‘She never stopped learning all her life’: Gandhian Shobhana Ranade passes away at 99

An architect of modern India and a builder of institutions of social work, veteran Gandhian Ranade passed away in Pune on Sunday at the age of 99. Awarded the Padma Bhushan in 2011, she dedicated herself to uplifting the underprivileged, especially women and children, spread across geographies in India. In the Northeast, she made contributions in the form of programmes such as Adim Jati Seva Sangh to empower Naga women by teaching them to spin the charkha, and the Maitri Ashram in North Lakhimpur, Assam.

There were times when Ranade would speak to Patil about her correspondence, pointing out which envelopes were related to work and which were personal. (File photo)

As he began to study the different ‘isms’ shaping India, from Gandhism to communism to the philosophy of Savarkar, Balkawde would meet Ranade more frequently.

“Shobhana ji, who was a staunch Gandhian, and I would have intellectual debates and ideological differences but it was always respectful. Shobhana ji was inspired when she met Mahatma Gandhi while very young, 18, and she dedicated 50 years of her life to being a Gandhian,” says Balkawde. “She worked with the Mahatma’s disciple Vinoba Bhave ji in movements such as Bhoodan, in which landowners gave up extra land so that the poor could cultivate. I would ask Shobhana ji a lot of questions and some answers made sense to me and some did not. The memories of those conversations and the relationship with her are memories that I will always cherish,” Balkawde adds.

According to the Jamnalal Bajaj Foundation, which awarded Ranade the Jamnalal Bajaj Award for Development and Welfare of Women and Children in 2011, Ranade, as a trustee of the Kasturba Gandhi National Trust, focussed on training in more than 20 village industrial trades and vocational skills. Among her other roles was setting up the Gandhi National Memorial Society (GNMS) and a National Institute for Training Women at the Aga Khan Palace in Pune in 1979.

Bal Griha and Balsadan at Saswad, Pune, which cares for vulnerable girls, is one of her lasting signs. The Hermann Gmeiner Social Centre at Shivajinagar was a pilot project of SOS Children’s Villages to ease the lives of street children. It takes care of their education, nutrition, health, counselling and rehabilitation.

At the GNMS, there is a pall of gloom. Jayant Patil had worked with Ranade for 22 years. “Before Covid, she stopped coming to the office because of her age. She was the founder member and trustee secretary of GNMS till her last day. It was because of her that we started lots of social work programmes at Aga Khan Palace. This included a United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) project that she brought in 1997, whereby thousands of refugees from 25 countries, besides places like Maharashtra and Goa, were facilitated under her guidance,” says Patil, who heads the project.

He remembers how Ranade was always “so calm” and how she was particular about small details, such as how to stick stamps on paper. “While travelling from Pune to Mumbai by train, she used to write 10-15 letters and, at Lonavala, she used to tell somebody to drop these in the post box. When you work with somebody like this day-to-day, you get to understand that communication skills need to be strong and that this is the way of working,” he says.

There were times when Ranade would speak to Patil about her correspondence, pointing out which envelopes were related to work and which were personal. “The envelopes cost Rs 5 but she would not charge even that to the official account. We would also be impressed by how beautiful her handwriting was. Even when she was travelling, her writing did not break. Then, there was her fondness for dictionaries. Every time, when you saw her in the office, she would have a small dictionary on her table and in her purse. She was always using a dictionary and learning. She never stopped learning all her life,” says Patil.