Acharya Vinoba Bhave: An uppercase Indian social reformer

 

In November 1982, Vinoba Bhave fell seriously ill and decided to end his life. He also refused to accept any food and medicine during his last days. On 15 November, 1982, the great social reformer of India passed away. He was posthumously honored with the Bharat Ratna Award in 1984. Acharya Vinoba Bhave was a scholar, saint, moral tribune, a beacon of hope and solace to millions in India and abroad. He was Mahatma Gandhi's spiritual successor. He was born in a village in Maharashtra's Kolaba District on September 11, 1895. He was drawn to Mahatma Gandhi and his unique 'Weaponless War' as a youth.

Like Gandhiji, Bhave also was very much ahead of his time. He is one of India's best-known social reformers and a widely venerated disciple of MK Gandhi. Bhave was the founder of the Bhoodan Yajna ("Land-Gift Movement"). His movements of Bhoodan (Gift of Land), Sampattidan (Gift of Wealth), Jeevadan (Gift of Life) and other movements are logical extensions of Gandhiji's programs of national reconstruction. He was one of the greatest scholar-saints thrown up by the modern Indian renaissance.

His talks on the Bhagvad Gita delivered in jail are innovative and inspiring. Though he had a marvelous memory and was a student by nature, he had devoted the largest part of his time to spinning in which he specialized. He believed in universal spinning being the central activity which would remove the poverty in the villages.

He abolished every trace of untouchability from his heart. He believed in communal amity. In order to know the best mind of Islam he gave one year to the study of Koran in the original. He, therefore, learnt Arabic. He found this study necessary for cultivating contact with the Muslims living in the neighborhood. The 'Padayatra' (Journey) of Vinobaji, which was part of his Bhoodan movement, now belongs to history. It was a demonstration of Gandhian doctrine of Trusteeship.

He used to say, "Of the many teachings of the Gita which Vinobaji highlighted in his talks, one of the most important was the role of self-help."The Gita is prepared to go to the lowest, the weakest and the least cultured of men. And it goes to him not to keep him where he is, but to grasp him by the hand and lift him up. The Gita wishes that man should make his action pure and attain the highest state."

Born of a high-caste Brahman family, he abandoned his high school studies in 1916 to join Gandhi's ashram (ascetic community) at Sabarmati, near Ahmadabad. Gandhi's teachings led Bhave to a life of austerity dedicated to improving Indian village life. He was imprisoned several times during the 1920s and 1930s and served a five-year prison sentence in the 1940s for leading nonviolent resistance to British rule. He was given the honorific title 'Acharya' (Teacher).

Bhave's idea of the land-gift movement was conceived in 1951, while he was touring villages in the province of Andhra Pradesh, when a landholder offered him acreage in response to his appeal on behalf of a group of landless Dalits (members of the lowest castes, formerly called "untouchables" and now officially named Scheduled Castes). He then walked from village to village, appealing for gifts of land to be distributed among the landless and relating the act of giving to the principle of ahimsa (nonviolence), which had been adopted by Gandhi.

According to Bhave, land reform should be secured by a change of heart and not by enforced government action. His critics maintained that Bhudan Yajna encouraged the fragmentation of land and would thus obstruct a rational approach to large-scale agriculture, but Bhave declared that he preferred fragmented land to fragmented hearts. Later, however, he encouraged gramdan i.e., the system whereby villagers pooled their land, after which the land was reorganized under a cooperative system.

Throughout 1975, Bhave took a vow of silence over the issue of the involvement of his followers in political agitation. As a result of a fast in 1979, he secured the government's promise to enforce the law prohibiting the killing of cows (animals sacred to Hinduism) throughout India. And that was a great fault of his ideals.

After a series of exchange of letters between Gandhi and Bhave, on 7 June, 1916 Vinoba went to meet Gandhi. Five years later, on 8 April, 1921, Vinoba went to Wardha to take charge of a Gandhi-ashram there. During his stay at Wardha, Bhave also brought out a monthly in Marathi, named, 'Maharashtra Dharma'. The monthly comprised of his essays on the Upanishads. Over the years, the bond between Vinoba and Gandhi grew stronger and his involvement in constructive programs for the society kept on increasing.

In 1932, accusing Vinoba Bhave of conspiring against the colonial rule, the British government sent him to jail for six months to Dhulia. There, he told the fellow prisoners about the different subjects of 'BhagwadGita', in Marathi. All the lectures given by him on Gita in Dhulia jail were collected and later published as a book. Till 1940, Vinoba Bhave was known only to the people around him. Mahatma Gandhi, on 5 October, 1940, introduced Bhave to the nation by issuing a statement. He was also chosen as the first Individual Satyagrahi (an Individual standing up for Truth instead of a collective action) by Gandhi himself.

In 1951, Vinoba Bhave started his peace-trek on foot through the violence-torn region of Telangana. On April 18, 1951, the Harijans of the Pochampalli village requested him to provide them with around 80 acres of land to make a living. Vinoba asked the landlords of the village to come forward and save the Harijans. To everybody's surprise, a landlord, got up and offered the required amount of land. This incident added a new chapter in the history of sacrifices and non-violence. It was the beginning of the Bhoodan (Gift of the Land) movement. Following this, Vinoba Bhave travelled all across the country asking landlords to consider him as one of their sons and so give him a portion of their land. He then distributed those portions of land to the landless poor. Not a single people around him ever saw him getting angry and violent. He always followed the path of truth and Non-violence, as shown by Mahatma Gandhi.

As usual, Vinoba's daily program was very regular. He used to halt at some small village for the day, go round it, listen to the people on their problems and address the post-prayer meeting in the evening exhorting them to take to self-help in solving their problems and to love one another. It may be mentioned here that in this Yatra, as also in the later ones, persons accompanying him for months and years together always found some originality and freshness in every speech of his, both regarding ideas and approach.

The idea of Bhoodan was a comprehensive idea in that it was not confined to land only. As he said in 1955, "The basic idea of Bhoodan is that wealth, intelligence and every such thing which a man has, belongs to society and they should go to it. If somebody retains something, he is a trustee for it."  And his concept of trusteeship, which he made clear on many occasions, implied the ultimate abolition of private property and its conversion into social property, with its benefits available to all. The word "Dan" in "Bhoodan" did not stand for charity, but for equitable distribution, a sense in which it was even taken by no less a personage than Adi Shankaracharya.

There were occasions when Vinoba refused to accept unbecoming land donations from big landlords, telling them that he was not seeking charity, but wanted to initiate them into new values of life. On other occasions he politely said that accepting them would tarnish both the donor's and his reputation.
Several objections were raised against Bhoodan from time to time, and Vinoba had to reply to them. To the charge that he was distributing poverty, he said, "If there is poverty in the country, it should be shared, and if there is wealth, that too must be shared. In fact, it is not a movement of distributing poverty, but of joining hearts." His reply to those who argued that small plots of land were uneconomic for cultivation, was, "There is no ground for holding that small plots of land reduce production, especially when you know that our people are inclined towards individual farming." He also made it clear that his movement was based on a positive ideology and was not counteraction against the communists. He said, "The rays of the sun are not a counteraction against darkness."

To sum up, Vinoba Bhave was a simple and dedicated person, but with grandeur in character who tirelessly worked for the Gandhian ideals of Ahimsa and upliftment of the people. He should be remembered for these very ideals and their importance in modern life.


The writer is an independent
political analyst who writes on
politics, political and human-centered figures, current and
international affairs.