Baba Amte, 93; Champion of Lepers and Outcasts

Mr. Amte's most transformative moment came in the late 1940s when he was walking home in the rain and saw a man huddled along the roadside. The man was in the end stages of leprosy, missing fingers and covered in maggots.

Mr. Amte said his initial reaction was horror. Fearing infection, he ran away. But his conscience led him back to the man, Tulshiram, whose name Mr. Amte never forgot. He returned with food and set up a bamboo shelter to protect Tulshiram from the rain.

"Where there is fear, there is no love," Mr. Amte said. "Where there is no love there is no God. That is why I took up leprosy work. Not to help anyone but to overcome that fear in my life. That it worked out good for others was a byproduct. But the fact is I did it to overcome fear."

He attended the Calcutta School of Tropical Medicine and soon started his own leprosy clinic with a government grant of 50 acres of rocky scrubland.

Mr. Amte said he began with six patients, a cow, a dog and the equivalent of $2. An early experience asking for money proved humiliating, and he vowed the shelter would become self-sufficient by growing grain and vegetables and digging its own wells.

Over time, he accumulated more than 430 acres, and Anandwan developed the feel of a township, complete with orchestra, singers and dancers. He committed himself to the minutest needs of the patients, such as cultivating a thorn-less rose for their pleasure.

Murlidhar Devdas Amte was born Dec. 26, 1914, at Hinganghat, in Maharashtra. His family gave him his lifelong nickname, Baba. As a young man, he wrote movie reviews for film magazines and corresponded with the Hollywood star Norma Shearer. She became an early financial supporter of Anandwan, Mr. Amte said.

After leaving the law, Mr. Amte became an ascetic and grew what has been described as a hermit-like beard and long fingernails. He also meditated but said he was never good at it; he totally lost interest after a crab pinched his thigh and he felt he had to pretend not to notice.

In 1946, he married Indu Ghuleshastri, who took a new first name, Sadhna, after they exchanged vows. They had two sons, Vikas and Prakash, who became doctors, and a daughter, Sheetal. All had leading roles in building Anandwan, which now houses about 2,500 people.

Mr. Amte won awards from the United Nations and human rights organizations. He also was a recipient of the 1990 John M. Templeton Prize for Progress in Religion, which carried a purse of $580,000. It is among the world's most lucrative honors.

On occasion he declined to accept awards from the Indian government to protest the erection of large dams. He cited environmental hazards and the displacement of hundreds of thousands of poor tribal inhabitants who could do little to fight back.

In the 1980s and 1990s, he was a key figure during the fight over the Narmada River Valley dam project, a multibillion-dollar effort that would submerge dozens of villages. More recently, a crippling spinal disease prevented Mr. Amte from marching or organizing other protesters, but he remained an important symbol of anti-industrialization.

He compared himself to a child's top. "When it is spinning the fastest, it appears to be standing perfectly still," he told the Los Angeles Times. "Now, I hope the world will listen to the deafening sound of my silence."

He is survived by his wife and three children.