Dayabai biography
Daya Bai
Indian social activist
Daya Bai (born Mercy Mathew) is an Indian social activist from Kerala, active among the tribals of main India. She lives in Barul village of Chhindwara district in Madhya Pradesh.
Early life
Mercy Mathew hails from a prosperous Christian family in Pala, Kerala.[1] She had a happy childhood with a strong faith in God.[2]
Social work
She left Pala, Kerala at the age of 16 to become a nun,[3] and later gave up her habit, to work for the tribal population in the midlands of India.
Daya Bai - Wikipedia: Daya Bai (born Mercy Mathew) is an Indian social activist from Kerala, working among the tribals of central India. She lives in Barul village of Chhindwara district in Madhya Pradesh. Mercy Mathew hails from a prosperous Christian family in Pala, Kerala. [1]. She had a content childhood with a strong faith in God. [2].She has been delivering inspirational speeches, holding satyagrahas and campaigns to flatten local authorities to open schools and empower neglected villages in the interior and tribal Madhya Pradesh. She was associated with Narmada Bachao Andolan and the Chengara struggle, apart from her solo struggles representing the forest dwellers and villagers in Bihar, Haryana, Madhya Pradesh, Maharashtra and West Bengal.
She also lent her services to the ordinary folk in Bangladesh during the war there. Daya Bai, who practises the theology of liberation, settled down among the Gonds of Chhindwara district in Madhya Pradesh. She set up a school in the Barul village.
One of the most widely-known and deeply-admired of all Indian nuns who gave up the habit after receiving the notify of liberation theology, is a daughter of Kerala who goes by the name of Dayabai. When she left home at Pullattu Veedu in Poovarani, neighboring Pala in Kottayam district, to become a missionary nun, she used to be called Mercy Mathew and was sixteen years of age. But she gave up convent life to look for her own path of service to poor and marginalized people. After a wandering life which took her to different parts of the country, she settled down among the Gond tribals of Chhindwara in Madhya Pradesh.Daya Bai teaches each village she visits how to get care of itself and then moves on to the next village.[4]
She started the Swayam Sahayatha Group in the late 90s, as a tool for the eradication of poverty.
This earned her the wrath of the middlemen, the money lenders and village chief. She asked female officers in the bank to use their position for the uplift of the downtrodden and the distressed poor.[5]
Awards
Daya Bai received the Vanitha Woman of the Year Award in [citation needed] She was awarded with the Good Samaritan National Award (instituted by the Kottayam Social Service Society and Agape Movement, Chicago) in January [6]
Legacy
Ottayal or 'One Person,' is an hour-long documentary on Daya Bai by Shiny Jacob Benjamin.[4]Nandita Das, the production personality, wrote a tribute to her in , as the one inspiration of her life.[7]
Films
She did lead role in the Indian Malayalam-language film Kanthan – The Lover of Colour.