“I do not know what adjectives I should use for you. Your love and purity of character overwhelm me. I am incapable of testing you.” So Gandhi wrote to his disciple Vinoba whose name like his master's is a household word in India today. “To reach his spiritual attainments”, the Mahatma wrote to Vinoba's parents, “I have passed a lifetime of spiritual endeavour.” Who is this Vinoba, almost unknown till a few years ago in India, whose one-man crusade based on love and non-violence is now sweeping the country like fire?

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.