Sindhutai Sapkal

Early life and education

Sindhutai Sapkal was born on 14 November 1948 at Pimpri Meghe village in Wardha district Maharashtra to Abhimanji Sathe, a cowherd by profession. Being an unwanted child, she was referred to as Chindhi (Marathi for "torn piece of cloth"). However, her father was keen on educating Sindhutai, much against the wishes of her mother. Abhimanji used to send her to school under the pretext of cattle grazing, where she would use the 'leaf of Bharadi Tree' as a slate as she could not afford a real slate because due to her family's limited financial resources. Abject poverty, family responsibilities and an early marriage forced her to quit formal education after she successfully passed the 4th standard.

Marriage and early work

At the age of ten, she was married to Shrihari Sapkal alias Harbaji, a 30-year-old cowherd from Navargaon village in Wardha District. She bore three sons by the time she turned twenty. She put up a successful agitation against a local strongman who was fleecing the villagers on collection of dried cow dung used as fuel in India and selling it in collusion with forest department, without paying anything to the villagers. Her agitation brought the district collector to her village and on realising she was right, he passed an order which the strongman did not like. Stung by the insult at the hands of a poor woman, he managed to convince her husband to abandon her when she was beyond 9 months of her pregnancy. She gave birth to a baby girl on 14 October 1973 in a cow shelter outside their house that night, all by herself and walked several kilometres away to her mother's place. Her mother refused to shelter her. She had to set aside the thought of suicide and started begging on railway platforms for food. In the process, she realised that there were so many children abandoned by their parents and she adopted them as her own and started begging even more vigorously to feed them. She decided to become a mother to anyone and everyone who came across to her as an orphan. She later donated her biological child to the trust Shrimant Dagdu Sheth Halwai, Pune, only to eliminate the feeling of partiality between her daughter and the adopted ones.

Later work

She has devoted her entire life to orphans. As a result, she is fondly called 'Mai'(mother). She has nurtured over 1,050 orphaned children. As of today, she has a grand family of 207 sons-in-law, thirty-six daughters-in-law, and over a thousand grandchildren. She still continues to fight for the next meal. Many of the children whom she adopted are well-educated lawyers and doctors, and some, including her biological daughter, are running their own independent orphanages. One of her children is doing a PhD on her life. She has been honoured with over 273 awards for her dedication and work. She used award money to buy land to make a home for her children. Construction has started and she is still looking for more help from the world. Sanmati Bal Niketan is being built in Manjari locality at Hadapsar, Pune where over 300 children will reside.

At the age of 80, her husband came back to her apologetically. She accepted him as her child stating she is only a mother now! If anyone visited her ashram, she proudly and very affectionately used to introduce him as her oldest child! In person, she comes across as an unlimited source of energy and very powerful inspiration, with absolutely no negative emotions or blaming anybody.

A Marathi-language film Mee Sindhutai Sapkal released in 2010, is a biopic inspired by the true story of Sindhutai Sapkal. The film was selected for its world premiere at the 54th London Film Festival.

Sindhutai fought for the rehabilitation of the eighty-four villages. In the course of her agitation, she met Chhedilal Gupta, the then Minister of Forests. He agreed that the villagers should not be displaced before the government had made appropriate arrangements at alternative sites. When Prime Minister Indira Gandhi arrived to inaugurate the tiger project, Sindhutai showed her photographs of an Adivasi who had lost his eyes to a wild bear. "I told her that the forest department paid compensation if a cow or a hen was killed by a wild animal, so why not a human being? She immediately ordered compensation."

Soon she realized the plight of orphaned and abandoned Adivasi children. Initially, she took care of the children in return for some meager food. Looking after them was a source of livelihood. It didn't take long for it to become the mission of her life.

Operating organisations

Awards

Sindhutai Sapkal has been honored with 750 awards.

Film

The 2010 Marathi film Mee Sindhutai Sapkal by Anant Mahadevan is a biopic inspired by the true story of Sindhutai Sapkal. The film was selected for world premiere at the 54th London Film Festival.