Vinoba Bhave| 50 Captivating Lives
Among all the apostles of Gandhi, Vinoba Bhave was the only one who blazed his own trail. After Gandhi’s death, most of his followers faded into oblivion, with the exception of Vinoba. He is remembered for the constructive work that he did after Gandhi’s death. He was a thinker and a saint, who believed in doing and not preaching.
Vinoba Bhave was born Vinayak Narhari Bhave on 11 September 1895 in Gagode (now in the Kolaba district of Maharashtra) to Narhari Shambhurao Bhave and Rukmini Devi. His father Narhari was a textile technologist and worked in the dyeing department of Buckingham Mills for some time and was credited with producing the first khaki cloth. But later, he shifted
to Baroda permanently and served as a senior clerk typist in a government office. Later in life, he developed great interest in music and even wrote books on Indian music. He lived alone in
Baroda till 1903, when he brought his family there. For the first eight years of his life, Vinayak was extremely influenced by his grandfather, Shambhurao, and his mother, to whom he was very attached. Vinoba was the eldest of the five children of his parents.
One brother and a sister died early, leaving the three brothers— Vinayak, Balkrishna (Baikova) and Shiva—to share the love and affection of their parents and grandfather. All three brothers did not marry and the Bhave family ended with them.
Vinayak started his formal education in a Baroda school and was admitted to Baroda High School later, from where he passed the matriculation examination in 1913. He was not a brilliant student but was good at mathematics and had a knack for learning languages. His English was good and so was his French, which was an optional subject at school. He also knew Marathi, Gujarati and Sanskrit. He then joined Baroda College for his intermediate, for which he had to go to Bombay in 1916. During his train journey, he changed his mind and took a train to Kashi (Banaras) instead. He wanted to learn Sanskrit. It is said that he burned his school certificates so that he would not be able to continue his college education. There were not many certificates to burn anyway. He started studying the Vedas and the Upanishads from
some pandits in Kashi, but he did not stay there for long. He had heard about Gandhi and the controversial speech he had delivered at the inaugural ceremony of the BHU, lambasting
the princes present on the dais. He wanted to meet Gandhi and reached his Kochrab Ashram in Ahmedabad (Sabarmati Ashram was established later in 1918). Vinayak liked the austere life being led by the ashramites and soon became one of the favourite disciples of Gandhi. The very first day Vinayak met Gandhi, the latter wrote to Vinayak’s father Shambhurao (on 7 June 1916), ‘Your son Vinoba is with me. Your son has acquired at so tender age such high-spiritedness and asceticism as took me years of patient labour to do.’ It is rather surprising how Gandhi could gauge the inner qualities of Vinoba at their very first meeting. The name ‘Vinoba’ was given to Vinayak after he joined the ashram. At the ashram, Vinoba did all the menial work which was required of all the people there. It is often claimed that even scavenging was being done by the ashramites, including Gandhi. This claim must have a qualified acceptance, as a sweeper had been employed to do the scavenging. In fact, one day, when the sweeper was ill, he had sent his twelve-year-old son to do the scavenging. When the boy could not finish the work, he began to cry. It was at that time that Gandhi decided that the they should do the scavenging work.
This was in 1920.1 Vinoba taught mathematics and Gujarati to the students in the Rashtriya Shala (National School) and also acted as a hotel superintendent. Gandhi used to discuss the intricacies of the Gita and the Upanishads with him and was impressed by the
depth of his knowledge and understanding of Hindu scriptures. Gandhi was so impressed by Vinoba that he wrote to him on 18 February 1918, ‘Your love and your character fascinate me and so also your self-examination. I am not fit to measure your worth. You seem almost to have met a long felt wish of mine.’ It seems that the hard work in the ashram took a toll on Vinoba’s health. Or there could be some other reasons behind his decision to leave which we will never know. Vinoba left the ashram in February 1917 and went to his ancestral place, Wai. He brushed up on his Sanskrit for six months and studied the Upanishads, Brahmasutra etc., from a learned pandit. For the next few months, he visited several surrounding villages and historical places on foot. Exactly one year later, he returned to the ashram and started doing the daily chores, including teaching, once again. In April 1921, Vinoba was deputed by Gandhi, at the request of Jamnalal Bajaj, to take charge of the Satyagraha Ashram at Wardha, which was earlier looked after by Ramniklal Modi. Soon, Vinoba extended the activities of the ashram. He founded other ashrams in nearby villages—one at Nalwadi, a Harijan village and another in Pavnar, five miles from Wardha. He also started a Mahila Ashram in Wardha. In 1923, he took part in the flag satyagraha at Nagpur and was imprisoned for three months. He also took part in the Vaikom satyagraha (Kerala) in 1924. He stayed in and around Wardha for 30 years. He ran the ashrams founded by him according to his
own beliefs, which were akin to Gandhi but differed in certain important details. There was better discipline and a greater emphasis on ‘Harijan’ work. Vinoba had several temples and wells opened for Harijans and also founded a tannery for them near Nalwadi in 1935. He had now a team of dedicated workers which enabled him to put into practise what he believed. To better organize the activities in his ashrams, Vinoba founded the Gram Seva Mandal in 1934. He also opened the Maharogi Seva Mandal at Datapur, near Wardha, for service to those with leprosy.
In October 1940, when Gandhi launched the Civil Disobedience Movement, Vinoba Bhave was chosen as the first satyagrahi. He was arrested thrice during this satyagraha and sentenced to various terms of imprisonment each time. When the Quit India Movement was started in August 1942, Vinoba was among the leaders who were arrested. He was kept in Vellore jail and Seoni jail for three years. Back in his ashrams, he started doing constructive work.
After Gandhi’s death in January 1948, Congress leaders sought out Vinoba for help in transforming the society in independent India. A conference of top political dignitaries and constructive workers was held at the Sevagram Ashram, with Jawaharlal Nehru, Rajendra
Prasad, Maulana Azad and others in attendance. It was then that the concept of ‘Sarvodaya Samaj’ was formulated. The importance of Vinoba Bhave and his work was realized by the government as well as by social workers. After the conference, Nehru invited Vinoba to Delhi to help with the relief and rehabilitation work for the refugees who had been ousted from Pakistan. Nehru wanted to help the Meo Muslims of Gurgaon get back their land which had
been occupied by Hindu and Sikh refugees when they (the Meo community) had migrated to Pakistan. Nehru had brought them back to India himself and was now in a dilemma about how to get the land vacated without inviting the ire of the Hindus and Sikhs. The sermons of Vinoba, coupled with the unsympathetic attitude of the Nehru government, succeeded in ousting the Hindu and Sikh refugees, thus fortifying the secular image of Nehru. To spread the message of Sarvodaya Samaj, Vinoba started the monthly journal, Sarvodaya, on 15 August 1949. Vinoba’s
teachings as well as community work must have come to the notice of people outside India. They had not yet forgotten the devastation caused by war, and were looking for methods which would lead the world to permanent peace. They saw some hope in the teachings of Vinoba. The World Pacifist Conference was held at Sevagram in January 1949, in which delegates from several countries participated. Vinoba inaugurated the conference and Rajendra Prasad presided. In 1950, he began his experiment of Kanchan Mukti (freedom from gold or money economy), which ended in failure for obvious reasons. Vinoba Bhave is best known for bhoodan (a gift of land by the big landlords to the landless). The movement was born accidentally
in 1951, when he visited the Telangana area where communists were active. In Pochampalli village, the landless Harijan entreated him to give them land so that they could eke out their livelihood. Vinoba, half in earnest, asked in his prayer meeting if anyone could give them the 80 acres of land that they needed. To everyone’s surprise, a young man, Ramchandra Reddy, stood up and said, ‘I make a gift of 100 acres of land.’ Vinoba realized that it was possible to get land
from the big farmers by begging and it could then be distributed to the landless. That was the birth of the Bhoodan Movement. Vinoba and a band of his followers marched from one village to another on foot, persuading landlords to donate their surplus property.
They travelled from one corner of the country to the other in a ‘sweet-tempered fury’, demanding land from landlords. It was a sight to see the ‘frail old man with a goat beard striding ahead, lean and sinewy, wearing tennis shoes and carrying a staff.’ Vinoba and his
movement was covered on the front pages of newspapers across the world. Prime Minister Nehru lauded his efforts in the Parliament. New York Times wrote a three-column story on him and his unique movement. Time magazine featured this ‘man on foot’ in its cover story. ‘The Bhoodan March’ of Vinoba continued for more than 13 years covering a total distance of 36,500 miles. During the padayatra (travels on foot) he collected 4.4 million acres of land as free gifts, out of which about 1.3 million acres were distributed among landless farm workers.2 The number of his followers swelled, which included Jayaprakash Narayan, their differences in the later stages notwithstanding. The Bhoodan Movement led to some other related movements like Gramdan and Sarvodaya. For his exemplary work, Vinoba received the first Magsaysay Award in 1958.
During his padayatras, Vinoba Bhave influenced the thinking of many people who met him or heard about him, including the dacoits of Chambal valley. In May 1960, Vinoba, accompanied by
Major General Yadunath Singh, toured the dreaded Chambal area which was the safe abode of several dacoits. Word went around among the dacoits and some of them came for his darshan and were converted. The first one was the notorious Lachhi, who surrendered at Vinoba’s feet. He had read in the newspapers that the ‘Baba’ (Vinoba) wanted them to repent and surrender. Within a few days, 20 more dacoits, led by the formidable Lokman Dixit (also known
as ‘Lukka’) as well as the Maan Singh gang, surrendered. In a prayer meeting after their surrender, Vinoba said, ‘Two thousand and five hundred years ago we witnessed such an incident when A ̇ngulimāla was turned into a saint by the touch of Lord Buddha. People say that such happenings are not possible in this Kali Yuga, the age of evil. This is nothing but (a) miracle of the Almighty.’
All these years, Vinoba had also been working for the eradication of untouchability and caste restrictions and for the propagation of khadi. But for the last 20 years of his life, he had the feeling that he had done all that an individual could do. Still, he could not resist the temptation of doing something to stop cow slaughter before his death. In February 1982, at the age of 88, he went on a fast and led a satyagraha to secure a total ban on cow slaughter. He did not succeed. On 15 November 1982, he breathed his last in his ashram. Mahadevi Tai, his adopted daughter, lit the funeral pyre. Vinoba Bhave wrote several books and pamphlets, mostly on spiritual and religious topics. His Gita Pravachan, translated in English as Talks on the Gita, is a collection of his talks which he delivered in Dhula jail in 1932. Others include Swaraj Shastra or Grammar of Politics (1973) and Gitai (a simple rendering of Gita in Marathi verse). His speeches and articles have been collected
by his disciples: Bhoodan (eight Volumes), selected and edited by Nirmala Deshpande, Shikshan Vichar (Thoughts on Education) and many others.
Vinoba learnt a lot from Gandhi and even imitated him in some ways but his thinking and constructive work went beyond Gandhian teachings. He clarified this during the Sevagram Constructive
Workers Conference in March 1948. He said:
Gandhiji gave me freely, but I also received from others. Whenever and whatever I got, I made my own. It now forms part of my capital. I do not have separate accounts as to what part of it was derived from Gandhiji and what from others. Of the ideas I read and heard, whatever appealed to me and were imbibed by me, became my own. Hence, I am a man of my own ideas.
Today, nobody talks about Bhoodan or Vinoba Bhave. The Naxalites have taken over once again and have expanded their area of action. The number of landless labourers has increased since Vinoba’s death. Land is being grabbed by the powerful and unscrupulous. More and more people are pushed down the enigmatic poverty line. The problem of poverty and landless people is a colossal one. Vinoba tried to do the impossible. He might not have been able to provide a solution, but he showed a way.
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