walls;
Where words come out from the depth of truth;
Where tireless striving stretches its arms towards perfection;
Where the clear stream of reason has not lost its way
into the dreary desert sand of dead habit;
Where the mind is led forward by thee into ever-widening thought and action-
Into that heaven of freedom, my Father, let my country awake. "
- Rabindranath Tagore (Gurudev)
1 comment:
You try to be different, people bite.
You try to be the same and people think your ordinary.
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