Social activist Swami Agnivesh passes away at 80

Social activist-politician Swami Agnivesh, known for his work on issues such as child and bonded labour, breathed his last at a government hospital on Friday.

He was 80.

Agnivesh was suffering from liver cirrhosis and was admitted to the Institute of Liver and Biliary Sciences here and was on ventilator support since Tuesday due to multi-organ failure.

Born in Srikakulam in Andhra Pradesh to a Brahmin family on September 21, 1939, Vepa Shyam Rao was brought up by his maternal grandfather, who was the Diwan of a princely state ‘Sakti’, presently in Chhattisgarh.

Rao studied law and business management and became a lecturer in Calcutta before becoming a full-time worker of the Arya Samaj, a monastic order founded by reformist Dayanand Saraswati, in 1968.

In 1970, Rao renounced worldly possessions to become a sanyasi and assumed the name Swami Agnivesh.

Agnivesh founded a political party, Arya Sabha, based on the principles of the Arya Samaj in 1970 and was also arrested for opposing the Emergency in 1975.

He was widely known for his campaign against bonded labour through his foundation Bandhua Mukti Morcha (Bonded Labor Liberation Front).

He was elected to the Haryana Assembly in 1977 and was made education minister after two years. He, however, resigned from the post in protest against the Haryana government’s inaction against police who had opened fire at workers protesting bonded labour.

Agnivesh also led several initiatives to foster peace and interfaith harmony in Kashmir at the height of militancy.

In 2010, he was tasked by the Congress government to open a dialogue with the Maoist leadership.

A year later he was part of the anti-corruption movement led by Anna Hazare, but was forced to part ways from the group after a video surfaced allegedly showing him speaking to a minister from the UPA government.