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.

Singled Out by Gandhi While in Baroda, walking and reading were his main occupations. In 1916 Vinoba joined Gandhi and for a year not only steeped himself in Sanskrit studies but undertook such menial tasks as scavenging and cooking. At Gandhi's behest he established an ash ram at Sew agram which later became the Mahatma's headquarters. Vinoba's fame rests on his personal holiness—a dedicated ascetic life since the age of 10. vegetarianism (not even salt or spices), total celibacy and more than landlord of the area, rose and offered a hundred acres. The untouchables conferred and came to a decision: eighty acres, two for each family, were all they needed. Twenty were returned to the donor. It was this double act of generosity that inspired the Land Gifts Mission. This unpremeditated, almost accidental—some forty years of self-discipline. In 1940, Gandhi chose Vinoba Bhave who “had never been in the limelight or on the political platform”—from among all others in the country—to be the only one to offer civil disobedience. Vinoba spent three years in jail. Today this bespectacled frail ascetic—he weighs only 90 pounds dressed in homespun cloth—walks, sunshine or rain, his 10 or 15 miles a day. He walks as other sages before him to deliver his message. For the character of a saint is like cotton fibre—both undergo suffering to contribute to the welfare of others. And how else could a man, suffering from duodenal ulcer, subsisting on yoghourt, walk each day, year in year out, from village to village, unless he be a saint, divinely inspired? Vinoba started his movement at Gaya, Bihar, whence twenty-five centuries ago the Buddha preached the doctrine of non-violence and love. He has walked for four years—nearly 13,000 miles—acquiring four million acres of land, gifts from over 300,000 people. And his target by 1957 is 50 millions—one-sixth of India's arable land. “This Bhoodan Yajna”, says Vinoba, “is an application of non-violence, an experiment in the transformation of life itself. I am only an experiment in the hands of Him, who is the Lord of all ages, even like those who give and those who receive his gifts. It is the phenomenon inspired by God. For how otherwise can people who fight even for a foot of land be inspired to give away freely hundreds of acres?” Vinoba is revolutionary; he is trying to fulfill a historical necessity. He seeks the true emancipation of the masses. His Bhoodan Yajna or Land Gifts Mission is a first step towards the