{"id":326284,"date":"2020-09-11T16:01:10","date_gmt":"2020-09-11T16:01:10","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/tehelka.com\/?p=326284"},"modified":"2020-09-11T16:01:10","modified_gmt":"2020-09-11T16:01:10","slug":"social-activist-swami-agnivesh-passes-away","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/tehelka.com\/social-activist-swami-agnivesh-passes-away\/","title":{"rendered":"Social activist Swami Agnivesh passes away"},"content":{"rendered":"<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-family: 'times new roman', times, serif; font-size: 14pt;\"><img decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" class=\"size-full wp-image-326289 aligncenter\" src=\"http:\/\/tehelka.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/09\/swami-agnivesh-1.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"492\" height=\"480\" srcset=\"https:\/\/tehelka.com\/media\/2020\/09\/swami-agnivesh-1.jpg 492w, https:\/\/tehelka.com\/media\/2020\/09\/swami-agnivesh-1-300x293.jpg 300w, https:\/\/tehelka.com\/media\/2020\/09\/swami-agnivesh-1-431x420.jpg 431w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 492px) 100vw, 492px\" \/>Social activist and well-known Arya Samaj leader Swami Agnivesh\u00a0passed away on Friday at the Institute of Liver and Biliary Sciences in New Delhi. He was 80.<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-family: 'times new roman', times, serif; font-size: 14pt;\">He was critically ill and was hospitalised due to liver cirrhosis. He was put on ventilatory support on Tuesday due to multiple organ failure.<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-family: 'times new roman', times, serif; font-size: 14pt;\">Born on September 21, 1939, the 80-year-old activist was a former MLA from Haryana. He was best known for his work against bonded labour through the Bonded Labour Liberation Front, which he founded in 1981.<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-family: 'times new roman', times, serif; font-size: 14pt;\">Swami Agnivesh served as the president of the World Council of Arya Samaj, which is the highest international body of the Arya Samaj movement originally established by Dayanand Saraswat.<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-family: 'times new roman', times, serif; font-size: 14pt;\">He had also served as the chairperson of the United Nations Voluntary Trust Fund on Contemporary Forms of Slavery from 1994 to 2004.<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-family: 'times new roman', times, serif; font-size: 14pt;\">Senior Congress leader Shashi Tharoor expressed shock over the passing of Swami Agnivesh. He took to the Twitter account and tweeted, \u201cI am shocked and saddened by his passing. A man of vigour and conviction, he never looked, sounded or behaved his age! The country is diminished by his passing &amp; I mourn with the millions whose rights he fought to uphold. Om Shanti.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Social activist and well-known Arya Samaj leader Swami Agnivesh\u00a0passed away on Friday at the Institute of Liver and Biliary Sciences in New Delhi. He was 80. He was critically ill and was hospitalised due to liver cirrhosis. He was put on ventilatory support on Tuesday due to multiple organ failure. Born on September 21, 1939, [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":59,"featured_media":326289,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[36],"tags":[3696],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/tehelka.com\/rest-api\/wp\/v2\/posts\/326284"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/tehelka.com\/rest-api\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/tehelka.com\/rest-api\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tehelka.com\/rest-api\/wp\/v2\/users\/59"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tehelka.com\/rest-api\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=326284"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/tehelka.com\/rest-api\/wp\/v2\/posts\/326284\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":326290,"href":"https:\/\/tehelka.com\/rest-api\/wp\/v2\/posts\/326284\/revisions\/326290"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tehelka.com\/rest-api\/wp\/v2\/media\/326289"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/tehelka.com\/rest-api\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=326284"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tehelka.com\/rest-api\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=326284"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tehelka.com\/rest-api\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=326284"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}