About this stamp
Doctor of Tapovan
India Post issued this ₹5 stamp on 28 December 2017, his 125th birth anniversary, for Dr Shivajirao Ganesh Patwardhan (1892–1986), physician, freedom fighter and founder of the Tapovan leprosy centre at Amravati. No India Post brochure for this stamp could be found; this text draws on Wikipedia and on the history published by the Vidarbha Maharogi Seva Mandal.
His Life
He was born on 28 December 1892 at Asangi, in present-day Karnataka, and settled at Amravati in 1917 as a doctor. He took part in the freedom movement and was jailed for it; in prison he saw a leprosy patient die and the body treated with contempt, and resolved to give his life to people with leprosy. After his release he turned from politics to social work.
Tapovan
With the support of Vinoba Bhave he founded the Vidarbha Maharogi Seva Mandal, known as Tapovan, near Amravati (the Mandal gives 1950 as its start), a place not only of treatment but of new lives, where he even arranged marriages between cured patients. Tapovan still looks after people affected by leprosy. He was awarded the Padma Shri and died on 7 May 1986, aged 93.
The stamp was designed by Alka Sharma and printed by Security Printing Press, Hyderabad.
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