A New World to Create

Te Ao Hou, September 1955, Page 40

A New World to Create Gandhi initiated the people into truth and nonviolence, and through them gave India political freedom. It is Vinoba's task to educate the people into non-possession, non-stealing, and thus to bring about the other half of India's freedom—economic independence. Vinoba is a great educator and believes like the Sage Vivekananda before him, that education is the unfolding of the divinity already in man. The object of his movement is to change people by persuasion. The establishment of equality, to bring about Sarvodaya, the greatest good of all, and not the greatest good of the greatest number, is the object of Bhoodan Yajna. Vinoba says, “I demand land as of right on behalf of the poor. I do not beg it of you. I say I am here to initiate you into the right conduct. A great revolution is taking place in India. I invite you all to work for this revolution. I seek to revolutionize thought, to revolutionize minds. The sages say young people delight in new creation, a new mission. Here is a mission for them, a new world to create.” To superficial observers, Bhoodan is just an agrarian movement, preparing the ground for legislation. It is, in fact, the beginning of an allround social and human revolution—human also because it aims at changing man along with society. Persuasion, change of heart and mind, creation of new social values and a corresponding climate of opinion, non-co-operation with evil when persuasion proved inadequate—these were

Part of a queue at a polling station: a sightless old woman is carried to the booth by her son. (Government of India Photograph.) Gandhi's weapons. And in the words of Jayaprakash Narayan: “They served a twofold purpose: they changed society and changed the individual. The law can do the first but not the latter. No heart or mind has been changed by law; no individual made virtuous by coercion.”