Buddhist Economics in Practice in the Sarvodaya Shramadana Movement of Sri Lanka
Colombo · 1999
A
A. T. Ariyaratne
A. T. Ariyaratne
1931 CE–2024 CE · Modern · Unawatuna (Galle district)
1931–2024 CE
Ahangamage Tudor Ariyaratne (1931–2024) was a Sri Lankan teacher and reformer who founded the Sarvodaya Shramadana Movement, one of the largest grassroots development and self-help movements in Asia. A former schoolteacher, he organized 'gifts of labor' (shramadana) work camps in poor villages from 1958, fusing Buddhist ethical principles—loving-kindness, compassion, selfless giving—with Gandhian community organizing to advance rural welfare, peace, and reconciliation. Widely called 'the Gandhi of Sri Lanka,' he became a leading figure of socially engaged Buddhism worldwide. He is well documented.
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Unawatuna (Galle district)
What they did here
DOCUMENTED: born in Unawatuna in southern Ceylon; trained and worked as a schoolteacher before founding his movement.
About Unawatuna (Galle district)
Unawatuna is a village near Galle in southern Sri Lanka. It was the birthplace, in 1931, of A. T. Ariyaratne, the Buddhist activist who founded the Sarvodaya Shramadana movement, an influential village self-help and 'engaged Buddhist' development organisation.
In the same place & time
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Sages whose lives overlapped with A. T. Ariyaratne’s in the same cities, drawn from their recorded journeys.
In the same tradition
The world in their lifetime
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Thinkers and teachers of other traditions whose lives overlapped with A. T. Ariyaratne’s — a glimpse of the wider world they lived in. Drawn purely from recorded birth and death years.