VINOBA… and his LAND GIFT MISSION

Te Ao Hou, September 1955, Page 38

VINOBA… and his LAND GIFT MISSION by Baldoon Dhingra It was in Telengana, Hyderabad. only four years ago, that the communists had sought to get the land by force and there was death and destruction on all sides. So it was there that Vinoba, recluse and scholar, repaired as a messenger of peace and goodwill. He toured the villages and saw that if communism had entrenched itself in them. it was because the big landlords had kept the land to themselves and exploited the labour of landless peasants. It was in the village of Pachampalli that the idea of Bhoodan Yajna. Land Gifts Mission, was first born in Vinoba's mind. There, forty untouchable families told him of their misery. If only they had some land, they said.

That very evening, at a prayer meeting Vinoba appealed to the local landlords: “If you had five sons and a sixth were born to you, you would give him a portion of your estate. Treat me then as your sixth son and give me one-sixth of your land—for redistribution to the poor.” After a silence one man, the most important Elephants are still used in India for ploughing the fields. (Government of India Photograph.) would call it divine—origin is responsible for Free India's first mass movement. “The land belongs to God, like air and water”, says Vinoba, “and it is foolish to believe it can belong to one class of people alone. Gain merit by giving land free”. To the communists Vinoba said: “If you would give up class hatred and truly work for the good of all, I would be the first to join you.” Vinoba Bhave, or Vinobaji as he is called in India, was born on September 11, 1894, of austere, deeply religious Brahmin parents. It was from his mother, who dedicated all she received to God and shared it with her neighbours, that he inherited his ascetic quality. He studied in the Baroda High School, passed his matriculation and intermediate examinations, wrote poems which he consecrated to the Ganges, and acquired a deep love for mathematics and learning. He has a prodigious memory which accounts for his profound knowledge of the scriptures of the world's great religions, and a gift for languages. Besides English, French, Sanskrit, Arabic and Persian, he speaks eight of India's principal regional languages. And he talks with such simplicity that even a child can understand.