Rabindra Nath Upadhyay

Upadhyay was married to Shakuntala Devi, who was also involved in his social activities. He died on 12 April 2010, at Guwahati, at the age of 87.

The Government of India included him in the 2000 Republic Day honours list for the civilian award of the Padma Shri for his services to the society. In 2003, he was awarded the Jamnalal Bajaj Award for constructive work by Jamnalal Bajaj Foundation. The next year he received the Friends of North-east Award and the National Foundation for Communal Harmony (NFCH), an autonomous body under the Ministry of Home Affairs honoured him with the National Communal Harmony Award in 2006 which he received from A. P. J. Abdul Kalam, the then President of India, on 23 May 2007.

Rabindra Nath Upadhyay (1923–2010) was an Indian social worker, Gandhian and the founder of Tamulpur Anchalik Gramdan Sangha (TAGS), a non governmental organization working for the social development of the rural people in the Kumarikata village of Assam. He was a recipient of the 2003 Jamnalal Bajaj Award. The Government of India awarded him the fourth highest civilian award of the Padma Shri, in 2000, for his services to the society.

Upadhyay was born in a small village (Sarayan Ujiyar) in Ballia District of the Indian state of Uttar Pradesh in 1923 and did his college studies at Banaras Hindu University. Attracted by the ideals of Subash Chandra Bose, he joined the Indian independence movement during his school days and is said to have been involved in armed struggle but, after the assassination of Mahatma Gandhi in 1948, he abandoned violent politics to pursue nonviolence. Associating himself with Vinoba Bhave and his Bhoodan Movement, he joined Shram Bharati, a Gandhian community, in 1951, to work alongside renowned Gandhians such as Jayaprakash Narayan, Dhirendra Majumdar and Acharya Ramamurti. When the Sino-Indian War broke out in 1962, he moved to the Assam border and worked there as a Shanti Sainik.