My colleagues in conscience:

I want to fly like a Madia tribesman's arrow, quivering with sun-intoxicated raptures, to thank you for the honor of conferring on me this highest Asian award for public service. But as I am tied to my torture-stake of pain, I am deputizing my son, Dr. Vikas Amte, to receive it on my behalf and on behalf of my big family at Anandwan: all those afflicted with leprosy, the lame and the blind, the deaf and the mute, the orphans and the homeless.

It is a privilege to accept this prestigious Award presented in the name of Ramon Magsaysay, an outstanding leader, yet a man of the people who believed firmly in their dignity, liberty and supreme sovereignty. Motivated by this mighty belief he could ensure a government that listened to the voices of the people. (Government should always be skillful in binding up the gaping wounds and drying its people's tears.) Magsaysay had this lofty ideal in his heart—an ideal which he proclaimed and practiced in his lifetime.

I am really distressed by my disability; it is better to be healthy than to be famous. But God has given me supreme power to smile through the tears. Confidence and courage are my strongest and sharpest weapons.

Public service is not merely something that occupies the hours you are doing it, but invades all your life and experience and affects them in one way or the other. In public service people test you before they entrust themselves to you.

I never have wanted to commit the sin of turning a deaf ear to the plaintive cries of thousands of leprosy patients; of people who are physically handicapped; of people who though present in the world are absent—the deaf, the mute; of youths united only in the fraternity of frustration; of people whose intestines are gnawed by hunger, whose minds are darkened by ignorance and hatred, whose eyes open into perpetual night; of tribesmen who have remained unprotesting for an agonizingly long time. People who remain silent for a long time become a silenced minority; that is detrimental to any democracy.

I sought fellowship with the primitive Madia tribes of central India. My love for these people cleansed my polluted heart, sanctified my ambitions, sweetened my relationships, glorified my undertakings and transformed the valley of shadows in my life into the bursting dawn of eternal day. Those walking in the twilight of life, those seeking honestly the last harvest of their lives, those desiring and striving with shaky confidence to add new life to their years, those leading life in stark loneliness—I wanted to be their companion on their long, lonely voyages.

I wanted to be a contemporary of those "Lords of Conspicuous Scars"—Christ, Damien, Gandhi. I saw the imprint of those nails with which Christ was crucified on the palms of Damien and on the breast of Gandhiji. Everytime I stand in the company of a leprosy patient I see the imprint of Christ's kiss on his forehead.

"I have infirm wings, a heart—weary and insolent, a restless will, a broken backbone but I am still not weary of long voyages and uncertain things." Thus like MacIntyre, I will attempt to shape a community united in a shared vision of the good for man.

All service to be truly effective and of permanent value must be wrought in love. Your work is your life made visible. In public service you have to bait death in pursuit of your aims. You cannot afford to indulge in desires and pleasures. War kneads the earth with blood. In public service the distressed world begs your attention and you have to drench it with love and compassion. Goodwill and dedication alone do not suffice. Public service challenges us to discover and accept new values, new attitudes and most important, new commitments.

This Award will lead me to deeper commitments.