In March 1895, Rev. W. E. Wilkie Brown, of the United Free Church of Scotland, passed through Poladpur on his way to language school at Mahableshwar. This is what he saw:
“Half a dozen low bamboo and leaf huts with straw thatching under the shady trees told you nothing till you came nearer, and there, seated on the ground, were a dozen or more poor broken men with the unmistakable signs of leprosy. Then I heard how Haripant [Kelkar], over and above his work as an evangelist, had found them here, for it was a good place for begging. It is at a point on the North and South Konkan road, where the road breaks off that climbs the Mahableshwar range and continues to the Deccan. This road is always thronged with bullock-carts carrying provisions and produce, salt, rice, coconuts, dried fish, pottery and much else to the hinterland. The poor lepers found it a good place and sat by the wayside begging.
“Taking compassion on them, Haripant had these simple shelters made for them. He had no financial help for this effort of his, nothing beyond his faith and his love for the poor outcasts. The shopkeepers and grain merchants of Poladpur, approving this effort to keep the lepers from wandering through the town, were ready to help. Indeed, it was Haripant, the converted Brahmin, who became a beggar for their sakes, and from the gifts he received made them the daily allowance for their needs. He himself had a room just across the road from the leper huts, so near that only the width of a road lay between.
“It was all done so quietly and unostentatiously. Every evening he gathered them for worship and taught them the hymns he loved as well as those of his own composition. It was a piece of work that he had added over and above his school and evangelistic work in that place. He was building better than he knew.”
This was how the foundation of the Leprosy Ashram at Poladpur was laid by one man, Haripant Kelkar, a convert to Christianity, a Brahmin by birth.
(Source: A. Donald Miller, An Inn Called Welcome, The Mission to Lepers, London, 1965)
“In 1895 the Rev. W. E. Wilkie Brown, passed through Poladpur en route to Mahableshwar. [Haripant] Kelkar offered him hospitality and took him to see the lepers he had housed. Brown was impressed, and the Mission for Lepers was subsequently informed of Kelkar’s endeavours and provided finances. As a result, the Home grew in size and permanency. At the start of the twentieth century, patients built a small church, which was superseded by a more permanent structure built in 1912. Although [Haripant] Kelkar was moved away by his Mission, the leprosy work continued, superintended by the Foreign Missions Committee of the Church of Scotland and financed by The Mission to Lepers. In the mid 1940s around 180 patients were resident. In 1943 Dr. Victor Das joined the staff as resident physician, and he was to be a pivotal figure in improving life at the asylum in future decades. During his residency a new church was constructed [in memory of Rev. Donald Mitchell and Haripant Kelkar] and dedicated in 1954, and a new hospital block was completed in 1959.”
(Source: D. A. Miller, Two Pioneers at Poladpur: And What Followed, The Mission to Lepers, London, 1960)
(Internet source: http://www.leprosyhistory.org/cgi-bin/showdetails.pl?ID=29&type=lep)
It is now a Trust Hospital of The Leprosy Mission.
