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ACHARYA VINOBA BHAVE

VISHWANATH TANDON
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BUILDERS OF MODERN INDIA

Acharya Vinoba Bhave
Vishwanath Tandon
PUBLICATIONS DIVISION
MINISTRY OF INFORMATION AND BROADCASTING
GOVERNMENT OF INDIA
February 1992 (Magha 1913)
Price Rs.32.00
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About the series
THE OBJECT OF this series is to record, for the present

and future generations, the story of the struggles and
achievements of the eminent sons and daughters of India who
have been mainly instrumental in our national renaissance
and the attainment of Independence. Except in a few cases,
such authoritative biographies have not been available.
The biographies are planned as handy volumes written by
knowledgeable people and giving a brief account, in simple
words, of the life and activities of the eminent leaders and of
their times. They are not intended either to be comprehensive
studies or to replace the more elaborate biographies.
The work of writing these lives has to be entrusted to
different people. It has, therefore,\not» been possible to publish
the biographies in a. chronological order. It is hoped,
however, that within a short period all eminent national
personalities will figure in this series.
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I . 1
Preface
THIS BOOK ON the life and work of Acharya Vinoba

Bhave has been a quest for me, though I have been interested
in his thought and activities for the last forty years. Still it
cannot be claimed that the search is at all complete. Vinoba is
too vast and too deep a subject for a complete search by a
person like me whose efforts have only been directed towards
understanding him intellectually. If I undertook to prepare
this book, it was only because some persons who had been
close to Vinoba had suggested my name to the late Dr R.R.
Diwakar, the General Editor of this series, for writing this
book, and wanted me to accept the offer and they were
prepared to co-operate with me in this endeavour.
In preparing this book, I have been greatly helped by
several books, already available on Vinoba’s life and work.
My greatest debt, from this viewpoint, is to Kalindi’s Ahimsa
Ki Talash which gives Vinoba’s autobiographical remi¬
niscences in his own words, and then follow Baburao
Joshi’s Tapodhan Vinoba, Shriman Narayan’s Vinoba: His
Life and Work, Suresh Ram’s Vinoba and His Mission,
Vasant Nargolkar’s The Creed of Saint Vinoba and a few
others, including Vinoba, Vyaktittva Aur Vichar, a
publication of Sasta Sahitya Mandal, New Delhi. Except for
Kalindi’s work, none covers the period beyond the Bihar
Storm Campaign for Gramdan (1965-1969) and that too has
VI PREFACE
only been dealt with by Shriman Narayan cursorily. Hence

for that campaign and the later period, I had mostly to rely
on the various Sarvodaya periodicals in English and Hindi,
especially the later, and on Maitri, a monthly published by the
Brahma Vidya Mandir, Paunar, Wardha. A solitary book which
proved of great help to me for the speeches of Vinoba during
the Storm Campaign was Suresh Ram’s Towards Total
Revolution.
There were several matters which required either
clarification or more detailed information. In this I received
full co-operation of Shri Shivaji Maharaj, the brother of
Vinoba, Kalindi Bahan of the Brahma Vidya Mandir,
Sarvashri Balbhai and Jayadevabhai who had worked as
Vinoba’s secretaries, Shri Ranjit Desai of Paramdham
Prakashan, Paunar, Shri Narendra Dube, Secretary,
Acharyakul and Khadi Mission, and of Shri Achyut
Deshpande who has been quite close to Vinoba and was
among those who had attended his famous talks on the Gita, de¬
livered in Dhulia Jail in 1932. To all of them, I would like to
express my deep sense of gratitude. Shri Achyut Deshpande
has also been a source of constant encouragement to the
throughout the preparation of the manuscript and my grate¬
fulness to him is still greater. 1
The late Dr R.R. Diwakar had not only recommended my
name to the Publications Division for writing this book, he
also took interest in its preparation and his advice was always
available to me whenever I sought it. Since he is now no
more, my gratitude to him is all the more.
I would also like to thank Dr Razi Ahmad, Director,
National Gandhi Museum and Library, New Delhi, Shri H.S.
Mathur, Librarian, and Shri M. Tiwari, Assistant Librarian,
for their help in making books and periodicals readily
available to me, to Shri N. Vasudevan, Director, Gandhi
Book House, Rajghat, New Delhi, for his advice and help in
the preparation of the manuscript, to Shri C.A. Menon,
PREFACE Vll
Chairman, Delhi State Gandhi Smarak Nidhi, for his useful

suggestions and for going through the typescript, to Shii
Gautam Bajaj for his copyright photo of Vinoba and to Mrs.
Praveen Kapur of the Gandhi Peace Foundation, New Delhi,
for typing the manuscript.
Lastly, my thanks are due to the Publications Division,
Ministry of Information and Broadcasting, Government of
India, for the confidence placed in me for preparing this
manuscript.
Gandhi Smarak Nidhi

Rajghat, New Delhi 110002 Vishwanath Tandpri
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Contents
Introduction xi
1. Childhood and Influences 1
2. Student Days and Home Renunciation 11
3. With Gandhi in Ahmedabad 19
4. In Wardha: The Twenties 24
5. In Wardha: The Thirties 31
6. The War Years 38
7. Gandhi’s Martyrdom: New Responsibilities 44
8. The Bhoodan Period 50
9. Gramdan Period: Early Phase 67
10. Gramdan Period: Later Phase 90
11. Rapport with Pandit Nehru 115
12. Final Return to Paunar 124
13. Different Approaches in Sarvodaya 134
14. The Last Concerns 153
15. The Passing Away 170
16. Asa Thinker and Harmoniser 174
Appendix A
Vinoba as a Man of Letters: His Books 181
Appendix B
Vinoba’s Contribution to Gandhian Thought 186
Index 195
\
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Introduction
ACHARYA VINOBA BHAVE, generally called Vinobaji or

Vinoba who succeeded Gandhi to the leadership of his
constructive work movement, primarily aimed at building a
new India of Gandhi's dream. He shot into fame as the father
of the Bhoodan Movement and was also his spiritual heir.
There is, however, no such declaration of Gandhi in its
favour as it was in the case of Jawaharlal Nehru whom he
named as his political heir. The reason is obvious. Gandhi
wanted to leave no sect after him and hence the question of a
declared spiritual heir did not arise at all. But there is enough
indirect evidence in its support. Gandhi evaluated Vinoba’s
spiritual attainments very high, attached highest value to his
views, and, according to Shriman Narayan, even looked upon
him as his superior in certain aspects. That is why during his
own life-time Vinoba was treated as such by those who were
near to him and knew Mm. GandM’s nomination of him as
the first satyagrahi in the Individual Satyagraha of 1940 only
set a seal on it.
Kaka Kalelkar, who was ten years semor to Vinoba in age
and knew Mm as a student, considered him ‘senior-most
amongst the Gandhians, and K.G. Mashruwala who
succeeded Gandhi as the editor of Ms Harijan Weeklies after
Ms death and was a reputed interpreter of Ms thought, felt
that Vinoba had understood Gandhi best.
Xll INTRODUCTION
While nominating him as the first satyagrahi in 1940,

Gandhi had to write a special article introducing him to the
country. This was so because despite all his spiritual
attainments and intensive constructive work at the grassroot
level, Vinoba believed in reducing himself to zero. He says in
his Abhang Vraten, “Vinya is a non-being like zero of
Mathematics. The master or Guru is one and unique whose
esteem grows by the addition of zeros.” It were the force of
circumstances, the compulsion of events, that made him leave
his cell of Wardha after the passing away of the Master and
assume the leadership of the constructive workers, spread all
over the country. He himself had once observed: “If Gandhiji
were alive today, I would have never appeared before the
public as I do today, but would have concentrated all my
attention on village sanitation.”
To have a more concrete understanding of the greatness
and importance of Vinoba, one may first know the opinion
Gandhi held of him, even when he was in his early twenties.
On Vinoba’s joining his Ashram in 1916, Gandhi wrote to his
father, “Your son Vinoba is with me. He has acquired at so
tender an age such high spiritedness and asceticism as took
me years of patient labour to do.” And next year he told C.F.
Andrews during his visit to Sabarmati: “He (Vinoba) is one of
the few pearls in the Ashram. They do not come like others
to be blessed by the Ashram, but to bless it, not to receive,
but to give.” And this impression of Gandhi only grew with
years.
Jawaharlal Nehru, who met Vinoba for the first time at the
Sevagram Constructive Workers Conference held after the
death of Gandhi in March 1948, looked to him for guidance
and confirmation of his viewpoints. He once said “Whenever
I am in difficulty about a problem, 'I think of Gandhiji. But
since Bapu is no more, my thoughts invariably turn to
Vinobaji, whom I regard as the best interpreter of Gandhi an
thought and tradition.” Jayaprakash Narayan’s high opinion
of Vinoba is testified by his remark: “Revolutionary and
INTRODUCTION xiii
path-finding thinkers in history have usually been followed by

mere interpreters, systematises, analysts. There have been
rare exceptions as Rosa Luxemburg and Lenin in the case of
Marx. Vinoba is such an exception in the case of Gandhi.” It
is even reported that he always used to touch Vinoba’s feet
because of his highest respect for him.
Vinoba, as indicated earlier, emerged on the Indian scene
in 1940 and became a world figure with the birth of his unique
Bhoodan Movement in the early fifties. His fame then
travelled far and wide, bringing many foreigners to this
country to have a close look at the man and his movement.
Many articles appeared about him in well-known periodicals
of the English-speaking world and also a few books, including
one in French. He was admired for the originality of his ideas,
for their clarity and for his knowledge of many languages.
Hallam Tennyson, a great-grandson of the famous poet,
rightly said of him: “Like a candle lit at a neighbouring flame,
he now burns with a steady and separate light.” And Donald
Groom, a British Quaker knowing Vinoba very well, wrote:
“Vinoba sitting looks a picture of frailty. But speaking he
becomes a picture of vitality, power, humour, goodwill. In
that frail body is a vital spirit which moves him to creative
action and gives him an inspiration which moves men.”
Arthur Koestler characterized the Bhoodan Movement “the
greatest peace revolution since Gandhi”, and Louis Fischer
saw in it “the most creative thought coming out of the East”.
What is even more significant is that many common people
outside India too were attracted towards him. Some came to
accompany him in his padayatra (foot-journey) and to
experience life in his Ashram. Some still visit his Ashram now
and then when he is no more. Then there were some who
didn’t visit India at all but held him in great regard. An example
of it is provided by one M.P. Perret, an assistant station master
in France, who wrote a poem on him and sent it to the Indian
Embassy. It has been translated in English as follows:
xiv INTRODUCTION
L
The previous evening, he had addressed the silent
crowd
Of villages, and reminded them that one should be
capable of giving
Not only the necessary but everything,
To those who have nothing but hope.
Now, distributing the land
He gave new life to the great Indian hopes
And everyone watched this, felt that Gandhiji was
walking again,
And smiled at the people he cherished.
Night has come again; and tomorrow

When birds will be singing again in the fragrant dawn,
Like the river, which can never be stopped,
Vinoba will be on the road again ...
Formal international recognition also reflected itself in the
form of the Magsaysay Award in 1958, and on this occasion
Ellsworth Bunker, the then USA Ambassador to India,
described Vinoba as “a saint who compresses into a small
body and great spirit the essence of ancient Indian tradition.”
He also once said: “Although the Bhoodan Movement and
the Sarvodaya have developed along the dusty road of Indian
countryside, the implications of the Acharya’s philosophy
have great political meaning in the international scene”
Bertrand Russell while inviting Vinoba to participate in the
Anti-nuclear March in London in 1962, said that “it seems to
me that you have come to symbolise the lole of conscience in
human affairs”.
Vinoba had been a nationalist no doubt, but his
nationalism, like that of Gandhi, had been of the highest
order. Really speaking, he was a “universal man”, “a citizen of
the world”, who made no distinction of any kind between
individuals and who never thought in terms of group, class or
national loyalties. He had studied with reverence the
scriptures of nearly all religions and found with Arnold
Toynbee and Sarvapaili Radhakrishnan the same moral
INTRODUCTION xv
preaching in them all. He once expressed his philosophy of

life thus: “We are universal men. We pride not on any one
country, we insist not on any one religion, nor do we enchain
ourselves to any one sect or caste. To roam about in the
garden of world’s best thoughts will be our diligent study, to
digest them will be our constant endeavour and to eliminate
their contradictions will be our unfailing creed. To develop
an attitude of universalism by synthesizing the peculiarities
will be our endeavour in the realm of thought.”
Such had been Vinoba, a combination of a sage and a
saint, whose life, work and thought are the subject of this
book. Gandhi’s ideas are proving much more relevant today
than were realized during his life-time, and their relevance is
bound to increase if mankind is to save itself from either
nuclear war or ecological disaster. The same is true of
Vinoba, who creatively interpreted and expounded his ideas
in the changed conditions of the post-war world in general
and Indian conditions in particular. Vasant Nargolkar
correctly wrote in 1962: “The significance of Vinoba’s life
and teachings ... to the modern world is exactly this, that
persons like him illustrate in their lives, the stage, the whole of
mankind has to reach some day.” and he further added: “It
may justly be said of him that, though he lives amongst us, he
belongs to the future.” This future may not be far off, since
the world is changing at rapidly accelerating pace.
1
Childhood and Influences
ACHARYA VINOBA BHAVE, whose original name was

Vinayak Narhari Bhave, was bom in a Brahmin family on
11 September 1895 in village Gagoda in the Kolaba
district of Maharashtra, His father’s name was Narhari
Shambhurao Bhave. His mother Rukmini Devi belonged to a
Godbole family of Karnataka, She called him ‘Vinya’. Vinoba
was the name given to him in the Sabarmati Ashram by one
Mama Phadke in the Maharashtrian manner of naming saints.
Gagoda was a small village situated in natural
surroundings, providing the child Vinoba love for nature which
persisted with him till his end. Bhaves were the only Brahmin
family of the village. The family originally belonged to
Ratnagiri district from where it first moved to village Limb in
Satara district and then to Wai. Gagoda was given to the
family for services rendered to the British under the Peshwa’s
behest. Later some family members had shifted from Wai to
Gagoda. However, Shambhurao, Vinoba’s grandfather, often
used to go and live for some time at Wai, where there was a
Shiva’s temple built by the family.
Shambhurao had three sons—Narharirao, Gopalrao and
Govindrao. Narharirao, Vinoba’s father, was the eldest. Vinoba
had three brothers and one sister, all younger to him. They
were Balkrishna (Balkoba), Shiva (Shivaji), Dattatreya and
Shantatai. Dattatreya had died in childhood, while Shantatai
2 ACHARYA VINOBA BHAVE
did not survive her marriage for long. After their last child
bom in 1912, Narharirao and Rukmini Devi had started
observing married brahmacharya, chastity. Balkoba and
Shivaji drew inspiration from Vinoba to take to life-long
brahmacharya. Shivaji, the youngest, lives at present in the
Paimar Ashram of Vinoba in Wardha district and is a source
of inspiration to its inmates. He is a philologist and a great
scholar of Marathi and Sanskrit, and had set up a good
library for study and research at Dhulia, where he formerly
lived.
Balkoba, who had also joined Gandhi, lived both at
Sabarmati and Sevagram, and later became the Director of
the Nature Cure Clinic established by Gandhi at
Urulikanchan, near Pune. He, however, used to stay at
Paunar Ashram for six months in a year to guide the inmates
of the Brahma Vidya Mandir, established there for women by
Vinoba in 1959. He died at Urulikanchan in August 1980, i.e.
two years before Vinoba and “breaking the queue", as
Vinoba had put it.
Vinoba’s father was a textile technologist who, in the
beginning, had served in the Dyeing Department of
Buckingham Mills and was credited with producing the first
Khaki cloth. Later he shifted to Baroda permanently and
served as a senior typist-clerk in a government office.
However, his interest in dye technology and a scientific
attitude towards life persisted with him. He lived alone at
Baroda till 1903. Afterwards he shifted his family there.
Gagoda had no school and Vinoba’s early education,
starting in 1901 with his sacred thread ceremony, was
consequently carried on at home. Thus, till the age of nine,
the most impressionable period of life, he lived mainly
under the influence of his grandfather and mother, his father
only visiting Gagoda now and then. Of these influences the
greatest was that of his mother who was extraordinarily
pious, affectionate and humane. However, before dealing
CHILDHOOD AND INFLUENCES 3
with them, it needs pointing out that the influences on Vinoba

are roughly divisible into two parts, the early influences and
the later ones. The early influences, in his case, included the
general cultural atmosphere of the Maharashtra society and
the influences of his grandfather, mother and father, while the
later major influences, as indicated by Vinoba himself, were
those of Shankaracharya, Jnaneshwar and Gandhi, though
the Jnaneshwar’s influences had begun very early in 1903
when he had started reading Jnaneshwari in Marathi prose,
which had been presented to him by his father. In this
chapter, however, we are concerned with the early influences,
and it will only be proper to commence with the cultural
atmosphere of Maharashtra, because his grandfather and
parents too were its children.
Vinoba had, during his Bhoodan days, often referred with
approval the characterization of the Indian society by Lin
Yutang as “God-intoxicated”. This is true of the whole
country with the only difference that different regions of the
country show in their God- intoxication, the primary influence
of their regional saints and their teachings. As far as
Maharashtra is concerned, the dominating influence has been
of its saints, beginning with jnaneshwar and ending with
Samartha Guru Ramdas. Vinoba had once reminisced that
the women of his village while performing their morning
family chores, would be singing the abhanga, the devotional
songs, of these saints. This was still truer of his mother, who
knew so many devotional songs including those of Saint
Purandardas of Karnataka, that once on Vinoba’s demand she
had been singing to him new songs everyday continuously for
six months. As such, the whole Maharashtrian society was
then, much more than it is now, surcharged with the teachings
of these saints, and the child Vinoba imbibed them from the
very beginning. Of these saints, Prof. R.D. Ranade has said:
“Jnandeva is the type of our intellectual mystic; Namdev
heralds the democratic age; Eknath synthesizes the claims of
worldly and spiritual life; Tukaram’s mysticism is most
personal; while Ramdas is an active saint.” In Vinoba one can

observe the influence of all these teachers.
So much about the general climate of the Maharashtrian
society. As regards Vinoba’s grandfather Shambhurao, he was
a person of strong personality, highly religious-minded but
without that narrowness of mind which is usually observed in
most religious persons. He was generous and broad-minded.
The first pickings of his mango trees would be distributed
among the neighbours through the children, and only after it
they would be allowed to eat them. He was also a Vaid,
Ayurvedic physician, who gave medicines free. His temple
was even open to Harijans on special days and the person
who sang devotional songs in his temple was a Muslim. When
the orthodox objected to both of these practices, his reply
was: “In the eyes of God there are no Hindus or Muslims, no
high or low. All are his children and equal in his eyes. I don’t
find anything wrong in them at all.”
Highly religious, he observed his fasts strictly and when
sometimes they were even broken at midnight, Vinoba was
awakened to accept the prasad, which he would give him
out of his own share, meagre though it be. He would not
allow a scorpion to be killed when it was found seated on an
idol since it had taken refuge with God, and in spite of his
mercurial temperament, he would not get enraged at Balkoba
who had sprinkled dirty water on him while he was doing his
puja, worship, because as he told Vinoba who questioned him
about it, “One must never show temper in a temple, which is
the abode of God.” He was so generous that the family had
adopted a blind person as one of them, since he had no
family member of his own to look after him.
Another incident related about him by Vinoba shows his
deep psychological insight in human character. A boy once
stole some jagree to eat and Vinoba’s grandmother reported
it to her husband, charging him of theft. But Shambhurao
said: “No, it is not theft. All that he has done is to take it
without permission. The house is his and so also the jagree.

Had he asked for it, he would have got it. He only took it
without asking. It is no theft.” Then he called the boy and said
to him: “Whenever you wish to have jagree, ask for it and you
will get it. But did you wash your hands before taking it?”.
The reply being in the negative, he explained to him the need
of washing and drying hands before taking such things. The
boy was cured of his habit. The whole incident served as ah
object lesson to Vinoba who once used this technique with
necessary modification to wean a boy of his smoking habit.
Vinoba attributed his own piety to the influence of his
grandfather.
It may also be mentioned here that Vinoba’s grandmother
Gangabai was a lady of great determination who learnt
reading and writing at the age of fifty-five. She had a great
sense of humour and could mimic others well, creating
peals of laughter. After Shambhurao’s death, she left home
and passed the rest of her life at Varanasi.
However, as already indicated, it was his mother’s
influence that moulded Vinoba most. He once said: “There is
nothing to compare with the influence exercised on me by my
mother. I have been associated with several good and pious
persons. I have read the writings of several great men and
they are full of experiences. But if I put all these on one side
of a balance and in the other the lessons I learnt from her of
concrete devotion, this other side will outweigh the former.”
Vinoba used to recall many incidents connected with her, and
whenever he remembered her, his voice got chocked and
tears rolled down his eyes. He jotted down in his Vichar
Pothi, a book of random thoughts: “Mother, none else has
given me what you gave me. But even you, while alive, did
not give me what you are giving after.your death.”
She was an extraordinary mother who, instead of
dissuading Vinoba from taking a vow of life-long
brahmacharya, encouraged him to do so. She had great faith
in Vinoba and was fully confident that he would never do

anything wrong. Vinoba once said: “My mother was a source
of strength. She had unlimited confidence in my capacity.
That living faith of hers gave me immense strength.” When
Vinoba, as we shall see later, left his house in search of the
Eternal and his father consoled her saying that he would soon
return, she told him that Vinoba, having once taken a
decision, would never go back. And when other women
would tell her that the boys these days didn’t care for their
parents, she would retort that her son had not forsaken her
for any wrong objective. He never acted wrongly.
It was from her that Vinoba imbibed many basic precepts
of his life, including the one which has inspired his Bhoodan
Movement. It was “He who gives is a God; but he who
withholds is a devil.” Some others stressed a life of great
simplicity and non-possession, the need of prayer even when
life was dedicated to the service of the country, hearing only
the stories of gods and saints, and not to treat the
untouchables as low since God himself had once taken the
form of Vittya Mahar, and so on. No beggar would return
from her house empty-handed, and to Vinoba’s objection that
it was encouraging idleness, her reply was: “Vinya, the beggar
who comes at our door is God in person. Who are we to
distinguish between the deserving and the non-deserving?” If
some neighbouring woman was ill, she would prepare food
for her own family first and then go to help her in cooking.
When Vinoba, in order to tease her, pointed out to her that it
implied her greater concern for her own family, she laughed
and said: “If I prepare their food first, it would get cold. I
prepare their food later so that they get warm food. It is not
selfishness but altruism.”
After feeding her family members, she would do her daily
worship. She would pray before the idol of Annapurna
with folded hands and say: “O! Ruler of the whole universe, I
seek pardon for all my shortcomings!” And as she would utter
these words, tears would flow from her eyes, and it was only
after this prayer that she would take her meals. The tears
which flowed then showed how deeply and genuinely she had
sought the pardon. Many such inspiring incidents were
related by Vinoba from time to time, but it is not possible to
give them all here. It will suffice to say that his mother taught
him by concrete examples how to conduct himself in life.
While engaged in work all day, she would never forget God
and seemed to be living in another world. Vinoba
remembered many of her songs in which she would forget
herself, though her hands would be doing some work
mechanically.
She respected her husband, but had greater faith in
Vinoba’s understanding. Once she resolved to offer one lakh
rice grains to the deity. She did it every day after counting
them. Narharirao observed this and suggested her to take
ten grams of rice, count them and then by calculating
take as much rice as would number one lakh grains plus some
more and offer it to the deity. Her heart did not accept it but
she could not think of any satisfactory reply to give to her
husband. So she questioned Vinoba about it, who said: “What
you are doing is not a matter of arithmetic. It concerns
devotion. The real aim is to take the name of God with every
grain. Therefore, weighing would not do.” This fortified her
and she confronted her husband with that reply.
She died in 1918. On the news of her serious illness,
Vinoba reached Baroda at the behest of Gandhi, since,
besides her, his father and the youngest brother were also
down with influenza, which was raging then in an epidemic
form. Even at that time she had demanded an explanation
from Vinoba as to why he had come leaving the work of the
Ashram. She could not be saved and died a very peaceful
death. Vinoba had inquired of her if her mind was fully at
peace and her reply was in the affirmative since Vinoba was
there to look after his brothers. Vinoba, however, did not
attend her last rites, because he wanted to perform all of
them himself without the customary intervention of any priest
but his father could not agree to it. Hene he stayed at home
and after bath read the Gita and Upanishads and also started
from that day the study of the Vedas which continued till
1969.
After her death, Vinoba had brought two things of her with
him as mementos—the idol of Annapurna she used to
worship and a costly sari. He handed over the idol to a
niece-in-law of Gandhi for daily worship, while he kept the
sari with himself and used to keep it near his head when
sleeping. It was a mill-made sari, which, when he took to
Khadi, was consigned to river Sabarmati.
The third natural influence on him was that of his father.
Though not visible in the beginning, it can be observed in the
later life of Vinoba. A rationalist, Narharirao had a scientific
outlook towards life, characterised by punctuality, love of
tidiness, very regulated diet in keeping with his two diseases
of diabetes and piles besides self-control in other matters,
and great freedom from worldly attachments. He believed in
self-reliance and would not permit his wife and children to do
his personal work. He lived all alone in Baroda after the death
of his wife, and did not even inform his sons of his last illness.
It was by an accident that a friend went to see his father and
Vinoba came to know of it from him. He informed Shivaji of it,
who insisted on bringing him to Dhulia, where he died in
October, 1947. Vinoba who was present there performed his
last rites himself and much against the custom of immersing
the ashes in some sacred river, he followed the “Vedic
custom” of returning the ashes to the earth by burying it in
the premises of the house and planting tulsi over it.
Vinoba used to tell many incidents of his life. While living
in Gagoda, his mother once told him that when his father
would come at Deepavali, he would bfing^ sweets for him.
When Narharirao came, he handed over a packet to Vinoba,
which instead of sweets contained the children’s editions of
Ramayan and Mahabharat. His mother then told him that no
better sweets could have been brought for him. This incident
shows how his father was interested in the formation of his
sons’ character. If he had to explain anything to them, he did
it in a rational manner. But he was a strict father, and quite
often he beat Vinoba for some mischief or untidiness. But the
beating too was scientific and care was taken that bones were
not hurt. And this beating stopped all of a sudden when
Vinoba attained the age of sixteen. This was in accordance
with the command of the Manusmriti that a son above sixteen
should be treated as a ‘friend’.
Narharirao was highly interested in chemistry and music.
Dyes were a special field in which he carried out many
research experiments. A believer in scientific progress, he
was highly pleased when the first textile mill was started in
Baroda, and he appreciated the formation of the All India
Village Industries Association by Gandhi in 1935. He even
once came to Maganwadi at Gandhi’s invitation and after
inspecting the activities carried on there, had advised that the
pulp for hand-paper should be prepared mechanically. This
was not heeded then because of the enthusiasm for carrying
out every process by hands, but it was adopted later. Once he
even wrote a letter using paper, ink and pen prepared by him.
In accordance with his habit, Vinoba did not keep it, but later
he felt that he should have preserved that letter.
His interest in music had made him devote the last thirty
years of his life to its study and learning. He practised singing
for fourteen hours per day and got two books on music
published at his own expense. When he died, he left behind
the manuscripts of some eight or ten books deserving
publication. He was also fond of playing chess, but he
played it exactly for half an hour, and would even leave the v
match unfinished on the expiry of that period.
Balkoba had once questioned him on the impact of his
mother’s death on him. His reply was: “My health is better
since your mother’s death. I have been a believer in a
restrained and scientific life. Even then, I had left my one

meal to her. Whatever she gave, I took, without any thought
of it being suitable or not. But now I eat only what is good for
my health.” Vinoba was so much impressed with this reply
that he was reminded of Tukaram whose feelings on the
death of his wife were that while she herself had been
liberated, God had also freed him of his attachment. He also
once said of his father that he was a Yogi.
There is enough in Vinoba’s life beginning with his days
with Gandhi and later development of his ideas to trace his
inheritance from his father. However it may be mentioned
here that like all great men, Vinoba cannot be explained by
merely looking at his family and other influences. He had a
strong individuality of his own, characterised by certain
strong inborn tendencies. He picked and chose out of his
family and other social influences those which tended to
strengthen those tendencies, be they of non-attachment,
asceticism, a desire to attain the Supreme, love of scientific
outlook and life, or any other. A strong believer in rebirth,
Vinoba had once observed: “An individual has his own
regular chain of sanskar, tendencies, and he is born of
particular parents accordingly. His own regular chain
constitutes one line and a second one is of family tendencies.
An individual soul is bom at the point of their intersection.”
He also held that despite all one’s limitations, an individual
has the potentiality, if he so wills, of breaking away from
them.
2
Student Days and Home

Renunciation
WHEN NARHAR1RAO BHAVE shifted his family to

Baroda in 1903, a new chapter opened in the life of Vinoba.
It was not only the beginning of whatever regular schooling
he received, but of the new influence as well, along with
the assertion of his innate individuality. It was a period when
a new political temper was rising in the country, bringing in
dissatisfaction at the policy of mendicancy followed by the
Indian National Congress in its resolutions, prayers and
petitions, which was proving ineffective. It favoured a
more vigorous action which would compel the British rulers to
concede the demand of the Indians. The leaders in this new
temper were Bal Gangadhar Tilak, Bipin Chandra Pal, Lajpat
Rai and Arvind. The partition of Bengal in 1905 had also
given birth to a ‘revolutionary’ or terrorist movement in
Bengal, which was attracting the attention of the youths in
other provinces as well. Of the above leaders, Tilak was the
natural leader of the youths in Baroda.
However, the first few years of Vinoba at Baroda seem to
have been somewhat uneventful except for the fact that he
came there more under the influence of not only his father
but his mother too. Most of the incidents he related about
them, including those given in the preceding chapter,
belonged to this period.
Vinoba was admitted in the third standard of a Baroda

school in 1903. He was a brilliant student, standing first in all
annual examinations and getting merit scholarships. He left it
after doing the final sixth standard examination of that
school, which he must have done in 1907. His father then did
not get him admitted to any school and himself taught him at
home. He wanted Vinoba to become a textile technologist as
he himself was in dyeing, and tried for his admission in Kala
Bhawan, his old institution. But Vinoba’s schooling in English
was far below other candidates and he failed to gain
admission. His father continued to teach him at home.
But he found that the boy was more interested in roaming
for hours together than in studying at home. To discipline
him, his father started giving him more work in Mathematics
to keep him engaged at home, but this strategy did out work.
Vinoba would solve difficult exercises and leave out the
easier ones, completing his assigned work in English and
Mathematics in an hour and then would go out. The father
noticed it but did not scold him since Vinoba was not lagging
behind in learning things, and ultimately decided to get him
admitted in Baroda High School. This was in 1910 and
Vinoba having matriculated from there in November 1913,
joined Baroda College for his Intermediate. In the High School,
French was one of the subjects which he had taken at the
instance of his father against the wishes of his mother who
wanted the Brahmin boy to learn Sanskrit. To this Vinoba’s
reaction was; “If he is a son of a Brahmin, he would pick up
Sanskrit all right. It is not necessary to learn it in a school.”
As a student, Vinoba had the reputation of not only being
an extraordinarily intelligent but also, as of having a high and
noble character. He was more interested in extra curricular
studies and activities than in class teaching. If a fellow student
spoke English, he would ask him in harsh tone if his mother
was a white woman. If somebody pointed to him his long nails,
he would inquire if he was a barber. For his school studies, he
relied on what he heard in the class room, and his memory
STUDENT DAYS AND HOME RENUNCIATION 13
too was so sharp that he could reproduce without taking it

down what the teacher had dictated. However, he was most
interested in Mathematics and was so good at it that he
helped even senior students in solving their questions. And
not only that, even the mathematics teacher would sometimes
refer the matter to him.
Vinoba was a voracious reader. He had once said: “I am a
student of world literature. My respect for works of
literature and litterateurs is unusual.” He used to read monthly
magazines, leaving out stories and poems altogether and
cursorily going through essays but reading articles on history,
science and such other subjects in full. He had gone through
all the biographies available in the Central Library of Baroda,
beginning with those which commenced with alphabet ‘A’
and passing on to the others in the alphabetic order. He would
finish even big volumes in ten or fifteen minutes. Thus he had
read thousands of the best books in all the languages he
knew, viz. Marathi, Hindi, Gujarati, English, French and
Sanskrit. Vinoba was adept in the art of remembering the
significant and forgetting the trivial. He had a knack for
learning languages, which he did with the help of their
philologies. In French, he had read Victor Hugo’s Les
Miserables and in English the poems of Milton, Wordsworth
and Browning. He also read the English translation of
Tolstoy’s War and Peace, but only in so far that he perused
the beginning and the end of it. He, however, went through its
Twenty-three Tales completely. Of the Shakespear’s plays, he
had read only Julius Caesar, and that too because it was in his
course. At that time, however, not knowing Sanskrit much, he
read only the Gita, and it were the Maharashtra saints who
influenced him most. He then knew by heart some ten
thousands ovis (couplets) and devotional songs.
Even at that stage Vinoba gave proofs of Ms fearlessness
and independent mindedness. To superficial eyes he looked
to be an eccentric because of Ms unconventional manners
and dress. An incident in tMs context is worth mentioning.
One summer, he was reading in the Central Library with his

shirt removed. A clerk objected to it and told him, “This is
not the way to dress in public. It needs some brains to know
and observe the etiquette.” To this Vinoba’s sharp reaction
was: “God has been generous to me, Sir, in this respect. I
dress myself in this way, because I use my God-given brain ”
The matter was reported to the Librarian who was an
Englishman and Vinoba was summoned. The Librarian was
sitting under a fan with his coat and hat off. He asked the
standing Vinoba, “Don’t you know what good manners are?”
Vinoba replied, “Yes I do ” The librarian then asked, “Then,
may I know what they consist in?” Vinoba’s reply to it was:
“We consider it, for example, good manners in our country to
offer a seat to anyone we are talking to, if there is a chair
around.” The librarian was taken aback, but being kind-
hearted he immediately offered Vinoba a chair and wanted
to know the reason for his quaint manner of dress. Vinoba
explained to him how customs and manners differed from
country to country, and said: “It is healthy and convenient in
this hot country of ours not to overdress oneself, especially
during summers. Besides, it is quite good manner too.” The
librarian was impressed by his boldness and logic and let him
go.
Another incident of the period revealing Vinoba’s
character pertains to the celebration of Shivaji’s birthday,
highly popularised by Tilak in Maharashtra. Vinoba’s group
consisting of ten to fifteen students resolved to celebrate it,
and in accordance with Vinoba’s suggestion decided to do so
outside the school in an open place. It being no holiday, they
selected the history period for it, though it involved absence
from that class and a fine of twenty-five paisa, a very big sum
those days, on each of them. Vinoba had advised them to
bring that amount with them in the class to pay the fine. Next
day the teacher inquired of the reason for their absence and on
learning it asked why they did not celebrate it in the school.
Vinoba’s reply was that the birthday of a freedom-loving man
like Shivaji could not, in the fitness of things, be observed in

the school. On being fined for absence, they all paid it then
and there.
Vinoba who generally kept silent in the class, was quite

frank and open amongst his group. They were all keen to
serve the country, and towards this purpose a study circle,
called Vidyarthi Mandal, was formed in 1914. Vinoba played
a leading role in the Mandal without taking up any office in it,
showing thereby his lack of liking for organisation. When
once pressed to accept an office, his reply was, '‘Making me
the organiser of some institution is like appointing Tukaram
to the post of a bank manager." The Manda! meetings used to
be held in the beginning at the house of one or other member
but later a room was taken on rent at four or five annas (25 or
30 paisa) per month, which Vinoba, in the beginning, used to
procure from his mother but later on the members
subscribed towards it. This room was also utilised for a
library of some 1600 books established by the Mandal.
Amongst its other activities were the celebrations of special
days like Shivaji’s birthday and the death anniversary of
Ramdas. In regular meetings held on Sundays, discussions
centred round the books read or on some topics of national
importance. Lectures too were delivered, but it was Vinoba
who mostly spoke and he was reckoned to be an excellent
speaker. His one lecture on Mazzini, who had inspired many
Indian patriots like Lala Lajpat Rai and the Bengal revoluti¬
onaries, used to be fondly remembered by his friends of those
days. The Mandal was even in existence in 1917, when Vinoba
attended its annual function and advised its members to take
up the propagation of Hindi.
It may also be reiterated here that Vinoba had been greatly

influenced by Tilak, and his Gitarahasya was his favourite
book. He was greatly agitated when Tilak was sentenced
to six years’ rigorous imprisonment in 1908. He respected
Tilak for being above provincial and other narrow
loyalties, for being revered throughout the country, for
16 ACHARYA VIMOBA BHAVE
being the man of the people and for being humble enough to
regard himself as dust before them.
As is apparent, Vinoba had no attraction for academic
education. He had a feeling that it did not relate to life. This
is not surprising since Vinoba was of an ascetic type, greatly
influenced by the Maharashtra saints. At the age of ten he
had vowed to a life-long brahmacharya., and had started
leading a highly ascetic life, considered favourable for it. It
included sleeping without a pillow, using blanket and
mattress only, not taking food-prepared for marriages, non-use
of umbrella and shoes, no matter how hot the sun. He did not
know earlier, but came to know later, that walking barefooted
on hot sand could do harm to his eyes as they actually did.
The Dasbodh of Samartha Ramdas had further inspired him
with the idea of renouncing home, arnidea strengthened by
the examples of Lord Buddha and Shri Shankaracharya. It
remained lodged in his mind for four years during which he
examined himself thoroughly for it before finally deciding on
the relinquishment of home. One day his mother found him
consigning to flames his certificates and scrolls. She tried to
desist him from it, pleading that they might be needed some
time in future. But Vinoba gave her a confident reply that he
would never be going for any service.
However, the actual renunciation came about in March

1916, while he was on his way to Bombay to appear at his
Intermediate Examination along with his other friends. He
parted company with them at Surat, catching the train for
Bhusawal on way to Kashi or Benares (now Varanasi) with
two others who had followed suit, namely, Shankarrao
Tagare and Bedekar. However, he had handed over a letter
to his friend Gopalrao Kale addressed to his father, with
instructions that it be posted in Bombay after the
examinations were over. He had written in it: “Instead of
going to Bombay for the examination, I am proceeding
elsewhere. You may rest assured that no matter where I go, I
won’t do anything unethical.”
Vinoba had chosen Varanasi for two reasons. First, it was a

centre of Sanskrit learning which Vinoba was very keen to
study. Secondly, it lay on the way to the Himalayas and
Bengal. His objective of the realization of the Supreme drew
him to the former and his desire to serve the country
attracted him towards Bengal where he could participate in
the revolutionary movement. But reaching Varanasi, he
plunged himself in the study of the Vedas and the
Upanishads. He had to do it by himself since the teacher he
had approached had felt that several years would be needed
for that study, while Vinoba wanted to do so in two months
only. At Varanasi, Vinoba and his companions found lodging
in a third storey of a house in Durgaghat, took their mid-day
meals in a charitable kitchen of a temple, where they also
received two paisa as dakshina, which were used for evening
meals. Of the two friends, Tagare soon left for his house, but
Bedekar was of sterner stuff and he stayed. However, despite
his robust health, he fell ill and died. He was cremated by
Vinoba himself in keeping with his wishes, though it was
unconventional and the local Brahmins derided Vinoba for it.
But he did not worry at it as was his wont.
Three incidents of this period must be mentioned. One
concerned the purchase of a lock. A shopkeeper demanded a
price for it which Vinoba knew was exorbitant. Vinoba told
him the real price but paid him the one demanded by him. He
used to pass that way everyday but he did not even look
towards the shopkeeper. One day he himself called him,
admitted overcharge and returned the excess amount. This
incident convinced Vinoba of the transforming influence on
an individual of the power of trust reposed in him.
The other two incidents are more revealing from the point
of view of Vinoba’s character. The first of these relate to his
teaching English in a private school run by a teacher whose
own English was very defective. Vinoba taught there daily for
an hour or two. When asked about the payment, he
demanded only two rupees per month. The teacher running
the school was surprised, and enquired if it would do. Vinoba

explained to him that he did not need more since he took his
meal in a charitable kitchen. He worked for two months in
that school, earning thereby four rupees. This incident
demonstrates the non-possessiveness of Vinoba.
The other incident concerns discussions between two

groups of pandits, which was a usual feature in Benares on
the bank of the river Ganga. Vinoba went there everyday and
used to listen them attentively. One day the discussion was
between two groups standing for advaita (non-duality) and
dvaita (duality). After a long discussion, the first group won.
Vinoba then stood up and sought permission to say
something. He was allowed and he pronounced it a defeat
for those who stood for non-duality. When asked to explain,
he said that the very fact that they entered into a discussion
with the other group, implied their defeat, for it meant that
they themselves believed in duality. This shows that to
Vinoba philosophy did not signify merely any theoretical
understanding but a realization of it in life, as is implied in the
Sanskrit word darshan used for “philosophy”.
Vinoba was also in the habit of spending his evenings on
the bank in meditation and in composing poems, which were
consigned to the sacred river. This habit of his was not new.
He also used to do it at Baroda. One day his mother had
observed him doing this and desired him to show them to her
now and then before consigning to fire. Subsequently he
complied it.
Due to the insanitary conditions of the city, Vinoba’s health

suffered. His contact with some political workers and
revolutionaries in the city also disappointed him beacuse they
lacked the dedication and renunciation which Vinoba
expected of them. Hence he was thinking of leaving Benares
for some other place. Just then he came to know of Gandhi’s
speech at the opening of the Benares Hindu University in
February that year, a month prior to his arrival in Benares. It
impressed him much and ultimately took him to Gandhi’s
Ashram in Ahmedabad which forms the matter of the next
chapter.
3
With Gandhi in Ahmedabad
GANDHI’S SPEECH IN the inaugural week of the Benares

Hindu University which drew Vinoba to Gandhi and brought
him to Ahmedabad, was truly a remarkable speech.
Delivered in the presence of an array of Indian Princes, it was
characterised by frankness which spoke of his extraordinary
fearlessness. What particularly impressed Vinoba was
Gandhi’s emphasis that there could be no non violence
without fearlessness, and that mental violence was worse than
overt violence. So also was his advice to the Indian Princes on
their vulgar display of jewels. Gandhi had said to them:
“There can be no salvation for India unless you strip
yourselves of the jewellery and hold it in trust for your
countrymen in India.” However, Vinoba had some
clarifications to seek, and he did it through a letter which
Gandhi replied. Then a second letter followed asking some
more questions. Gandhi then suggested him to come to
Ahmedabad and stay with him for some time when they
would be able to talk off and on. He told Vinoba that it was
the observance of life, not words, that could set all doubts at
rest.
The idea appealed to Vinoba as it was accompanied by a

copy of the Ashram rules which said: “The object of this
Ashram is that its members should qualify themselves for,
and make a constant endeavour towards the service of the
country, not inconsistent with universal welfare." It further

said that this service needed the observance of the eleven
ethical vows, namely, Truth, Non-violence, Brahmacharya or
Chastity, Control of the Palate, Non-thieving, Non-possession
or Voluntary Poverty, Physical Labour, Swadeshi,
Fearlessness, Removal of Untouchability and Tolerance. All
this was something new for Vinoba to find a political leader
laying emphasis on them for country’s liberation. This was
what, in a way, he himself was seeking. As he once observed
later: “When I was at Kashi, my main ambition was to go to
the Himalayas. There was also a longing to visit Bengal. But
neither of the two dreams could be realised. Providence took
me to Gandhi and I found in him not only the peace of the
Himalayas but also the burning fervour of revolution typical
of Bengal. I said to myself that both of my desires have been
fulfilled.”
Vinoba reached Ahmedabad on 7 June 1916 and went
straight to the Ashram, then at Kochrab. When he met
Gandhi, he was cutting vegetables, something unexpected of
a political leader. This was an object lesson to Vinoba. From
his talks with Vinoba, Gandhi could read in him his search
for self-knowledge, and he told him that it would be a
pleasure- for him if he stayed in the Ashram and devoted
himself to service. He also remarked: “You look physically
weak. Self-knowing persons are often frail, but you appear to
be ill, when such people never fall ill.” This was a second
lesson for Vinoba. He decided to stay and Gandhi stood all
his tests. Vinoba once said: “I don’t know if Bapu (Gandhi)
ever tested me, but I did test him in my mind, and had he not
stood my tests, I could not have stayed in the Ashram.”
Vinoba had not written to his father about his whereabouts.

Gandhi told him that it was wrong on his part to do so, and
then only Vinoba wrote to his father. Gandhi too informed
him personally about it. In that letter he also called Vinayak
‘Vinoba’, setting his seal of approval to the name given to
Vinayak by Mama Phadke in the Ashram. Vinoba remained
WITH GANDHI IN AHMEDABAD 21
its inmate till Gandhi himself sent him to Wardha, except for
a period of a year when he was on leave from the Ashram.
Vinoba’s life in the Ashram, first in Kochrab and then in
Sabarmati where the Ashram was shifted in June 1918, was a
very arduous one. He fully participated in grinding grains,
watering plants with water from the river Sabarmati,
scavenging, working in fields and teaching students in the
Rashtriya Shala (National School), besides doing his own
cooking and washing utensils. As hostel superintendent, he
was very popular with the students, belying the fear that he
might prove too strict for them, Gandhi'was surprised at the
immense labour put up by Vinoba, and asked him how he
could cope with it. Vinoba’s reply was “It is not so much my
body as my will that enables me to undertake this hard
work." However, his health could not escape its effects and
Vinoba took a year’s leave with the two objectives of
completing his Sanskrit studies left halfway by his joining
Gandhi and to recoup his health. But before dealing with that
three episodes of the Ashram period throwing special light on
his attitude and conduct must be mentioned.
On Vinoba’s joining the Ashram, some of his Baroda
friends had also followed suit, and so also his brother
Balkoba in 1920. At that time the scavenging work used to
be carried out in the Ashram by a sweeper. Once he fell sick
and his 12-year old son had to deputise for him. The pots
being too heavy for him, he was crying and Balkoba taking
pity on him helped in that work. Some Ashramites
criticised him for it and on being apprised of it, Vinoba also
started doing it. Gandhi was away at that time and when he
returned, the matter went to him. He supported Vinoba
and ruled: “Scavenging is a good and pious work. It should
now become a part of our daily routine. Those who dislike it,
can leave the Ashram." And some even did so.
In the second episode, once while bathing in the river,

Vinoba was carried away by a current. Instead of crying for
help when in danger of being drowned, he shouted: “Convey
my namaskars to Bapu and tell him that though Vinoba has

disappeared, his soul is immortal.” Fortunately he was carried
to a shallow land in midstream and he swam back safely. All,
including Gandhi, were highly impressed by this equipoise of
his mind even in that moment of crisis.
The third relates to the emphasis Vinoba laid on quality

over quantity. As the principles of self-reliance and physical
labour were more strictly enforced in the Ashram, inmates
started leaving, creating problem for Magandas Gandhi who
managed the Ashram. He was worried how to cope with the
work. He consulted Vinoba, who advised against any
relaxation of the rules and said: “Even if there are a few only
willing to live according to the Ashram rules, they are better
than hundreds of vacillating minds.” He also suggested how
the work could be reduced.
It was in February 1917 that Vinoba had proceeded on
leave. He first went to Wai where a learned Sanskrit teacher
of scriptures and philosophy was available and spent six
months there. The last six months were spent in going on foot
to places of historical interests and staying at one place for
not more than three days, when he would give talks on the
Gita. In an oft-quoted letter written to Gandhi in February
1918 Vinoba had given him a detailed report on his life and
activities during this period.
In that letter, Vinoba had told him of the various books he

had studied, and they included the Upanishad,
Shankar-Bhasya of the Brahmasutra, Yogasutra of Patanjali
and other books of philosophy. This had quenched his thirst
for the study of scriptures and philosophy and he had felt that
if he desired to read further, he could do it himself. As
regards his health, he had said that in the beginning he used
to walk ten or twelve miles per day, but later he took to
grinding cereals from six to eight seers per day, and was at
the time of writing the letter doing 300 surya-namaskar, a
form of yogic exercise, per day. Vinoba had also given details
WITH GANDHI IN AHMEDABAD 23
of his diet, especially mentioning the observance of the vow

of control over palate. However, he had felt that his diet was
luxurious and he sought Gandhi’s instructions about it.
Regarding his other activities, he had mentioned giving free

tuitions on the Gita to six students, teaching Jnaneshwari to
four, Upanishad to two and English to two, besides
propagating Hindi. He informed Gandhi that he had covered
some 400 miles in visiting places of historical interests and
had given talks on the Gita at 50 places during his tramp. He
told him that he had started a Vidyarthi Mandal at Wai and
established a library of some 400 books attached to it. These
books had been purchased from the money earned by
grinding people’s cereals. He had also tried to propagate the
Ashram principles, and he assured Gandhi that, though on
leave, he had behaved as an Ashramite. The letter further
said: "What else may I say? Will He make me a fit instrument
of His service! This one desire dominates my thought even in
my dreams.” Gandhi was overwhelmed with emotion after
reading it and he exclaimed: “He is a Goraknath who has
beaten his Guru Machhendranath.” Gandhi’s reply was in all
appreciation of Vinoba. It said : “You have scrupulously
observed the Ashram observances all through. May God give
you long life! May He make you an instrument of service to
Hind! That is my prayer.”
Vinoba returned to the Ashram exactly after a year.

Gandhi had even forgotten about it. He welcomed him
affectionately saying, “It shows your loyalty to truth.” To this
Vinoba reacted politely, “Rather, it is my loyalty to
mathematics.”
4
In Wardha: The Twenties
IN APRIL 1921 Vinoba was deputed by Gandhi to assume

charge of Satyagraha Ashram, Wardha, established earlier at
the wish of Jamnalal Bajaj. Ramniklal Modi who held the
charge earlier, had to leave it because of ill health, and the
only option before Gandhi was either to close it or send
Vinoba there. Gandhi was not prepared for the former, and
Vinoba was sent despite all unwillingness of Magandas s
Gandhi who managed the Sabarmati Ashram. Having once
gone to Wardha, Vinoba remained there, at one place or
another, till practically 1951, when he set out on his
‘Bhoodan campaign’. These thirty years, according to Vinoba
himself, were devoted to constructive work, keeping in mind
the basic thinking behind it. Some eleven years of them were
spent in conducting the Ashram till the Government banned
and locked it in January 1931 during the Civil Disobedience
Movement.
Gandhi maintained touch with the progress of the Ashram

and came there every year for a month’s stay or so. Despite it,
Vinoba may be said to have been holding an independent
charge of it, with full opportunity to make his own
experiments in Ashram life. Consequently, as years rolled on,
Vinoba’s own thinking and practice developed side by side,
and by 1948 when the master was snatched away, he was in a
position to take his place both as a thinker and as a
constructive work leader.
)
IN WARDHA : THE TWENTIES 25
Vinoba had clear ideas about Ashram life, with its emphasis
on physical labour and other ethical disciplines combined with
self-study, and with a view to mould its life accordingly, he
had brought with him a team of two old Baroda friends and
three select students. He looked upon the Ashram as a
laboratory and its inmates as spiritual seekers. He was
interested neither in agitational nor in parliamentary politics.
Once when someone suggested after Tilak’s death that he
should participate in the political movement, he said that he
was engaged in building up the next generation. However, in
spite of this coldness towards politics, he did take part in
enrolling Congress members and was elected by others to
Vidarbha Congress Committee as a member. Later he gave
up both on finding that the enrolled members were not
comprehending its true implications and precious time of the
Congress Committee was being wasted on trivial and
avoidable matters.
However, before taking up his‘ Ashram experiments, it

would be better to deal with three diversions from it in the
twenties. The first was his participation in the Flag Satyagraha
of Nagpur in 1923. A request to direct it had compelled
Vinoba to participate in it. He was arrested and sentenced to
a year’s imprisonment. He was first kept in Nagpur Jail and
later transferred to- Akola Jail. The imprisonment did not
bring any change in his daily life, the Ashram routine having
been strictly followed there. But his experience of jail life did
make him observe: “You have seen a circus, haven’t you?
There men command and control animals. In a jail, it is
otherwise.” In Akola Jail the political prisoners were refusing
to work and Vinoba reminded them of the teaching of the
Gita that it was a sin to eat without working. He was able to
persuade them to learn some craft and to complete all
physical work assigned to them. Vinoba was released after an
imprisonment of only two months along with all others.
The second Satyagraha which he had to direct at Gandhi’s

instance was the temple entry Satyagraha by the Harijans
against the prohibition of their entry into the temple at Vaikorn

which is in Kerala at present. He had been sent there with the
two-fold purpose of talking to and persuading the learned
Sanatanis to change their attitude who were opposed to the
entry and to suggest modifications in the method of S^tyagraha
adopted there. Vinoba failed to achieve the first objective, but
he did suggest some changes in the method to make it purer.
Gandhi himself visited the place later and a settlement was
arrived at. Vaikorn was very near the birth-place of
Shankaracharya whom Vinoba held in special reverence and
who had exercised some determining influence on his life.
Hence he was naturally very keen to visit the place, but he did
not do so since the primary motive of his coming there was
different. This trait of Vinoba’s character to concentrate on
the work undertaken by him lasted all his life.
Hie third diversion was his being called to Delhi in 1924
when Gandhi was on his 21-day Hindu-Muslim Unity Fast,
to read out to him some books and to recite verses in his
melodious voice. And since Gandhi was too weak to address
the gatherings, Vinoba was asked to speak to them daily in
accordance with Gandhi's instructions. He also then
delivered a series of discourses on Kathopnishad. On the
completion of the fast, Vinoba returned to his Ashram and
picked up the earlier threads without delay.
As regards Ashram life, as already hinted, besides

introducing the principles of community life practised at
Sabamiati, Vinoba tried to make it fully self-reliant. He made
it a rule that the community would eat only what it earned by
physical labour in the whole day. For years together; the
evening meals were cooked only after calculating in the
afternoon the anticipated total earnings of the community
that day. The earnings of all were added up together and each
inmate got meals according to his actual needs. Quite often
there were no evening meals at all and generally they were
inadequate.
Ail work in the Ashram was done by the inmates, including

IN WARDHA : THE TWENTIES 27
scavenging. Vinoba too worked like others. He took his

classes while cutting vegetables or cleaning cereals. For him,
work could never be divorced from knowledge, and he
regarded it to be the best form of worship. Experiments in
diets were also conducted in the Ashram, and so also in
spinning and weaving. However, despite ail this, Vinoba was
reluctant to impose his ideas on others. To give an instance of
it, Kamalnayan, a son of Jamnalai Bajaj, had joined the
Ashram on the condition that he would not be asked to do
scavenging work. Vinoba had agreed to it, but he never lost
any opportunity to explain to him the rationale of doing that
work. As a result of it, Kamalnayan’s aversion for it
disappeared, and one day Vinoba saw him doing it. He was,
however, perturbed and enquired of him as to who asked him
to do it. He felt relieved on learning that he did it of his own
accord. However, Vinoba told him that he should have
informed him of the change of his mind before undertaking it.
Kamalnayan admitted his mistake and the matter ended. But
the whole episode shows that Vinoba did not believe in
imposing his ideas on others but in allowing them to develop
in their own manner and at their own pace. He would gently
put his views before them and leave it there to do its work.
The ideas he propounded during this period are probably

of greater importance. He started a monthly, Maharashtra
Dharma, in January 1923. It included his articles on diverse
topics. It stopped publication, however, on his participation
in the Flag Satyagraha in April that year, but was resumed
after his release as a weekly, and this time in a more simple
and lively style suidng the common people. The earlier style
was too erudite to be comprehended even by the educated.
Its publication continued till 1927. These articles are
important not only from the viewpoint of his thinking but also
for the fact that Vinoba believed in ordering his life to the
best of his ability. However, before analysing his thinking as
revealed in them, it may be pointed out that in the early
twenties Vinoba had made a special study of several books
on Economics in English, including those of Tolstoy and
Ruskin. It was probably also at this time that he had studied

Capital of Marx, of which he once made a mention later but
without telling as to when he had done so.
The 1923 issues of Maharashtra Dharma had carried

Vinoba’s articles on the study of the Upanishads, now also
available in Hindi as Upanishadon Ka Adhyayan, He finds in
the Upanishadic teachings the absence of any contradiction
between the real good of an individual, the social good and
the Supreme Good. They teach according to him, that society
is more than the sum of the individuals and, therefore, one
should not act in a manner as to come into conflict with
others. There should be toleration all around. Being a
Brahmin does not imply that one does not belong to other
varnas. Being a Hindu does not mean that one is not a
Muslim. There is no such exclusiveness according to the
Upanishads. Since all are the forms of the Supreme, they
stand for goodwill for all and peace, which should not be
confused with lethargy and inactivity. God incarnates Himself
and works for the establishment of dharma, righteousness.
One should act independently, with knowledge and
detachment. The Upanishads begin where treatises on ethics
end. Non-opposition or peace is the basic formula of life.
Some selected articles from the second series of
Maharashtra Dharma have also been published in Hindi as
Madhukar. These articles, in particular, lay stress on the
importance of the eleven vows of Gandhi. Several of them are
against untouchability and declare it to be against the tenets
of Hinduism. Vinoba urges the people in them to take up the
service of the untouchables, to mix with them and to
inculcate hygienic habits in them. He opposes separate
hostels for them and says that to save Hinduism itself, the
false ego behind it must be got rid off.
Two of them deal directly with education and teachers. He
advocated a close relationship between education and life at
all stages, including the student period. He was highly critical
IN WARDHA : THE TWENTIES t 29
of the present system of education and the prevailing

mentality of the teachers. He said, “Merely teaching implies
being a corpse cut off from life. It means dead-alive teaching
from a dead-alive teacher.” He would like a teacher to mould
his own life on the pattern of the ideal national life conceived
by him. He was confident that if it happened, the teacher
would emit rays of education all around and influence the
environment. Such a teacher would be a school by himself
and to associate with him would be to get educated.
Some of these articles emphasise non-possession. In one

Vinoba differentiates between charity and renunciation,
according a higher place to the latter as it strikes at the very
roots of exploitation. In another he finds three types of
livelihood prevailing in society—Bhiksha, living on alms,
Vyavasaya, business, and Chori, theft. The first stands for
giving more to society and taking from it the bare minimum
and that too with a sense of obligation. In the second, there is
a balance between giving and taking, while, in the third,
taking predominates over giving. Vinoba places public
servants, businessmen, teachers, lawyers and many others of
today in the third category. As apparent he stands for the
first, and his life had been accordingly.
Between December 1928 and March 1931, it was his

practice to jot down his stray thoughts for five minutes before
retiring to bed. These were later published as Vichar Pothi,
and most of them have been translated into English as
Random Reflections. These gems of thought reveal his mind.
So much about his life and thought during the twenties.

Two revealing incidents of his life have been related above,
but one more must be given here, though it may even be of
the next decade. It concerns a letter to Vinoba from Gandhi.
No sooner Vinoba had read it, he tore it into pieces and threw
them into the waste-paper basket. Kamalnayan came to know
of it from others. Out of curiosity, he picked up those pieces
and arranged them to read its contents. Then he went to
Vinoba and said to him: “What right had you to tear the
letter, even if it was addressed to you? If not for your sake,
you should have kept it intact for the sake of posterity.”
Vinoba smiled and said: “Don’t you see that Gandhiji
committed a great blunder in calling me a great soul. And he
commits even a greater blunder by comparing others with me
and belittling them. This is unjust and improper. I rectified
that mistake by destroying it.” But Kamalnayan protested
saying that Gandhi was a very good judge of men and that he
was not a person to write anything in haste. To this, Vinoba’s
reply was: “Even if there be no mistake on his part, what use
has that letter for me? Preserving it was likely to feed my ego
and this would have acted as an impediment in my spiritual
development. I still hold it was proper for me to have
destroyed it.” This episode, besides revealing Vinoba’s
attitude, tells us of the freedom he permitted his students to
question his actions.
t
5
\
In Wardha: The Thirties
STRICTLY SPEAKING, VINOBA’S whole life was a life of

sadhana (spiritual efforts), but his years with Gandhi were
particularly so. In the twenties while it mostly centred
round the Wardha Satyagraha Ashram, in the thirties it
chiefly took the form of village service. At the age of 35 his
genius had begun to make its mark. It can be witnessed in his
literary creation of Gitai, a Marathi translation of the Gita “in
parallel. verse which reproduces the haunting music of the
original in an amzing degree”, and in his famous Talks on the
Gita, translated and published in all the Indian and several
European languages, commanding a sale of some two million
copies so far. Both were the products of the early thirties.
Before, however, dealing with them, it would be better to

take up his activities which were the outer expressions of his
evolving thought. The 1930s had opened with the Civil
Disobedience Movement under the leadership of Gandhi, but
Vinoba, a devoted constructive worker, did not participate in
it since Gandhi had left it to the choice of such workers.
Vinoba, however, did initiate the movement for the felling of
palmyra trees in Wardha district in order to prevent the
manufacture of toddy, but he was not arrested. His main
activity in 1931 lay in the campaign for opening wells to
Harijans in that district. He was, however, arrested in January
1932 to prevent him from addressing a public meeting in
)
Jalgaon, prohibited by the Government. The prohibition
order had been issued after the public announcement of the
meeting and Vinoba, in accordance with his temperament,
was not prepared to take cognizance of it. He was sentenced
and kept in Dhulia Jail where he delivered his talks on the
Gita, altready referred to. When he was released, he found his
Ashram locked and banned by the Government, and he had
to put up in Wardha elsewhere for two months before shifting
in December 1932 to Nalwadi, a village of Harijans and
agricultural labourers. Nalwadi later became a centre of his
activities.
For long Vinoba had been entertaining an intense longing
to serve the villages, but circumstances had not favoured it.
He returned from the prison more convinced of its need for
social and economic progress of the country. He felt that
India was a land of villages and would remain so, and just as
one worshipped in a temple by going round and round it, we
must go to the villagers again and again. One should make
every effort to identify onself with them. That was the only
way to serve them with dedication. By this identification
Vinoba did not mean that one should adopt their faults as
well.
Vinoba started going from village to village and this

continued for two years, bringing out the need of some solid
planning for an all round integrated service. Therefore he
called a conference of constructive workers of the district and
as a result of its deliberations an idea of ‘Khadi Yatra'
emerged. Under it, the workers used to visit villages with
Nalwadi as their headquarter, meet the people as one of them
and start their activities like Khadi, village industries, cow
husbandry, etc. They met together at Nalwadi after every
fortnight to present reports of their work and to discuss their
doubts and difficulties. On these occasions, competitions in
spinning, weaving and carding were held and exhibitions
were organized. This programme formed part of the activities
of the Gram Seva Man dal which had been formed in May
IN WARDHA : THE THIRTIES 33
1934. Later some workers settled down in villages, and started

Ashrams there. They numbered nine or ten, and Vinoba
guided them through letters. His stress was more on the
quality of work than on the number of workers, more on
depth than extension.
Visits to villages had brought out the need of the leprosy

work, which had not formed part of the Gandhian
constructive programme by that time. Manohar Diwan
a disciple of Vinoba was inspired to take it up, and he did so
with the approval of Vinoba, who also secured his unwilling
mother’s consent for it. Thus was bom the Maharogi Seva
Mandal of Dattapur, some five kilometres from Wardha on
road to Nagpur, in May 1936. In 1937, a tannery was added
to Nalwadi complex and so also a workshop for the
manufacture of spinning wheels and such other things.
Vinoba personally experimented with Takli, spinning on it

for eight hours per day, four with one hand and four with the
other. He found that this could bring to spinner some two
annas (12 paisa) per day. He also made several experiments
on the spinning wheel and later decided to live solely on its
earnings, which were highly inadequate. He did it to identify
himself with the suffering spinners. This, however, led to the
alleviation of their sufferings. Gandhi came to know of
Vinoba’s experiments and enquired of him about his earning
and daily expenditure. This led to the idea of a minimum
wage of eight annas (50 paisa) to the spinners, which at the
instance of Gandhi was first accepted by the Maharashtra
Branch of All India Spinners Association and later by others.
It may also be mentioned here that Vinoba used to lay much
stress on swadhyaya or study by the workers, and he always
welcomed constructive criticisms of the Gram Seva Mandal.
By Swadhyaya Vinoba did not mean study of books one after
another without any effect on one’s life, but the study of such
matter as lay at the base of all their activities and in addition
other subjects as well. He held that real service needs not
only devotion and dedication but understanding as well.
Moreover, by Swadhyaya he also meant that a worker should

examine his own work like an artist who looks at his painting
from a distance to find out its defect and then comes back to
it to remove them.
In 1937, Vinoba played an important role in the Zakir
Hussain Committee Report on Gandhi’s idea of Nai Talim or
Basic Education. He was a member of that Committee as an
expert on Takli. As already mentioned in the preceding
chapter, Vinoba was against the separation of education from
life even at the so-called education stage and the Nai Talim
concept of Gandhi had his full approval. His experiments
with Takli helped in its being recognized as a basic craft in
Nai Talim.
Gandhi had, in 1933, moved to Wardha, handing over his

Sabarmati Ashram for Harijan service. This was in accordance
with his resolve of 1930 not to return to it till India got
freedom. With that many girls getting education there also
came to join Kanya Ashram, Wardha. In the beginning,
Vinoba used to come there in daytime to take their classes,
but later he came in the evening and returned to Nai wadi
after the morning prayers. However, by 1938 his health had
gone down so much as to cause worry. This was because of
excessive strain of six months’ spinning for eight hours per
day, mal-nutrition caused by living on meagre wages earned
thereby and the wayside situation of Nalwadi on way to
Nagpur which led to heavy dust pollution due to very busy
traffic. It became essential for him to take rest at some place.
Gandhi even proposed Sevagram Ashram, where he could
look after him. But Vinoba rejected it humourously: “I can’t
rely on you. You have many things to do, including serving
the sick of whom there are many. I shall be one of them.
What good will it do?” Ultimately, the choice fell on Paunar
where Jamnalal Bajaj had a vacant bungalow. Gandhi,
however, laid a condition that Vinoba would free himself of
all work and stop thinking about them. This was agreed to by
Vinoba, and while crossing the river Dham to reach the
bungalow on the other^side, he said thrice, “I have given up, I

have given up, I have given up.” A man of extraordinarily
strong will, Vinoba always did what he once resolved. With
mind completely relaxed, better diet and the digging exercise
gradually increased up to two hours per day, Vinoba had
recouped his health considerably and gained weight from 88
to 128 lbs. Vinoba named the place ‘Paramdham’, since it
was situated on the other side of the Dham river. It became
his permanent abode and an Ashram grew up there. It was to
Vinoba what Sevagram was to Gandhi.
As he recouped his health, his activities grew. He increased

his contact with the village Paunar and started a workshop
there for the villagers. Weaving too was subsequently started
and some children began learning it. If Vinoba had to
purchase anything, he would do so at a price just to the
producer taking into consideration the price of the raw
material and the hours of work spent on it. He did not believe
in exploitation as others did, and he taught the children to
develop feeling against exploitation of the poor and the weak.
As regards the development of his thought and his literary

achievements, Gitai occupies historically the first place. It was
a delayed fulfilment of his mother’s wish who did not know
Sanskrit and who could not also follow the Gita in its
available Marathi translation. Hence she had asked her Vinya
to translate it for her in simple verse, and this was what her
Vinya later did. As the name itself suggests, it denoted both
his love for the Gita and his mother. It was a discharge of a
debt he owed to her. He started working on it on 7 October
1930 and finished it on 6 February 1931. While working on
it, he would read out to his pupils and elicit their suggestions
for improvement. However, final touches were given to it in
Dhulia Jail and it was published during that period itself.
Gandhi had said in his Foreword to it: “The beauty of Gitai is
that the meanings and the music of the Gita have been
rendered in Marathi in such a way that those who do not
know the original can enjoy reading it as they would the

original.”
After Gitai came the Talks on the Gita, delivered in Dhulia
Jail on Sundays, beginning with 21 February 1932 and
ending on 19 June that year. These lectures had been taken
down by Sane Guruji and thus preserved for posterity. The
Talks are indispensable for an understanding of Vinoba’s
philosophy of life. As he himself said: “The bond between the
Gita and me transcends reason. My heart and mind have
received more nourishment from the Gita than my body has
from my mother’s milk.I live and move in the
atmosphere of the Gita.” The Gita's ideal is that of the
steadfast wisdom and it insists on the discharge of one’s
swadharma, duties, without attachment to results. Vinoba had
his own interpretation of these concepts and an examination
of his life reveals their influence on him. It is not possible here
to summarize his ideas expressed in the Talks. It should
suffice to cite the opinion of an eminent scholar like Dr T.M.P.
Mahadevan, who writes: “As a life-long student of Adi
Shankaracharya, it was for me a unique experience to read
Vinoba Bhave’s Talks on the Gita. It is obvious that the Talks
were profoundly influenced by Shankara’s Gita Commentary
and they are also the results of Vinobaji’s rich and wide
experience. It may be remembered that in a well-known
passage Shankara observes that the authorities for Vedanta
are not only Shruits etc., but also experience. He says that the
end of Vedantic enquiry is experience.” Dr Mahadevan also
points out the influence of the Maratha saints on it.
Vinoba had profusely written and spoken on the Gita. He

found it reflecting on all aspects of life, without any undue
emphasis on any one, and synthesizing by eliminating
contradictions in various experiences. He particularly noted
three kinds of synthesis in it—synthesis between various
metaphysical systems, between the conflicting claims of
individual and society and between the claims of the physical
body and the soul. He holds the Gita to be above sectarianism
i
and its teachings not coming in conflict with those of other

religions.
During this period, Vinoba also learnt Arabic to read the

Koran in original to have a first hand knowledge of it. It was
in line with his on-going attempt to understand other
religions without prejudices. In tills context, one is reminded of
a peculiar experience he had in the fortieth year of his life.
Vinoba, who hardly ever remembered his birth-date, began
to analyse his past life in May 1935 and he found that while
his first twenty years had been spent in acquiring knowledge,
the next twenty were devoted to the observance of ethical
disciplines. He felt then that the rest of his life should
concentrate on giving and acquiring love of others. His study
of the Koran in original can also be viewed as a step in that
direction.
Vinoba, however, took about a decade to rise completely
over the habits he had come to acquire during the second twenty
years of his life. The strict sadhana of this period had made
him dry and unsocial, at least outwardly, and it persisted with
him till the thirties. Gandhi had also mildly drawn his attention
to it. Later in 1949 Vinoba explained his nature of this period
by telling that when a fruit is raw, it does not taste good but
on becoming ripe it acquires sweetness. Such a
metamorphosis can be testified in Vinoba’s life as well by
those who have known both the earlier and later Vinoba.
At the end, it may also be mentioned that, even though

rarely, there were a few occasions when Gandhi had to
correct Vinoba. One such occasion was Vinoba’s opposition
to the spinning of fine yam. Gandhi did not agree with him
and told him: “Our forefathers forced the poor to produce
Dacca muslin to gratify the delicate taste of the people who
loved luxury. Let us atone for their sin by spinning as
Yajna yam of the finest count and offer it to the Lord .... It
is necessary to revive the old skill in order to popularise
khadi among all classes of people. We should prove that what
was possible then in the days of slavery can be done in the
age of freedom too.”
6
The War Years
THE VERY DAY the United Kingdom declared war against

Germany in September 1939, the Viceroy did the same on
behalf of India without consulting Indians, though the
Congress had repeatedly made it clear that it would refuse to
be dragged into any war without its consent. However, since
its sympathies lay with Great Britain and France against Nazi
Germany, efforts were first made by the Congress to arrive at
a settlement with the government. But they failed and the
Congress, as advised by Gandhi, decided to launch an
individual Civil Disobedience Movement on the limited issue
of the freedom of speech to express and propagate its views
. on war into which the country had been dragged and in
whose conduct it had no say.
This individual Satyagraha was launched on October 17
1940 with Vinoba as the first satyagrahi, Jawaharlal
Nehru getting the second nomination. Gandhi had chosen
Vinoba as the first satyagrahi, because he had thought that it
would be the last satyagraha conducted by him and he
wanted it to be as flawless as possible. Vinoba seemed to be
the best choice for it, though he was practically unknown to
f the country as a whole and Gandhiji had to write an
introductory article on him in his Harijan. How Gandhiji
sought and got the consent of Vinoba to his participation is
interesting. He called Vinoba from Paunar and disclosing his
THE WAR YEARS 39
mind to him, said that if he could make himself available for

it without special efforts, he should get ready for it. Vinoba
then said half jocularly: “I consider your call to be like a call
from Yamaraj (the God of Death), therefore, I need not even
go back. I can go for satyagraha direct from here.”
Vinoba was sentenced thrice in this satyagraha, the

sentence initially being of three months but getting doubled
up every time. Thus he was sentenced in all to twenty-one
months. However, he was released before time in December
1941 with others when, with the entry of Japan in the war on
the side of the Axis powers, it took a turn for the worse
against the Allies.
Before starting his first satyagraha, Vinoba had issued a

statement clarifying his stand. It said: “Twenty-four years ago
I left my house with the sole aim of seeing God. My life till
this day tias been a life dedicated to the service of the people,
believing strongly that their service is the easiest and the best
method of seeing God. I hold and it has been my experience
that the service rendered by me to the poor, has been my
own service not theirs.” He also added: “I fully believe in
nonviolence and I think that it alone can solve all problems of
humankind. Constructive activities like Khadi, Harijan
service, communal unity, etc are only external expressions of
nonviolence. . . . War does not become of human beings. It
does not differentiate between combatants and non-
combatants. The mechanical war of today is an acme of
inhumanity. It relegates man to the level of a beast. India
worships Swarajya, the rule of all. It can only be achieved by
nonviolence. There is not much difference between Fascism,
Nazism and Imperialism. But it ill agrees with nonviolence to
create problems for a government in dire danger. Hence this
Individual Satyagraha of Gandhiji. If the government does
not arrest me, I shall gently urge the people not to help in the
war in anyway. I shall explain to them the philosophy of
nonviolence, of the horridness of the present war, and of
Nazism, Fascism and Imperialism being the various sides of

the same coin”
In his speeches, Vinoba told the people that neither the war
could be abolished nor peace established by negative
programmes. War is the outcome of a diseased mentality and
it demands positive programmes. The whole of humankind
must bear the responsibility for it, not merely Europeans. His
own opposition to the war rested both on moral grounds and
on its being an imperialisnvin design.
During his peridd of imprisonment, Vinoba had
discussions with his inmates there on the principles of a
nonviolent political order and his ideas on it were later
published as Swarajya Shastra in Marathi. It has been
translated in several languages including English and
published in it under the same name. This booklet is all the
more remarkable in that Vinoba had been speaking and
writing mostly on spiritual matters, but here he also emerged
as a political thinker of a high order. Writing in 1956, he
characterised it as a “Grammer of Lokaniti”. Lokaniti stands
for the ethics or power of the people in contrast to Rajaniti,
the politics of the State. In its Preface, he clarified, “rajya
(government) is one thing. Swarajya (self-government) is
another. Government can be had through violence, but
self-government is impossible without nonviolence. So the
thoughtful do not want government, but urge the people to
strive for self-government.” He also explained that the negative
aspect of self-government was “not to desire to govern” and
its positive aspect was “to strive for self-government”.
Vinoba was aware that all thinking takes place within the
context of particular time and place, and, as such, it has both
general and particular elements, both enduring and transitory
features. Hence he clearly said: “The science of
self-government is ever growing. Its systems are ever
changing according to time and place. But its basic principles
are eternal. It is on the basis of these eternal principles that
THE WAR YEARS 41
the outline here presented has been made.” Vinoba stood for
a government which seems to each, his own rule, or in other
words, which is a rule of all.
After his release in December, 1941, Vinoba did not

remain long outside the prison wails. After some nine months
he was detained again when in August 1942 the Congress
adopted its Quit India Resolution. He was then first kept in
Nagpur Jail, then transferred to Vellore Jail and finally to
Seoni Jail, from where he was released in July 1945, along
with other detainees.
But before dealing with his jail period, an incident must be

given. This time Gandhi was of the view that if imprisoned, he
would go on an indefinite fast and he expected the same of
others. This idea of his was opposed by others who were
close to him. They argued that the idea of mass fasting was
visionary. They were also worried about Gandhi himself.
Gandhi consulted Vinoba who concurred with him saying,
“What Ram can do out of understanding, Hanuman can do
out of faith” This settled the matter then, but Gandhi as an
afterthought gave up the idea for the time being reserving it
for further consideration. Since he had not informed Vinoba
of it, on his arrest in the early morning of 9th August, he
took care that Vinoba be intimated of his change of mind.
Vinoba, unaware of it, had informed the jailor of his intention
to fast from the evening, but before it could actually materi¬
alize, he had been conveyed Gandhiji’s message through a
reliable source with the permission of the government. How¬
ever, in February 1943 when Gandhi went on a 21 day fast,
Vinoba did the same on getting its information a day later.
This shows that for Vinoba approval of anything implied fol¬
lowing it in his own life.
It was in Nagpur Jail this time that Vinoba started giving

another series of talks on the Gita which were completed in
the Vellore Jail, and are known as Gita Vailarl These talks
were of an advance nature compared to the famous Dhulia
l
talks. The reason for it lay in the fact that the Nagpur and
Vellor audiences were much more educated than that of
Dhulia, which was mostly composed of ordinary prisoners.
But, unfortunately, there was no Sane Guruji this time to take
them down verbatim. Hence the final version prepared from
the notes of several persons failed to meet Vinoba’s
touchstone and he did not want them to be published.
However, several typed copies of that version exist, and a few
portions of it have been published even in the Maitri, the
monthly of the Brahma Vidya Mandir. The author of this
biography had the opportunity of going through a typed copy
and, as usual, he found them highly remarkable for their
originality of ideas and treatment, particularly for his
concepts of swadharma (one’s own duty) and stithprajna (the
man of steadfast wisdom).
In Seoni, Vinoba spoke on the last eighteen versus of the

second chapter of the Gita, and these talks of a still more
advanced nature, were found very useful by persons
given to spiritual efforts. Originally given and published in
Marathi as Stithprajna Darshan, they are available in some
other languages as well including English under the title
Steadfast Wisdom. With these talks, delivered at the age of
about 48, Vinoba may be said to have completed his stage of
sadhana, both spiritually and intellectually.
The various jail terms, beginning with the twenties, had

made no difference for Vinoba. He had rather found them
more suited for Ashram life based on various ethical
disciplines. With its regular life, physical labour, few
possessions, insipid food, etc. along with enough time for
thought and contemplation, he returned from prisons with
some new ideas every time. A remarkable incident may,
however, be related here. It was probably in Akola Jail during
his first incarceration that he was put in solitary confinement
by the jailor. But Vinoba knew how to pass his time and keep
himself happy in his cell. When the jailor discovered that he
THE WAR YEARS 43
/ v
even enjoyed his solitary confinement, he was brought back
to the general ward.
During his last incarceration, Vinoba had to live with

persons of all shades of political opinions, and he found that
goodness like evil was not the monopoly of any particular
group. Therefore he felt that it would not suit him to belong
to any particular organization and his efforts should rather
aim at co-ordinating the goodness in all. On his release when
questioned by Gandhiji about the new idea he had brought from
his jail that time, he told him of it, and Gandhi approved it,
interpreting it to mean that while he would belong to all
organizations, he would accept no office in them.
Vinoba’s confinement in Vellore Jail had also provided him

with an opportunity to learn all the four languages of the
south, namely, Tamil, Telugu, Kannada and Malayalam. He
returned this time from imprisonment with the idea of taking
up the service of the weakest section of society, and he did so
by undertaking scavenging and sanitation work in village
Surgaon, some five kilometres away from Paunar and
connected with it only by a foot-path passing through fields.
The path was sometimes flooded with water in the rainy
season, but, undaunted by all this, Vinoba used to visit the
village regularly, with the ideal of the sun before him. This
activity beginning on 2 April 1946, had continued even for
some time after the passing away of Gandhiji when Vinoba
moved out of Paunar and assumed new responsibilities.
7
Gandhi s Martyrdom: New

Responsibilities
BESIDES HIS SURGAON activity, Vinoba helped in the

running of the Harijan by contributing articles in it in 1946
and 1947. In October 1947 his father died as mentioned in
the first chapter, leaving behind 25 thousand rupees in bank
accounts, 450 acres of family land in Gagoda and a library.
The money was handed over to Gram Seva Man dal. while the
family land was distributed when Gagoda became a Gramdan
village. The 15th of August, 1947 was no special day for
Vinoba. He went to Surgaon in the morning as usual, but he
did address a public meeting in the evening. He observed
then that just as Independence had led to the unfurling of a
new flag, it should also lead to a new system of education
replacing the old one.
Gandhiji’s death on 30th of January 1948 did not produce

any immediate reaction on Vinoba but after a few days he
started feeling the gravity of it. However, all through the
mourning period, he spoke every evening. In his first address
on the 31st, he drew a parallel between Lord Krishna’s death
and that of Gandhiji. He said that though superficially the
two appeared* to differ since in one case the action seemed to
be unintentional and in the other intentional, it was not so in
/ reality since Godse who shot Gandhi mistook him to be an
enemy of Hinduism, when it was he who was keeping the
GANDHI’S MARTYRDOM : NEW RESPONSIBILITIES 45
name of Hinduism blazoning in the world. Yet, there was no

cause for grief, Gandhiji was not afraid of death and he died
in a prayerful mood.
To Vinoba, Gandhi was not a person but an idea, and as
such his emphasis in these speeches was on ethical
disciplines, Khadi with self-reliance in cloth requirements,
indispensability of nonviolence if science itself was to
survive, the need of nonviolence both in individual and
collective life, etc. He disfavoured physical memorials to
Gandhi and his reaction to the suggestion of a Gandhi
temple was that Gandhi was a human being and should be
allowed to remain as such. If he was raised to godlihood, the
quintessence of his message would be lost on the people.
Respect for all religions would be the best memorial to the
Mahatma.
f
Gandhiji himself had mooted the idea of a conference of
constructive workers at Sevagram in February and he was to
leave for Wardha on 31 January when he Was snatched
away a day earlier. The conference was held later in March
and was even attended by Dr Rajendra Prasad, Pt. Nehru
and Maulana Azad as special invitees. Dr Rajendra Prasad
even presided over it. All eyes at the conference were riveted
on Vinoba as the spiritual heir of Gandhi, and on his advice it
was decided to form Sarvodaya Samaj, a loose organization of
those who believed in the ideas and ideals of Gandhi.
Another important outcome of the conference was of Vinoba
agreeing to take up the peace and rehabilitation work in and
around Delhi at the request of Pandit Nehru. He reached
there with some other workers on the 30th of that very
month and devoted himself to that work for about six months.
Clarifying the purpose of his mission on the very day he
reached Delhi, he said: “Though it is necessary to mitigate the
sufferings of the refugees, it is not my main task. My basic
mission is to replace the prevailing atmosphere of hatred and
bitterness with one of peace, harmony and goodwill.
Violence cannot be countered by violence; love alone can

generate conducive atmosphere. This cannot be done by the
government. It is the duty of the people and voluntary
organizations to help the government in this crucial task.”
Vinoba visited the refugee camps in Delhi and Punjab, and

asked the refugees to banish from their minds the idea of
Hindu Raj. He advised them against being influenced by what
Pakistan did and emphasized that they were first human
beings and then Hindus, Sikhs or Muslims. He said to the
Meos of Gurgaon district: “God has bestowed upon us two
great capacities—one of rememberance and the other of
forgetfulness. We must discriminate between what should be
remembered and what should be forgotten. True
discrimination lies in forgetting the evil and remembering the
good done by others.” He reminded the people of the long
tradition of India to welcome even the adherents v>f other
creeds and asked them to maintain it.
Vinoba also went to Ajmer where the Muslims were highly
frightened and feared trouble at the time of their famous Urs.
He stayed there for a week, visiting Dargah everyday. He
received a highly cordial treatment there in the Muslim
manner and was even permitted to hold his own prayer in it.
Vinoba told the Durgah devotees: “India belongs to all
communities, irrespective of their religions. We are born of
the dust of this land and would return to it. We should,
therefore, love one another, have room in our hearts for one
another and live like brothers.” However, he did not fail to
notice the absence of their womenfolk in their collective
prayer, and asked them to give up their old custom and
permit them also to participate in it along with men.
In October, Vinoba visited Bikaner where some caste

Hindus accustomed to worship at a temple everyday had
been debarred from entering it because they had done
sanitation work in Harijan localities. In protest against it, they
were on fast. Vinoba prevailed upon them to give it up
t
and instead resolve not to enter the temple till Harijans too
were allowed to do so. He said to them: “A temple not open
to all, lodges only a stone idol and God does not reside
there." He also went to Jaipur in December on the occasion
of the Congress session, to open the Sarvodaya Exhibition.
There he pointed out that the so-called small tools led to
large-scale production by allowing participation in work not
only to one or two millions but to tens of millions and they
were superior in that they provided means of livelihood to
them all.
In the last week of the year, he was at Wardha because of

the Sevagram session of the World Pacifists Meeting. In his
opening speech, read out by some other since he was unwell,
he had said: “Ahimsa is not merely non-participation in the
destructive activities; it principally manifests itself in
constructive activities—services which lead to the upward
growth of men." He also pointed out that the light of Ahimsa
could not be spread by organisations. It was not the physical
body which could do it, since it was itself an embodiment of
violence. Ahimsa was assimilated to the extent one rose over
one’s body. It was a natural state of the soul and, therefore,
what it needed was the quest of the spirit, purification of
mind and heart, service of living creatures, universal love and
fearlessness. He also then made the startling but valid and
highly original remark that he was not afraid of world wars
but of the small ones. He said: “When we do not understand
what is right straightaway, the all-merciful God sends world
war to free man’s mind from limitations and make him think
in terms of humanity as a whole. This is a big step towards
Ahimsa. But it is not true of small wars. They are the sworn
enemies of Ahimsa and all the times push Ahimsa further
and further away.” >
Vinoba returned to Delhi for the first anniversary of

Gandhi’s death, and then decided to go round the country.
His visits to various parts of the country—U.P., Rajasthan,
Bombay, Madhya Pradesh, Tamil Nadu, Kerala and
Andhra—served the useful purpose of making him familiar

with the people of these parts, and at the same time acquainting
them with himself and his ideas. All this was essential if he was
to initiate an all-India Movement, as he probably intended to
do, for the reconstruction of a nonviolent society in the
country. From Andhra, he returned to Wardha and intended
to go to Bihar, but could not do so because of intense
stomach pain due to duodenal ulcer. The visit was cancelled.
But it was not in his nature to sit still, and he began his
experiment of Khanchan-muktl, freedom from gold or
money economy, from the New Year Day of 1950. Before,
taking it up, it would be appropriate to deal with his
experiences of peace and rehabilitation work in which he had
been engaged at the instance of Pandit Nehru. According to
Vinoba, he worked very hard those days and something was
achieved but not the thing he was after. Hence he came out of
it after six months, the period he had assigned for this
purpose. The work he had to do was of liaison type, and what
he found was that while Panditji said one thing, the persons
who had to carry out his order had their own ideas and they
acted in their own manner. It also happened that once the
Punjab Government which had promised to give land to
Harijans, later went back on its assurance on the plea of the
lack of enough substitute lands even for those who had left
them behind in Pakistan. This was a status quo mentality
which Vinoba could not appreciate. Vinoba had also hoped
that the work of rehabilitating Meos might result in the
development of the power of nonviolence and to the
discovery of a method helpful in initiating a nonviolent
revolution in the country besides strengthening the Khadi
Movement, but it too did not happen. Hence, despite some
achievements,Tie failed to get what he was seeking.
Vinoba's experiment of Kanchan mukti which had

commenced with the resolve that the Ashram would no more
get its requirements beginning with vegetables from outside,
has its own history. The idea can be traced back to 1935-36
by which time Vinoba had come to acquire a revulsion for

money and had felt the need of the adoption of the principle
of non-possession by the Gandhian institutions to usher in a
nonviolent society. At the Rau Sarvodaya Sammelan in
March 1949, he even publicly stated his view that the
principles of non-possession was as much applicable to
institutions as to individuals, and he questioned the propriety
of institutions keeping large funds in banks which they could
loan out for any purpose whatsoever, even if un-Gandhian.
He had asked why should such funds be maintained at all?
And if they were there, why should they not be exhausted in
a year or two?
It was with such a background that his experiment of

kanchan mukti began with the Paunar Ashram. It had a small
beginning because Vinoba was a realist and never got
impatient. Before the start of the experiment, he explained to
the inmates that money economy was the main cause of the
unrest and inequality one saw all around in society. The
experiment resulted in what is termed ‘Rishi’ cultivation with
the help of small tools and human labour, and it continued
for about three years till April 1953, when Vinoba called the
Ashram inmates for a concerted drive in Bihar for Bhoodan
work. However, the idea did not die, and the threads were
picked up again by the Brahma Vidya Mandir, a women
institution established in 1959 in the Paunar Ashram, as
mentioned earlier.
Vinoba had been of the view that in this experiment lay a

partial solution to the problem of unemployment, some
hopes for cultivators without means, opportunity for
experimentation in intensive farming, a boon for Nai Talim,
and, above all, a long-term view for nonviolence.
8
The Bhoodan Period
WHATEVER VINOBA EVER undertook, he devoted

himself with single-mindedness to it. The second Sarvodaya
Sammelan, held at Angul in Orissa in 1950, when he was
engaged in his kanchan mukti experiment, had not been
attended by him. The third Sammelan was scheduled for
April 1951 at Shivarampalli near Hyderabad and Vinoba was
frankly told that if he did not attend it, there would be no
sense in holding it. This overcame his reluctance and he
agreed to attend it. He, however, decided to reach there on
foot in the manner of Buddha, Mahavir and some others,
since it could acquaint him better with the people, their
problems and their surroundings than any means of rapid
transport, bringing greater clarity to his social thinking.
This “Sarvodaya Yatra” as it was termed, began on 8
March and ended at Shivarampalli on 7 April, covering a
distance of over 500 kilometers. As usual, Vinoba’s daily
programme was very regular. He used to halt at some small
village for the day, go round it, listen to the people on their
problems and address the post-prayer meeting in the evening
exhorting them to take to self-help in solving their problems
and to love one another. It may be mentioned here that in this
Yatra, as also in the later ones, persons accompanying him
for months and years together always found some originality
and freshness in every speech of his, both regarding ideas and
approach.
THE BHOODAN PERIOD 51
At the Sammelan, Vinoba told the workers that in the

changed circumstances of the country the constructive work
needed new directions, and he set forth before them the
five-fold programme of inner purity, village cleaning,
reverence for physical labour, peace corps and sutanjali, i.e.
offerings of self-spun yam, as a token of identity with all
those who participate in creative work. On the last day of the
Sammelan he made the unexpected announcement of visiting
the Telangana region where the people were groaning under
the Police Raj in the day and communist reprisals at night.
After Independence, the law and order situation in the
Hyderabad State had deteriorated due to the activities of the
Razakars, a fanatic Muslim militia opposed to any form of
democracy in the State or to its acceding to India. The
communists, inspired by the Chinese example, had acquired
considerable influence over the poor peasantry and they
utilised this opportunity to rouse them against the rich
landowners, making the latter flee for their safety. Their lands
were occupied by the landless. But when the law and order
situation improved after the Police Action, they returned and
demanded their lands back. This was resisted, leading to a
strife between the two. The law and order machinery
supported the landowners. Vinoba had decided to go there
to study the problem first hand and to bring peace to the area.
He left Shivarampalli on 15 April morning, reaching

Hyderabad the same day. He met the communists jailed
there, had a two-hour talk with them and returned with the
feeling that he had been able to impress upon them of his
goodwill. Tills is not surprising. Vinoba’s Introduction to
K.G. Mashruwala’s Gandhi and Marx, published that very
year in September, had expressed his high regard for Marx as
a thinker with genuine sympathy for the poor and the
exploited, though he had also found fault with his thinking
and completely differed with him on the method. Vinoba was
of the view that it was the rich who had created the
communists. He also believed in equality in every respect

and said: “The police will not be helpful in fighting the
communists menace. The only way to root it out is to remove
the unjust distribution of land in a peaceful way.” However
misguided they might be, he did not look upon tjiem as
destructionists, and he wanted to bring them on the right
track by reasoning and active sympathy for their cause.
In his trek of Telangana, he reached Pochampalli village on

the 18th, where the local Harijans told him that if they could
get 80 acres of land, they would cultivate it and eke out their
living. Vinoba first asked them to give him an application
addressed to the State Government, but later realizing that it
would take time, he asked the persons present there if
someone would donate land for the purpose. One C.R.
Reddy then offered to donate 100 acres which his late father
wanted to give to deserving persons, and he later confirmed
this offer at the evening meeting. This was a happy surprise
for Vinoba himself, who took it as a Divine revelation and
saw in such voluntary donations the possibility of solving the
problem of the landless agricultural labour.
Vinoba himself had left for us an account how he felt all

about it, and it is important since it reveals the working of his
mind. According to him, “Man does not act on the strength of
his individual thinking alone There is a preparation going on
in the surrounding world which prompts action. The donor
had no doubt (in this case) become the immediate and
effective cause, but, may be, the atmosphere is also ready in
the world for such a programme. Nature’s planning is never
partial. When it gives appetite to the child, it not only
provides the mother with the necessary food but also inspires
her to feed the child. And (then) suddenly came the flash and
I realized that the world power beckons me to fulfil some
new mission.” The he asked himself if he had the capacity
for it, and the reply was: “if I am blind to the suggestion, I
must either give up faith in nonviolence and accept violence
as my creed or I should become a pessimist.” But not being
prepared for either, he fell fast asleep with “heart within and
God overhead”.
His faith was further enhanced when from that day

onwards he repeated that appeal at every meeting with
favourable response. Thus was born the Bhoodan'idea and in
his 51 days in Telangana, he had collected 12,001 acres. The
task of distributing it was assigned to a committee before he
left that State. However, one could not be sure if such
donations would also be forthcoming in areas devoid of
communist troubles, and this had to be experimented upon.
Vinoba soon got an opportunity for it as well. R.K. Patil, a

member of the Planning Commission, had a discussion with
him at Paunar on the draft of the First Five Year Plan.
Vinoba was highly critical of it on several grounds. There was
no commitment in it for work and food to all citizens despite
assurances for them in the Constitution; it did not provide for
self-sufficiency in foodgrains and envisaged their import for
an indefinite period though the Government pledged to
attain self-sufficiency by 1951; it asked the village industries
to stand on its iegs after their feet had been chopped off; and
it failed to provide for cow protection when the Indian
conditions demanded it. Vinoba was still more emphatic on
the introduction of basic education, since he held that Nai
Talim would not only make for self-sufficiency in food and
cloth but would also generate a spirit of self-sacrifice and
self-respect in the new generation. Laying stress on the dire
need of Khadi and village industries, he even said: “If you can
provide full employment to the people through other
programmes, including that of large-scale industries, I shall
bum my Charkha and cook a day’s meal, without shedding a
single tear.”
Patil apprised Nehru of Vinoba’s views who invited Vinoba
to visit Delhi for discussions with him and his other
colleagues of the Planning Commission. Vinoba accepted it
and decided to proceed to Delhi on foot, demanding lands on
t
the way for the landless. Leaving Wardha on September 12,

he reached New Delhi exactly after two months via Sagar,
Jhansi, Agra and Mathura. The land donations during this
padayatra averaged 300 acres a day, demonstrating that the
idea was also , workable
• * \ _
in such areas which m
lacked
communist turbulence. This brought a new confidence to
Vinoba and roused a new spirit in the country. Consequently,
when he was at Sagar on Gandhi’s birthday, he demanded of
the country 50 million acres of land, i.e. one-sixth of the total
cultivable area in the country, by 1957, the centenary year of
the First War of Indian Independence.
He was welcomed at Mathura by the workers of Uttar

Pradesh, and they resolved to present him with five lakh
acres of land within a year. After visiting Delhi and having
discussions with Nehru and the Planning Commission, he
toured U.P. and the movement there became a people’s
movement, reminding the public of the days of Gandhi. By
April 1952 when the 4th Sarvodaya Sammelan was held at
Sevapuri, near Varanasi, more than a lakh acre had been
collected in the state and, encouraged by it, the Sammelan
had resolved to collect 25 lakh acres in the whole country
within two years. After the Sammelan, Vinoba continued his
tour of U.P., and finally returned to Varanasi to spend the
rainy season there, before proceeding to Bihar. Two
important events of the post-Sevapuri period deserve
mention. Vinoba had started at Kanpur asking for
sadhan-dan, i.e., donations of the means of cultivation like
wells, bullocks and other inputs from the rich for the poor
donees of Bhoodan lands. Secondly, he got his first Gramdan
of the village Mangroth in the district of Hamirpur, to which
we would return in the next chapter.
Vinoba left LJ.P. for Bihar on September 14, and by that

time the all India collection was little less than four lakhs,
U.P.’s contribution being 2,95,028 acres. So far the
movement had passed through three phases. The first was
Palliative phase, aiming at the removal of the local grievance
which characterised the Telangana period. The second phase

was of Calling Attention, which aimed at creating a wide
understanding of the movement and drawing the attention of
the country towards it. This was a feature of the foot journey
from Wardha to Delhi. The third phase, witnessed in U.P.,
was of Fortification of Faith. It created a confidence in the
workers that they could collect land. With Bihar, the
movement entered the fourth phase of Extensive Land-gift, in
which efforts were directed towards getting one-sixth of
cultivable land. On entering it, Vinoba had laid down a target
of 50 lakh acres for it to see how far success could be
attained in collecting that much portion of the land. It was
later reduced to 32 lakh acres and he stayed there till the
very end of 1954, i.e., for more than 27 months, going round
all the districts twice or thrice for this purpose. The total
collection in Bihar during this period had come to over 22
lakh acres.
Four events of the Bihar period stand out prominently in

the life of Vinoba. They are the two Sarvodaya Sammelans of
Chandil and Bodhgaya, his severe illness before the Chandil
Sammelan and the event at Baidyanathdham. The Sarvodaya
Sammelans will be dealt with later since they pertain more to
the development of his thought, but the other two need telling
here. Vinoba was down with malignant malaria at Chandil in
Manbhum district in December 1952, but he refused to take
any medicine as was his wont, and his condition became
critical causing anxiety to all, especially to Pandit Nehru, Dr.
Rajendra Prasad who belonged to Bihar, and to the then
Bihar Chief Minister Shrikrishna Sinha. The last person
implored Vinoba with tears in his eyes to agree to take
medicine, and ultimately Vinoba too felt that nonviolence
demanded that their feelings should not be injured and he
agreed to take the medicine, which worked miraculously on
his unmedicated system. He recovered but was so weak that
he had to remain there for months to recoup himself and the
fifth Sarvodaya Sammelan had to be held there.
The Baidyanathdham incident took place in September,

1953 when Vinoba was there and the head priest of the
famous temple invited him to visit it. On being informed that
Vinoba did not visit any temple not open to Harijans, the
head priest also gave his consent for it. However, when
Vinoba went there with others, the Pandas fell on him and his
party, and though his companions did their best to protect
Vinoba, he was injured at the ear. Vinoba issued a statement
next day which said that the hooliganism was due to
ignorance and that he did not want them to be punished. He,
however, added, “This is an age of science. Every faith is
put to the touchstone of reason.” It appears that the head
priest had given consent to the entry of the Harijans out of
the fear of the law against untouchability.
From Bihar Vinoba entered West Bengal on his way to
Orissa, spending 25 days in the districts of Bankura and
Midnapore. This short and rather casual stay did not bring
him much land, but it was highly significant for another
reason. The soil of Bengal had produced Shri Chaitanya
Mahaprabhu, Shri Ramakrishna Parmahansa and many other
religious leaders, social reformers and literary giants who had
fathered the Indian Renaissance in the last century, and at
one time, as already told, Vinoba himself had been attracted
by its revolutionary movement. Had Gandhi not entered into
his life, he might have visited it much earlier. However, on
this occasion he called upon Bengal to supplement its
legendary devotion with nonviolent activity. He was also
able to contact its leading men of letters, teachers, public
workers and politicians, and was able to win the support of
many.
It was also there that Vinoba received an invitation to

attend the Avadi (Madras) session of the Indian National
Congress in January 1955. He could not accept it because it
involved digression from his mission, but being anxious to get
the Congress co-operation in his mission, his reply to that
invitation said: “Please convey to the delegates, on my behalf,
the word that there is an individual who is constantly moving

about with the hope, that sometime or other, Congressmen
will run to his succour and that he regards himself entitled to
receive their help.’' This was in line with Vinoba’s attitude to
seek the co-operation of all, including political parties in his
work of unquestioned importance. Pandit Nehru was so
much moved by this reply that he got it read out to the
delegates, and the Congress passed a resolution appreciating
the work being done by Vinoba and appealed to Congressmen
to extend their fullest co-operation to the Bhoodan Movement,
Vinoba entered Orissa on the Republic Day in 1955, and

with this the Bhoodan period be rather taken as having come
to a close. The movement underwent such qualitative
transformation in Orissa that the word Bhoodan in the
restrictive sense used so far would riot suit it, though this
transformation was inherent in the basic idea of Bhoodan
that all land belonged to God, and it could well have been
expected to flower in propitious circumstances. Vinoba
considered it as the fifth and the final phase of Bhoodan and
named it as the Land Revolution, properly termed
Gramdan, in which 80 per cent or more of villagers
surrendered their ownership over land in the village to the
village community for equitable distribution among them and
the land so tendered did not come to less than 50 per cent of
the total land in the village. This redivision of land amongst
them could be revised after every ten-year period in
accordance with their altered family needs. However, the
original practice of getting part of one’s land as Bhoodan in
the non-Gramdan areas continued for years and was never
formally given up. But with time the increasing emphasis was
on getting Gramdans, either as originally conceived or in its
easier form to be described later.
This depicts the Jiistory of important events of the period of
this chapter. Without minimising their importance, it must,
however, be said that of far greater importance were the ideas
Vinoba was expounding during this period as his philosophy
of individual and social life. Bhoodan was only an expression

of this philosophy and to that now I recur.
During his Telangana tour, Vinoba had met three kinds of

people—the communists, the village rich and the common
villagers. He had told the first that their dream had not been
realized anywhere so far and that none could say if it would be
realized at all. Hence it would be a mistake of the first order
if they did not give up their method of violence on even
pragmatic grounds
He had told the second group who had fled away from
their villages to take the vow of serving their fellow
villagers and to return to stay among them courageously. It
was better to die there than to live in cities out of fear. One
could get rid of the fear by loving and serving the poor. His
advice to the common people was that they should have love
for their well-off fellow villagers and protect them. He
explained at all places that land donations should not be
considered as acts of charity but given with the feeling that all
had claims on land just as they had over water, air and
sunlight.
On his way to Delhi from Wardha, he developed his

Bhoodan ideas further in consonance with his basic
philosophy of individual and social life which had fully
evolved by the fifties. He had made it quite clear even in
1951 that his mission was not to stave off a revolution, but to
prevent a violent one and substitute it by a nonviolent one.
He elaborated on it later on several occasions. For example,
he observed in 1954: “We seek to reconstruct society on a
new basis. That is the purpose behind the Bhoodan work. It is
not merely to collect land. What we want to establish are new
values—to make morality the guiding principle of social life
and to make economics, which enjoys undue importance at
present, subservient to the former. The Bhoodan Movement
is for us an instrument for achieving a nonviolent and
peaceful change of values.” Despite this, when some
opponents of Bhoodan looked upon him as an agent of the

rich and landlords, Vinoba’s reply was: “The truth is that I am
an agent of the poor. I am presenting their case. I have lived
among them and have tried to make my life like theirs. But I
want to be the agent of the big landlords too, provided they
give me land generously.”
The idea of Bhoodan was a comprehensive idea in that it

was not confined to land only. As he said in 1955: “The basic
idea of Bhoodan is that wealth, intelligence and every such
thing which a man has, belongs to society and they should go
to it. If somebody retains something, he is a trustee for it.”
And his concept of trusteeship, which he made clear on many
occasions, implied the ultimate abolition of private property
and its conversion into social property, with its benefits
available to all. The word “Dan” in “Bhoodan” did not stand
for charity but for equitable distribution, a sense in which it
was even taken by no less a personage than Adi Shankaracharya.
There were occasions when Vinoba refused to accept
unbecoming land donations from big landlords, telling them
that he was not seeking charity but wanted to initiate them
into new values of life. On other occasions he politely said
that accepting them would tarnish both the donor’s and his
reputation.
Several objections were raised against Bhoodan from time

to time, and Vinoba had to reply to them. To the charge that
he was distributing poverty, he said: “If there is poverty in the
country, it should be shared, and if there is wealth, that too
must be shared. In fact, it is not a movement of distributing
poverty but of joining hearts.” His reply to those who argued
that small plots of land were uneconomic for cultivation, was:
“There is no ground for holding that small plots of land
reduce production, especially when you know that our people
are inclined towards individual farming.” He also made it
clear that his movement was based on a positive ideology and
was not counteraction against the communists. He said, “The
rays of the sun are not a counteraction against darkness.
The wider implications of the movement unravelled

themselves as it developed. To the Sadhan-dan started in
U.P. and mentioned above, he later added Sampattidan, gift
of wealth, and Shramdan the gift of free labour, in Bihar,
while there was also some talk of Buddhidan, the gift of free
intellectual help. Vinoba held that not only the so-called
“haves” but the so-called “have-nots” too possess something
to contribute for the good of society. They are also “haves” in
one respect or another.
Shramdan was expected of all, except those physically
invalid, while sampattidan was a demand mainly from the
well-off either as a part of their wealth or of their income.
Vinoba had said in 1952: “From Bhoodan to Sampattidan
was a natural step, and its idea had occurred to me along with
that of Bhoodan. But the land problem being a basic one, I
first concentrated my energy on it. However, as the work of
Bhoodan progressed, it became increasingly clear that the
idea behind the movement could not be realized unless we
went further and asked for a portion of wealth or property.”
Vinoba used special occasions of larger gatherings of

workers, especially Sarvodaya Sammelans, to explain to
them and others, different aspects of his approach and
philosophy. The first such occasion was the gathering of the
U.P. Sarvodaya workers and sympathisers at Mathura in the
very beginning of November, 1951, when he was on his way
to Delhi. He said to the workers then: “After the attainment
of Swaraj, we must aim at the establishment of Samyayoga,
the yoga of equality. We have named it Sarvodaya. You may
call it by any name.” His Samyayoga involved the principle
that no money appraisal could be made of the intellectual and
the spiritual services of any person, and that the basis of
payment should for all be the same, whether he is the
President of India, a kisan or a scavenger. This, however, did
not mean any arithmetical equality. It stood for such an
equality as was found between the five fingers of a hand,
which did not prevent them from co-operating with each
other.
The next gathering of importance was Sevapuri Sarvodaya

Sammelan, near Varanasi, in April, 1952. It was the first
occasion when workers from all over India had gathered in a
very large number, enthused as they were over the progress
of the movement. On such occasions Vinoba also used to
meet the workers of different States-collectively to remove
their doubts, to resolve their difficulties and to establish
rapport with them. He told the common gathering at
Sevapuri: “I have been often asked if I expected to solve the
entire land problem in this manner. My reply to them is that
neither Rama nor Krishna could solve ail the problems of the
world. World’s problems could be solved by the world alone.
I can make no egoistic claim that I can solve anybody’s
problems. That is why no worry disturbs me at night and I go
into sleep as soon as I lie down on my bed.” He also then
explained his ideas on Satyagraha and the reason why he did
not think in its term to solve the land problem. He said: “You
should know that if I have any reputation in the country, it is
only as a Satyagrahi. This means that if I ever find that
satyagraha was imperative, nothing will prevent me from
offering it. But Gandhiji gave us as a maxim the famous line
‘One step is enough for me’. It does not mean that we know
nothing about the next step. But as soon as a person gives
room in his mind to the next step, he begins to harbour a
doubt about the success of the first step. If I have to nurse a
sick person, it will not be right for me to simultaneously plan
to arrange for his cremation, in case the patient dies. I should
serve him with the hope that he would be cured by treatment
and nursing. If, however, he dies in spite of my care, I should
take the fact peacefully and proceed to make arrangements for
his funeral as the next step.” He also said: “What you call
satyagraha will be real satyagraha only to the extent it retains
a persuasive character. As soon as it takes the form of
coercion, it ceases to be satyagraha.” He advised the workers
to concentrate on Sutanjali (yam offering), elimination of
money economy, and Bhoodan. It was at Sevapuri also that
Vinoba explained his ideas on “freedom from government”,
which I hope to take up elsewhere.
V
The next Sammelan was held at Chandil in Bihar in March

1953. In his opening address there, Vinoba explained why he
chose to remain outside the Government, free from any
administrative responsibility. He said: “When the two
bullocks (party in power and the opposition) are already
yoked to the cart, how will the addition of a third one help it?
It instead can repair the road for the cart to go on it right
merrily, I can render it the greatest possible service.” And
then he proceeded to state that the mission of a Sarvodaya
worker lies in building up an independent “people’s power”,
and that in itself would be a true service to the government
and the people.
He distinguished this “people’s power” both from the power
of violence and dandashakti, i.e., the penal power of the state.
However, while people’s power was quite opposite to the
power of violence, it could not be said so about the power of
the state despite the element of coercion involved therein,
because of the sanction of society behind it. What he aimed at
was the creation of such conditions as would eliminate any
need for the exercise of that power and this he did in spite of
his view that state power could be an instrument of service
and would have to be retained as long as society needed it.
In this context he also clarified his attitude towards the use
of legislation to solve the land problem. He said that he was
preparing a conducive social climate for it. However, he also
added that “there I must stop. If I go a step further and start
repeating that our objective cannot be realized except by
legislation, then it means that I have strayed away from my
duty, the duty imposed on me by the particular path I have
chosen to tread.”
He also reminded the workers that the method to generate

people’s power must correspond with the objective itself,
and, therefore, it would have to be based on the two principles
of Vichar-shasan, the discipline of thought, and kartrittva-
vibhajan, distribution or dispersal of the government’s functions
amongst the people. The former implied peaceful conversion

of the people to one’s views by making them think about it,
along with one’s own readiness to listen to their views and
understand them, avoiding any imposition of one’s views up¬
on them. Explaining the latter he said: “There should be no
concentration of power at any one place. It should be widely
distributed among the villages. Every village ought to have the
right to determine what things should be allowed to enter and
what should not.” His idea thus was to make villages a sort of
republics.
He ended his address by cautioning the workers: “We are

neither a sect nor a party. The word ‘Sarvodai’ often used
to designate us, is misleading. We are simply human beings
like others. Political parties have their different labels which
may continue because they are useful to them. But we are not
a party.”
In another highly significant speech at the Sammelan,

Vinoba dealt with his basic approach towards such matters
as the Five Year Plan, Community Development Projects,
political parties and other ideologies. He said that he had his
own specific way of dealing with such matters and it was of
laying stress on agreements rather than on disagreements. He
knew that some differed with him and wanted disagreements
to be emphasized. But he could not agree with them and
explained the merits of his approach. Taking the case of the
Plan, he pointed out that despite some modifications in the
original Plan in the light of his objection, its outlook was
different from that of Sarvodaya. Yet, he had avoided to
dwell on the points of differences beyond what was necessary
for the clarity of thought, though it left an impression that he
approved of it on the whole. This impression, he said, was not
wrong, but this attitude of approval sprang out of a desire to
avoid creating a confusion in the minds of the people. He
said: “Today we may, if we decide to oppose the Plan, retard
its progress. But that is not the same thing as the capacity for
construction. We have not enough hold on the people to
place our own programme before them and get it

implemented. I therefore, think it improper from the point of
view of nonviolence, to use my influence in creating
buddhibheda, confusion of thought, and preventing even the
good points from being given effect to."
A second reason for this approach was that any adverse
criticism ultimately leads to the questioning of the bona fides
of the person behind it, conferring on him or her a right to
question the good faith of the critics themselves, doing harm
to their own cause. As regards co-operation in the Plan, he
observed: “We must continue to advance in our own
direction. ... we should co-operate in those aspects of the
Plan which we approve of, but we must keep ourselves free.
We cannot accept any of these Plans and projects as our own
and get entangled in them. We may give the Government our
advice if and when sought and may occasionally help it when
there is need, but it will be a mistake to make any of its Plans
our responsibilities.” This was Vinoba's personal attitude, but
he left it to individual workers to think for themselves.
However, summing up his own position, he said: “When we
take to criticising others, we waste a great deal of energy. I,
therefore, think that both criticizing others and getting
involved in what is not our own work are undesirable and
eventually deterimentai to our cause.”
Regarding political parties, he said: “I am inclined to take

the view that they should cease as different parties and
combine to form a united front made up of all good and
honest people in the country, carrying out commonly agreed
programmes. And to that end f try to put before the people a
programme of work which may be acceptable to all and in
which all can join forgetting their differences. This will tend
to draw the parties closer to each other, with the result that
their differences will gradually shrink and the points of
agreements will increase.” He hoped that such a programme
could take the country forward and develop the inherent
strength of the people. He, however, refused then to define “a
good man”, urging the workers to consider it their duty to

bridge the gulf between various political parties. On the basis
of the Gita he said that all the differences observed were on
the surface only and that at the bottom there was unity which
one should try to see. This could only create an atmosphere
for it. Differences in views would always be there but one
must aim at unity in the field of action. It may be mentioned
here that while in East Pakistan in 1962, Vinoba defined ‘a
good man’ as one who is kind-hearted, generous and chari¬
table.
After Chandil came the Bodhgaya Sarvodaya Sammelan in

April 1954. It was attended among others by Vice-President
Dr. S. Radhakrishnan and Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru. It was on
this occasion that Jayaprakash Narayan dedicated his life to
Gandhian work and appealed to others to do the same.
Consequently, Vinoba too formally dedicated his “humble
life for the attainment of a nonviolent revolution based on
Bhoodan Yajna and sustained by village industries”. It was
also on this occasion that Vinoba established an Ashram at
Bodhgaya on a piece of land donated for it in the vicinity of
the sacred Mahabodhi tree for the purpose of research on
synthesis between the philosophy of the Upanishads and the
ideology of Buddha and for the service of the devotees of
both and the poor people of the area. It was named as
Samanvaya Ashram, which is now a fairly big centre.
Before closing this chapter another fact of this period too

must be mentioned, and it relates to the spread of Vinoba’s
fame in the various comers of the world due to the Bhoodan
Movement. It was a result of the articles that had begun to
appear on him and his movement in various countries,
especially the English-speaking ones, along with some radio
talks and a few full publications on him. This, as already
indicated in introduction, brought many commoners to him
to learn more about his personality and some even visited
India to meet him and to accompany him for some time on
his tour to watch and understand him. A few even became
permanently attached to him and his Paunar Ashram and still

visit it now and then though he is no more today.
It is not possible to give here what the various writers said
or wrote about him, but, as an illustration, some mention may
be made of what Chester Bowles, the US Ambassador to
India, wrote about him. He refers to him in at least three
books of his, namely, Ambassador's Report (1954), The New
Dimension of Peace (1955) and Ideas, People and Peace
(1958). Bowles was highly appreciative of Vinoba’s
movement and in the first book he also deals with some of his
ideas. But what rather attracts one most in it are his
preliminary remarks: “India is a land of miracles, and strange
are the shapes in which miracles come ... when Gandhi came,
despite all his denials that he was a Mahatma, the people
believed that the Lord had come again to work in the world.
And now just as frustration and despair were spreading
among the people, a frail old disciple of Gandhi is applying
th" Mahatma’s principles of non-violence and truth to the
solution of the problem of land ”
In the second book he wrote: “In 1955 we sensed that the
Bhoodan movement was giving expression to a moral
revival throughout India. In a country as vast and full of
contrasts as India, one must avoid hasty generalisations based
on isolated personal experiences, no matter how vivid. Having
said that, I must still state that from our own knowledge and
fife in India, we were greatly heartened. The glowing promise
of a deeper and spiritually richer life, which had dimmed
somewhat in the years after the first major accomplishment of
Independence, seemed to be reawakening, and Indians were
thinking more and more of moral values ” That was how he
felt then, and so did many others. If it did not take firm roots
as it seems today and though Vinoba would have called it a
superficial view, the fault did not lie in his efforts but in other
factors. This is, however, no place to go into them, and we
shall take it up in the last chapter.
I
9
Gramdan Period: Early Phase
4 VERY NOTEWORTHY event of Vinoba’s post-Sevapuri

tour in U.P., was the donation of village Mangroth in
Hamirpur district in May 1952. With the exception of one or
two of 107 families, all donated their entire land. This was
the first Gramdan, donation of a village for an equitable
distribution of land amongst the families in the village. Its
idea, as indicated earlier, was implicit in the very philosophy
of Bhoodan that all land belongs to God. However, this
donation had been inspired by the example of Shatrughna
Singh, the biggest landlord of the village and a hero of
freedom struggle in that area. He donated all his land to
Vinoba, the saint, and his example was followed by others.
This Gramdan was no normal development of the movement
but an isolated event. Nonetheless, it set a precedent by
giving birth in a concrete form to the idea of Gramdan.
The second Gramdan of Manpur in Orissa took place

when the Bhoodan Movement was at its climax in Bihar, and
it was soon followed by Akili in that very State. This set the
people of that area athinking and the Gramdan idea so much
gripped the people of Koraput district that when Vinoba
entered Orissa on the Republic Day in 1955, their number
was 93 and, when he left the State some eight months after,
their number had risen to 812.
There were three special reasons for his phenomenon—the

strong community traditions among the tribals inhabiting that

district, the influence of Vishwanath Patnaik who, then 40,
had spent his youth in their service and the absence of wide
disparity among them in the possession of lands. Like
Bhoodan this had again given rise to the view that same
would not happen elsewhere,, a view which was then belied
soon by Tami! Nadu and some other States.
The strenuous work in Bihar and a 25-day yatra in West

Bengal had told on Vinoba’s health, and his duodenal ulcer
started troubling him in the second week of February. When
asked about it, he simply laughed and said: “Some diseases
become chums to the body and last till its end. So far my
stomach was inactive; now it seems to be getting rather
active.... As f feel being distinct from the body, its pleasures
and pains do not affect me." And he continued his
programme unmindful of it.
In Orissa, he had started a new practice of stopping on the

way for about an hour and devoting it to the study of some
book. It was Bhagwat there, the most popular classic of
Orissa. He used to read the original text, explain its meaning
and in case of any difficulty refer it to friends around him.
This programme deepened his contact with the people and
helped him to understand them better.
On his way to Puri where the Sarvodaya Sammelan was

scheduled from 25 to 27 March, he stopped for a few days at
Bhubaneshwar, where he addressed a meeting of the
legislators. Referring to the growing rift between political
parties, he said: “If we go on creating differences and
bitterness among the people by stressing our party
ideologies, I wonder which party will gain thereby. After all,
we claim to be the servants of the people. I welcome diversity
of views but there must be some programme which can
secure the cooperation of all." And his personal opinion was
that Bhoodan could be that programme since all agreed that
the landless must get lands and the programme was already
in hand.
GRAMDAN PERIOD : EARLY PHASE 69
Vinoba reached Puri on 21 March, but he could not visit

the famous temple because they did not allow a Christian girl
from France accompanying him, to enter it. Hence Vinoba
letumed from the gate after bowing to the Deity from there.
However, he observed at his evening meeting: “These days
every religion and nation is going to be put on trial, if we
enclose ourselves within our four walls, our progress would
be blocked and the expanding liberal mindedness which has
been a feature of Hinduism would come to an end.... Let us
not turn out temples into prison houses.” Speaking at the Puri
Sammelan, Vinoba explained his idea of satyagraha. He
said: “In the domain of violence they proceed from gentle
weapons to sharp and sharper ones, but the process in the
working of nonviolence is entirely different. If our gentle
satyagraha does not yield the desired fruit, we must infer that
there is something wanting in our gentleness itself and we
must, therefore, render it finer and gentler. That is, in fact, the
real nature of satyagraha.” And he added: “Keeping this in
view, Ave must appreciate the new conditions, the new forces
working in the world as also the post-independence democracy
in the country, and realise that we would have to operate
more and more gentle varieties of satyagraha.”
While he was in Orissa, a meeting of the All India Congress

Committee had been so arranged at Berhampur in Ganjam
district that he could address it. He then said: “It is neither
possible nor necessary to stop the progress of science. It
should only be brought under the control of moral power. If
that happens, its unbridled progress would not create any
fear.”
The last district visited by Vinoba was of Koraput. He

toured it for about four months, and the late Annasaheb
Sahasrabuddhe, a prominent Gandhian worker, was assigned
the responsibility of development work there. On his birthday
that year, Vinoba enumerated the seven basic objectives of
Gramdan. They were the elimination of poverty, awakening
love and affection in the landowners and thus improving the
social climate in the country, strengthening society by forging
bonds of mutual help and fellow feelings, the revival and

furtherance of Indian culture based on the philosophy of
yajna, sacrifice, dana charity, and tapa, penance, building
a new social order based on voluntary physical labour,
co-operation and self-reliance, giving an opportunity to all
political parties to come together on a common platform and
to work unitedly, and promotion of world peace. The 30th of
September was his last day in Orissa, and in his parting
message he characterised his tour of the state as ‘‘a pilgrimage
of strength”.
The next State was Andhra, where he remained from 1

October 1955 to 13 May 1956. Andhra had not so far been
touched by the Gramdan breeze, and the workers there were
even accepting small land-gifts from big landlords. With
Vinoba’s arrival, there was a change. The Gramdan idea
began spreading and he set the example of refusing
unbecoming land-gifts from big landowners. He would tell
them that he had not come to beg but to demand the rightful
share of the Daridranarayan, the Poor God.
Vinoba entered Telengana on 2 January 1956. There he
started having two halts in a day instead of one. This was
done to impart a sense of urgency to the efforts. But it also
indicated less emphasis on insistence and more on
persuasion. As such it was interpreted by some as making his
satyagraha gentler. He was at Pochampalli, the birthplace of
Bhoodan, on the 30th of January and in a mood of
self-introspection at the then outbursts of violence in Bihar
and Orissa which had distinguished themselves in his
movement, he confessed defeat since Bhoodan stood for
peace. He attributed them to the effects of the 1942
happenings there. He also said that in India the two currents
of self-knowledge and science are meeting together and it
demands of us to rise above our mind which is full of
prejudices and predilections. /
At Kamool, addressing a meeting of Andhra M.L.A.S, he

regretted that despite Swaraj, the poverty and illiteracy of the

poorest sections of society persisted and the Community
Development projects had benefited only those who had the
means to profit from them. A few days later at Adoni he
exhorted the business community to take up the
responsibility of making Bhoodan lands cultivable and to
help the donees with their managerial ability and other
resources. When he left Andhra on 13 May, the Grarrldans in
the State numbered 20.
Entering Tamil Nadu, he reached Madras a few days later
on way to Kancheepuram, where the eighth Sarvodaya
Sammelan was to be held from 27 to 29 May 1956. Speaking
there, he drew attention to the piling up of armaments,
nuclear and non-nuclear, which threatened to destroy the world
and said: “We in India, should make a beginning towards our
ultimate goal of one world by considering ourselves as
Indians first. We must rise over parochial and caste
distinctions.”
He had a severe attack of malaria in November and had to
forgo yatra for a few days. During his illness, he considered
the working of the movement and at the Sarva Seva Sangh
meeting at Palani on 21 November, he advised the workers to
stop taking financial aid from the Gandhi Smarak Nidhi and
stand on their own legs. He also dissolved all Bhoodan
Samities. These steps were respectively termed Nidhi-Mukti,
liberation from funds, and Tantra-Mukti, liberation from
organisations. They were very bold steps, but in keeping with
his ideas he never regretted them. He had then said:
“Today many suffer from an illusion—partly an illusion and
partly a truth but more of an illusion—that paid workers are
at the back of the Bhoodan movement. We ourselves are
responsible for creating this impression, because we think
that we cannot do without such workers.” He advised them to
declare that all salaries would be stopped by the year end.
The Sangh, therefore, decided to make the Movement
financially people-based on Sampattidan and SutanjalL
J
The dissolution of organizations was a more serious matter,

and he advised formation of Sarvodaya Mandals to
co-ordinate constructive activities. They were associations of
workers both at the State and district levels, with convenors
called Nivedaks at the head. The district Nivedaks were
nominated by the State Nivedak, who himself was a nominee of
Vinoba. The experience of both these changes was a mixed
one, with progress in some States and setbacks in others. In
Tamil Nadu, within six weeks of the step, the number of
Gramdans had risen from 40 to 175.
Vinoba was at Kanya Kumari on 16 April 1957, where he
took a pledge saying: “We solemnly pledge this day at the feet of
Kanya Kumari on the shore of the Indian Ocean and in the
presence of the Sun God that as long as Gram Swaraj is not
established in India, we shall continue our Yatra and
ceaselessly carry on efforts in that direction. May God give us
the strength for achieving this goal.” He used the word “we”
instead of “I”, because he did not look upon himself as an
individual, identified with a particular body. That also
explains why he alone took the pledge, when others too
would have done that gladly. He entered Kerala on 18 April
and was welcomed there, amongst others, by its Communist
Chief Minister E.M.S. Namboodiripad. On 7 May he was at
Kaladi, the birthplace of Shankaracharya, where the Ninth
Sarvodaya Sammelan was held on 9 and 10 May. At the
Sammelan, besides other things to be dealt with later, he said:
“I am not worried in the least about the number of Gramdans
obtained. For me the worker is the test. How many persons
of the right type come forward and devote themselves to
work is the main thing. Bhoodan needs devotees of high
quality to create a new society of the free and equal.”
Vinoba was at Kozhikode on 11 July, and there he placed
before the people the idea of Shanti Sena (Peace Brigade) as
“a brigade of workers who would ceaselessly serve the
people, influence them morally and would not allow violence
to break out.'* It, however, came into existence on 23 August,
his last day in Kerala, with eight persons taking its pledge in
his presence to lay down their lives for maintaining peace
through nonviolence and love. On this occasion Vinoba was
reminded of Gandhi who had originally mooted the idea of
its formation but could not form it because of the weakness
of his followers. “But now,” he said, “when his soul is free
from the bondage of the physical body, the working of his
spirit is more effective. This is how the souls of great men
work.”
Another notable development in Kerala was Vinoba’s

announcement that he wouid henceforth accept either
Gramdans or the receipts of the donees of Bhoodan lands,
and not land-gift papers. This he did for two reasons. First,
accepting land-gifts and distributing them was a
time-consuming process involving all sorts of difficulties as
the experience had shown, and, secondly, it reflected lack of
faith in the donors, which ill agreed with nonviolence.
Another worth mentioning event of Kerala relates to the

famous Guruvayur temple which had been opened to the
Harijans on Gandhi’s decision to fast for it. When Vinoba
went for darshan to the temple, he was accompanied by a few
Christians. He asked if they could also go inside but when
told politely that they could not, he also did not enter it. To
the temple authorities who were keen that he had his darshan
of the Deity, his reply was: “1 am helpless. If I go inside the
temple without my Christian friends, I would not be able to
see God there.” Many Kerala papers commented on the
incident and most of them supported Vinoba. It may also be
mentioned here that Vinoba’s experience of the two famous
temples of Karnataka—one at Melkote associated with the
memory of Ramanujacharya and the other
Gokarna-Mahabaleshwar temple—was different. Vinoba’s
attitude in such matter was, “If I don’t insist on going inside
the temple with all my companions, Hinduism will lose its
good name in the world.”
Vinoba set his foot in Karnataka on 24 August, and his
first message to it said: “From Bhoodan and ending of private

ownership in land we have come to Gramdan and Shanti
Sena. I would like Karnataka now to demonstrate what a
Sarvodaya society is.”
The most notable event of Karnataka was the conference at
Yelwal, a few miles from Mysore, in September 1957 which
was attended by the top leaders of all political hues,
including Dr. Rajendra Prasad, Pandit Nehru, Govind
Ballabh Pant, Ganga Saran singh, Z.A. Ahmed, E.M.S.
Namboodiripad and S.K. Dey. They appreciated the
movement for its voluntary character and nonviolent
technique and in their statement appealed to all sections of
the people to extend their enthusiastic support to it. The
conference statement had been drafted by Pandit Nehru. It
set at rest all doubts raised against Vinoba’s movement, and it
naturally gratified him. It was expected that henceforth all
forces in the country would take up the work, but his hope
was belied. The reasons for it are unclear, for no competent
and informed person has thrown any light on it. What was
expected was that in future the Gramdan movement and the
Community Development Movement would work in close
co-operation, but it did not happen. The reason probably was
that the spirit and methodologies of the two were so much at
variance that the gulf between them could not be bridged,
despite all good intentions of the persons at their helm.
There were two other notable developments in Karnataka.
One was the use of “Jai Jagat” (Victory to the World), started
by Vinoba as a form of greeting and the second was the
addition of the Sarvodaya-patra programme. The idea behind
Jai Jagat has been a feature of Indian culture since ancient
times, and it was part of the philosophy and outlook of both
Gandhi and Vinoba. However, it was in Karnataka that Vinoba
first used it on 1 November 1957, the day the Karnataka
State was born. He looked upon it as the beginning of a
process of national integration which would finally end in
world integration. Speaking about Jai Jagat later in Kashmir,
Vinoba said that it stood for fearlessness and love for all.
The idea of Sarvoclaya-patra was expressed on 1 February

1958 at Dharwar. It was a logical offshoot of the Shanti Sena
idea. Under this programme, families were to keep earthern
pots or any utensils in which the youngest children of the
families were to put a handful of grains every morning before
eating anything and the grains were to be utilised for
Sarvodaya work, especially for the maintenance of Shanti
Sainiks, the members of the Shanti Sena. The keeping of a
Sarvodaya-patra by a family was presumed to indicate its
support for Sarvodaya ideas, a vote for peace including a
kind of pledge by the family not to take part in anything
that will disturb peace. It also meant a training for
children of the family to give precedence to others before
self. These later objectives were more important than getting
something for the maintenance of the Shanti Sainiks.
Vinoba entered Maharashtra on 23 March 1958, when the

region was in the grip of a movement for a unilingual State of
its own. The public was keen to enlist Vinoba’s support for
the cause, but he concentrated on the land problem and
avoided involvement in any political controversy. He said on
the very first day: “I belong to a different world. I have come
to Maharashtra) like a child. I have shed off desires. I am
empty. I have no opinion to hawk. All that I have is affection
for you, an openness of mind to discuss problems in a heart
to heart talk with you. I belong to no cult or institution.... I
am entirely uncommitted. You are welcome to convince me
of your point of view or to come to understand what I am
saying.”
Vinoba reached Pandharpur, the most important place of
pilgrimage in Maharashtra, on 28 May. He had never visited
it before. The Sarvodaya Sammelan was to be held there
from 30 May to 1 June. Here he received written requests
from all the three important shrines for visiting them, with all
the members of his party, irrespective of caste, creed or sex.
Vinoba was overwhelmed by this development, and on the
evening of his visit to them said, “It is a great day for me.”
J
Reserving the delineation of his other important ideas
expressed at the Sammelan for later pages, one may mention
a remark of his in his opening address. He said: “Our needs
are many, but the basic need is love. It does not indicate any
sense of indulgence. There are two kinds of love,
reciprocative and unilateral. In reciprocative love one is
actuated to express only when the other person also loves.
It is actually a kind of reaction. There is no manifestation of
soul power in it. Such love also exists in animals.’' And he
added: “It is unilateral love which is the demand of the age
and it is what the saints too have taught." A question
troubling the minds of many was put to Vinoba at
Pandharpur, asking him the reason for his selecting places of
Hindu pilgrimages as the venues of Sarvodaya Sammelans.
Vinoba replied that it was wrong to think that he only
selected Hindu places. He made no distinction between
religions, and, had a conference been held in Palestine, his
choice would have Jerusalem. If the next Sammelan was held
in Rajasthan, he would suggest Ajmer, a place sacred to all
Indian Muslims. The idea behind such selections was to take
advantage of the spiritual power of that place.
In his tour of Maharashtra, Vinoba also visited Nevasa,
associated with the completion of Jnaneshwari. Recalling
there the three most important influences on his life, he
remarked: “I have had the good fortune to live with Gandhiji
and to learn something from him. I am indebted to Shri
Shankaracharya for my intellectual grounding. I cannot
express in words how much beholden I am to the great saint
Jnaneshwar. All I have and I am, is due to him.” He dedicated
there all his writings to him.
At Chalisgaon where a Sarva Seva Sangh meeting was held,

Acharya Kripalani also met him and asked about his
alternative if he did not believe in party politics and his
method for achieving it. Vinoba said: “I have none. But I
want to say after the Sufis that we know the truth, but not the
way to attain it. We are in quest of it.” Referring to this talk,
he said in his evening speech: “I am in search of power these

days. Power is both spiritual and subtle. All revolutions are
spiritual at the source. The spiritual values change first and
others follow suit slowly later. It is right that they change; it is
impossible for them not to do so.”
At Dhulia, he visited his old jail and said: ‘1 do not believe

in dividing men and women as criminals and non-criminals.
Some are branded as such and put into jails, but some are to
be found outside, since they are not so in the eyes of the law.”
During his last day’s in Maharashtra, referring to the
development of nuclear energy, he observed at Navapur on
19 September: “I submit in all humility that Marx today is out
of date and Manus code has no value. Even Gandhiji’s
thought as developed and presented by him during his
life-time, cannot solve our contemporary problems.”
Vinoba entered Gujarat, the land of his rebirth on 22

September. To the welcoming crowd, he expressed his debt
to Gandhi and said: “I do not know how far I have been able
to practise what he preached, but I have no hesitation in
saying that I have been constantly trying to translate into
action as much of his teaching as I have been able to
understand and appreciate.” At the Bochasan Ashram in
Kaira district, he asked the workers to turn searchlight
inwards to find, out why the Gandhian institutions have failed
to inspire people and are being influenced by politics, when it
was otherwise with Gandhi who influenced politics. Vinoba
attributed it to their lack of devotion to the eleven ethical
disciplines, repeated mechanically everyday in prayer.
Vinoba reached Ahmedabad on 20 December. Addressing

a crowd of some three lakhs, he acknowledged his debt to
Ahmedabad and Sabarmati and said that it was their
responsibility to demonstrate to the world a nonviolent
solution of economic disparity and thereby significance of
peace and nonviolence. In his farewell message on 12
January 1959 he said that Gandhiji had given us a lot, but
he never wanted that his words or way of thinking should be

imitated. He wished that they should be continuously
developed and perfected.
Towards the middle of January 1959, he entered
Rajasthan, credited with producing both Mira and Rana
Fratap. He asked the workers there to develop in themselves
the qualities of both and expected them to fulfil his demand of
Shanti Sena both in quality and quantity. He visited Ajmer
where the Sarvodaya Sammelan was scheduled for 28 and 29
February. There he paid a visit to the Dargah. Speaking there
he said: “The message of Islam is very high. It makes no
distinction between the poor and the rich. It has strongly
prohibited charging of interest and puts forward an ideal of
democracy. I declare that I am a Muslim and a Christian as
well.” Reiterating his idea of visiting Kashmir, first disclosed
at Pandharpur, he said at the Sammelan that he was going
there without any preconceived ideas. There were many
problems connected with Kashmir and his mission was that
of love. He would see, hear and study things and then decide
how he could be helpful.
The late Martin Luther King Jr., the famous American
Negro Leader, met Vinoba at Kishengarh on 3 March along
with his wife Coretta King, and had discussions with him on
several topics of international importance. Elucidating his
views on the potentialities of satyagraha in the present
nuclear age, Vinoba said to him: “In this age we cannot afford
to have conflict of mental attitudes. Otherwise, nuclear
weapons are sure to sort out the whole problem of humanity
by doing a clean shave. Hence the need of rising over mind
and thinking on the supra-mental level.... Satyagraha is to let
truth take care of itself. Let us not come between truth and
ourselves.” To another question as to when the Shanti Sena
would justify disarmament in India, Vinoba said: “A very
difficult question indeed! But I think that unilateral
disarmament is quite justified even without Shanti Sena. Any
country can disarm, provided it has the courage for it.”
Vinoba was in Rajasthan till March end, and on the 13th of

that month he was at Kashi-Ka-Vas, the birthplace of
Jamnalal Bajaj. It was there that he inaugurated the Brahma
Vidya Mandir in his Paunar Ashram for the development of
women’s power. Entering Punjab on 1 April, he was at
Rajpura on 27, where a Nai Talim Conference was held.
Here besides repeating his old idea that the pre-
Independence system of education had become incongruous
with the advent of Independence,he refused the common ar¬
gument which credited it for producing great men. He said:
“This is a baseless argument, just as baseless as it would be to
say of a person crossing a river with ten maunds of weight
that it was this weight which enabled him to cross it.”
At a camp near Bhakra, he observed on 8 May with

reference to Pandit Nehru calling such projects as “new
temples”, that it would be so if one-sixth of the newly
irrigated land were to go to the landless. He met the
members of Shiromani Akali Dal at Hoshiarpur and advised
them to take decision by unanimity and to leave off “their
political shoes before entering the sacred precincts of
Gurudwaras”.
After visiting other places, on route, he set his foot on the

soil of Kashmir on 22 May 1959 and remained there till 21
September. On the very first day, he set the tone of his
Kashmir visit by repeating what he had said at Ajmer about
it. He also said: “Whatever I may speak, I shall do so in order
to love. I have no faith in speaking. It is a heartful prayer to
God that works and accomplishes all.” He intensified his
penance too by giving up his early morning intake of food, by
resuming his old practice of going round the village of his
stay to meet people in their homes and to try to be of some
use to them, and to carry a part of his personal luggage on his
back. His deep knowledge of the Koran and respect for the
Prophet, established a rapport between him and the common
Muslims of that State. At each camp he used to ask one or
<
two persons to read the Koran, would correct their
pronunciation and at times explain the meaning of what was
read.—'
His speeches there laid emphasis on the ethical ideas
common to all the religions, relegating to a secondary place
the forms of worship, other practices and mythologies. About
the political problem of the State, he would point out that it
could not be solved by politics. It needed a spiritual approach
which demanded unanimity and goodwill. He also said:
“Kashmir is directly connected with six countries, viz., India,
Pakistan, Afghanistan, China, Russia and the U.S.A. The
connection of the USA is through Pakistan. It is, therefore,
necessary for the people of Kashmir to raise their thinking to
the supra-mentai level and evolve a world approach towards
their problems.’'
fie crossed Pir Panjal to enter Gulmarg, where he asked
the people to turn it into a “Centre of Worship” by
eliminating both luxury and poverty. He did not go to
Amarnath, since he got its darshan everyday when he saw the
poor and lowliest in different villages, and talked to them
about their problems of hunger and unemployment.
On his way back from Kashmir, Vinoba returned by the
national highway. On his last day in that State, i.e., on 20
September 1959, he was at Kathua. He said a few w'ords for
the Chinese there. They were: “We have a history of ten
thousand years behind us. Innumerable peoples, races and
tribes have come here and continue to come. Recently,
terror-stricken people came from Tibet and India gave them
shelter for they were running for refuge. The Chinese friends
did not like it, but I want to say to them that my country’s
honour is wedded to it. It is this country which produced
Buddha, and it regards none as its enemy. Our love for the
Cftinese would remain the same as it had been in ages past.
Had we denied refuge to the Tibetans, we should have fallen
from our human stand ” Vinoba returned from this visit with
the opinion that the State of Jammu and Kashmir should

remain unified and uphold the ideal of secularism in the right
sense of the term.
Vinoba was at Pathankot in Punjab on 23 September when

he put forward the idea of the establishment of an Ashram
there, which came into existence later as “Prasthan Ashram".
Thereafter, he spent two weeks in Himachal Pradesh. He
felt very happy to be there because of his old desire to go to
the Himalayas in the quest of the Supreme. He said while
speaking in Chamba district that he was on a quest to
discover the power of satyagraha. “Just as the
inter-continental ballistic missiles can be fired today from one
end of the earth to the other, we have also to discover a
similar force of nonviolence which may have its impact on the
whole world from one place." After a few days of his re-entry
in Punjab, Vinoba decided to proceed on an unprogrammed
tour of the State. He thus intensively toured several Punjab
districts before reaching U.P. on 8 April 1960, on way to the
Chambal region in Madhya Pradesh. Meanwhile, the 12th
Sarvodaya Sammelan had been held at Sevagram in March
1960, without Vinoba. This was in consonance to his desire
that the workers should not depend on him and carry on
their work according to their own lights.
While in Kashmir, Vinoba had received a letter from

Tehsildar Singh, the son of the famous dacoit Man Singh,
from the Central Prison at Naini, Allahabad, where he was
under death sentence, expressing a desire for his darshan
before being hanged. Vinoba deputed Yadunath Singh, a
retired major-general who was in-charge of his Kashmir trip,
to meet him in the prison. After seeing him, Yadunath Singh
went to the Chambal region and met several dacoits of Man
Singh group. On return, he gave Vinoba his impression that
some dacoits might surrender to him if he visited the area.
Vinoba, therefore, expressed a desire to visit it and try for
the conversion of the dacoits. The idea was welcomed to Chief
Minister Dr. Kailash Nath Katju of Madhya Pradesh and,
consequently, when Vinoba was at Agra, the Union Home

Minister Pandit Govind Ballabh Pant and the U.P. Chief
Minister Shri Sampurnanand met him and it was decided to
lend support to him in his peaceful efforts to make the
dacoits surrender and give up their ways. The police
authorities of the three concerned States of U.P., M.P. and
Rajasthan were instructed to help in the process.
Vinoba started on his mission on 7 May, and in his first

day post-prayer speech, he repeated the same idea about the
criminals which he had expressed in Dhulia Jail some two
years back. A few days later at Fatehabad, the first surrender
of Ram Autar Singh took place, promising that he would commit
no more crimes. At that time, Vinoba said explaining to some
police officers present there: “No one is a born dacoit. It is a
natural result of exploitation, miserliness, cruelty and cal¬
lousness. ... If we love dacoits, show kindness to them,
transform our village into a family, the whole problem would
be solved by itself. These dacoits are very simple, brave and
fearless. If we change their line of action they will easily turn
into saints.” And he added: “The police cannot solve this
problem. If they come to stay here, the dacoits will do like¬
wise, and so also malice, hatred, aversion and animosity.”
After some time, a dacoit Lachhi Pandit with considerable sum
on his head, also came and placed himself and his family in
Vinoba’s hands. He had come from Bombay, having read
about his missionary efforts in the papers. Thus the mission
gradually gathered momentum, and on 19 May, eleven top
dacoits led by Lokman alias Lukka, laid down arms at
Vinoba’s feet after the evening prayer meeting. Speaking on
that day, Vinoba had said: “The three main causes of this
(dacoit) problem are poverty, personal feuds and police. The
fourth cause is party politics and elections. If these causes are
eliminated, the problem will be solved by itself.” On 22 May
they took leave of Vinoba and went to the Jail, where Vinoba
also met them the next day.
All this was not liked by some police officers. Sometimes,
there were revelations of the nexus between the dacoits on

one hand and some police officers and politicians on the
other. This probably led to the statement by the then
Inspector General of Police, Madhya Pradesh, that Vinoba’s '
mission had “delivered a blow to the morale of the police
force." He also alleged that the dacoits were assured during
negotiations of a lenient treatment. This was totally incorrect,
and to it Vinoba’s reaction was: “One sees God according to
one’s own light. It is incorrect to say that the dacoits who
surrendered to me had been given any assurance. All along
my tour, I have been publicly stating that it is for the law
courts to decide whether they are to be acquitted or
punished." As regards human touch in dealing with such
cases, he observed: “The very fact that the President of India
is empowered to commute death sentences is a proof positive
that the Indian Constitution honours kindness and
compassion."
To those Sarvodaya workers who did not relish their being

put in prison, Vinoba said that he did not want to do anything
agai/ist law, which has its limitations. All that he could do was
to see justice done to them, to provide legal aid to them and,
if possible, help to their families to lead a good life. He even
did not want them to seek pardon, for none could escape the
fruits of one’s karma, action. The cases, however, did not take
long, since they all pleaded guilty to genuine charges.
By the time Vinoba left the region, the number of

surrendering dacoits was twenty. To utilise the changed
climate generated there, a Chambal Peace Committee was
constituted by the Sarva Seva Sangh under the guidance of
Vinoba. It helped in the expediting of the cases in law courts
of the three concerned States, collected funds for the
reclamation of waste lands in the ravines and started a few
cottage and village industries to train the dacoit families.
From this Chambal region Vinoba passed through

Rajasthan on way to Indore, reaching there on 24 July 1960.
He stayed there till 25 August, and during this one month

period he was going round the city, exhorting the people to
make it a Sarvodaya city by taking up the programmes of
Shanti Sena, sanitation,' avoidance of law courts for the
settlement of disputes and lifting the municipal affairs above
party politics. In the first week of August, Vinoba personally
participated in the sanitation drive. While he was there,
elderly persons formed Sarvodaya Vanaprastha Mandal to
devote themselves to social service in accordance with such
ideas of Vinoba which concerned them, and the Sarvodaya
workers also established Visaijan Ashram as a centre for
serving the people.
When moving about in Indore, Vinoba happened to see
indecent cine posters, which he described as “free and
compulsory education in sexuality”. He called a meeting of
picture palace owners and they promised not to use them.
But on their going back on the assurance, Vinoba decided to
launch a satyagraha against them, which also spread to some
other northern cities. However, he had made it clear that he
was not against cine industry as such. If organized properly, it
could serve as an effective medium for public education. But
cinema owners could not be allowed to thrust obscene
posters on the eyes of the people. He, however, regretted the
increasing pursuit of pleasure by the young, since it weakened
the moral fibre of the nation which alone was a guarantee
against foreign invasion. Vinoba appealed to the women to
come forward to help in the drive. The satyagraha did not last
long, because of the prevailing tendency towards sensate
culture in society, but it did leave a legacy which some women
organizations now seem to be picking up.
Leaving Indore on 25 August, Vinoba visited some other

parts of the State and returned to Indore on 28 September to
resume his padayatra on the next day. While at Dhar on the
30th, he received a letter from Nehru requesting him to
proceed to Assam “to heal the wounds” of linguistic riots
there. Vinoba himself had been thinking of proceeding to
Assam, since that region had remained unvisited by him so

far, but Nehru’s letter finally determined it. However, he
decided to go there in his tortoise manner.
There were certain issues which were repeatedly coming to

the fore during this period, and Vinoba had to deal with them
again and again. One of them pertained to the use of
Gandhian types of resisting satyagraha for the success of the
Bhoodan movement and for the redress of some other
grievances of the people. There was a growing feeling that
Vinoba was neglecting the use of Gandhian resistance, which
had brought success to Gandhi and was his recognised legacy
to the world. This feeling was shared even by foreigners
influenced by Gandhi, and they too played no minor part in
reinforcing the opinion in India. The second issue was related
to the attitude towards politics and political power, and the
third concerned the Bhoodan-Gramdan Movement which
lagged far behind from its anticipated target of 50 million acres
of land by 1957, with no prospects at ail of its achievement.
The question of satyagraha in the present age in general

and the Indian conditions in particular, was dealt with by
Vinoba at every Sarvodaya Sammelan of the period and on
some other occasions as well. His basic idea remained the
same, though the language somewhat differed from time to
time. He was insistent as already indicated in the context of
Martin Luther King’s meeting with him, that it was essential
now to rise over the mental plane for a correct diagnosis of the
situation and for a correct method of conflict resolution. He
had also said to him then: “Let us not come between truth and
ourselves. We ourselves often become an impediment and
hinder truth from playing its role .... While meditating about
satyagraha, that remarkable utterance of Jesus had helped me
very much, ‘Agree with thine adversary quickly’. If you
ponder deeply over this sentence, you will get a clue for the
type of satyagraha which is needed for the nuclear age.”
Another matter which emerges from his statements

about satyagraha in the nuclear age, is that Vinoba did not
think that the grosser forms of satyagraha would suit it.

Hence his search for gentler and subtle forms which might
prove as effective as an inter-continental ballistic missile is
from a far off place. May be here Vinoba was entering a field
of spiritual power which not many of us can find intelligible
but in whose existence he had full faith.
As far as the particular conditions of India were concerned,

he had been of the opinion that Gandhi’s own satyagraha and
his major objective of freedom from British yoke was very
much conditioned by the then situation but the conditions
are different now. There is democracy and the people against
whom we have to conduct satyagraha, are our own. Therefore
instead of copying the forms of Gandhi’s satyagraha, we have
to examine the basic philosophy behind them and change
their forms in the context of the new conditions. This led him
to lay down the following four principles:
1. The form of satyagraha should be positive, i.e.,

constructive, and not negative.
2. In case one form!of satyagraha proves ineffective, instead
of adopting a more extreme form, one should take to a
milder or gentler form.
3. It should be such that its very name does not create fear
in others, but rather gladdens them.
4. It should permit the truth to assert itself, not the
Satyagrahi. In the context of the present democratic
conditions, internal problems should be solved by
constitutional means, including change through the ballot
box, persuasion and societal change through people’s
own efforts.
All this, however, did not mean that he totally rejected

negative forms of satyagraha. His rule for them was: “There is
a field for negative’ satyagraha where established values are
disregarded. Should society leaders have differences on any
matter, it cannot be made an excuse for satyagraha. It is one
for popular education.” It was in accordance with this rule
that he had started satyagraha against obscene cine posters
and permitted it against the ejectment of tenants. This period

also witnessed some gentler forms of satyagraha undertaken
by Vinoba himself. To this category belong the changes he
had made in his padayatra routines in Andhra and Kashmir,
and his refusal to have darshan in some temples without all
his companions.
As regards his attitude towards politics and political power,

it did not undergo any basic change from that of the earlier
period. He was interested in what was termed “strength
politics” and not power politics. By that term is meant
something that strengthens the power of the people as against
the power of the politicians. He had said in 1956: “Bhoodan
is a movement of increasing the power of the people. There
is no lack of politics in it, though it demolishes the present
politics and builds up a new one by keeping away from the
prevailing one. The new politics is called lokaniti, the politics
of the people.”
Vinoba kept aloof from power politics since he was against

the undue importance given to it with the concomitant evils
of envy, malice, talking ill of others etc., which work against
the upliftment of the country. He felt that there were other
more important things of which the people should have
experience. While admitting that by acquiring power and
authority, some service could be done to the people, he felt
that there were some basic services which it could not render
and in which the Sarvodaya workers should take interest. The
examples of it are creating social climate for desirable new
social values, creating amity among people, helping them to
be self-reliant, etc.
Regarding co-operation between the government and
constructive workers, he had discussed it at length at the
Pandharpur Sarnmelan because of the generation of a new
atmosphere for and hopes of co-operation between them by
the Yelwal conference. After discussing both the pros and
cons of the question in the context of the Sarvodaya ideal of a
I
government free society, he had come to the conclusion that

since the bona fides of the government could not be
questioned, the workers should be prepared to extend their
co-operation to the government programmes, but they would
have to be careful lest the whole of their burden fell on them.
However, later Vinoba also warned the workers against such
government aid as would cripple them.
The third question of the achievement of the target by
1957, in view of doubts about it, was probably first referred
to by Vinoba at the Puri Sammelan, He then had said:
“Believe me, I do not even worry for a moment. In fact, I
hardly think in terms of fifty or a hundred million acres. After
ail, the land-gift movement is only a symbol. I have faith
within me that Sarvodaya society would come into existence
all over the world by 1957.” And he added: “Find out if you
have real faith in creating a nonviolent order. If you have
that within you, your faith will be irresistible and it will shine.
If even thee the movement does not grow, the fault is yours.”
All this was said by Vinoba to spur the workers to

determined efforts, without minding whether the targets were
achieved or not. This is clear from his later statements,
explaining that his choice of the target date was aimed at
imparting a sense of urgency to the movement. Moreover,
this fixing of target date could also help in making necessary
changes in strategy if the efforts did not appear to be
succeeding. The efforts could provide only needed guidance
for it. Lastly, he had done so taking into consideration the
nature of the Indian people who could only be goaded to
make efforts when the targets placed before them were very
high.
However, after 1957, he attributed the non-attainment of

the target to the lack of efforts and the paucity of workers,
and to their various other attachments. But he was satisfied
that he had done all that an individual could and the Yelwal
Conference had put its seal of approval on his movement.
GRAM DAN PERIOD : EARLY PHASE 89
The feeling that he had achieved his purpose had developed

in Vinoba after his success in Bihar and Orissa, and it was
because of it that he had started spelling out other
programmes as well like Shanti Sena and Sarvodaya-patra.
Finally, this period also found Vinoba expressing the idea

that the three great forces in the world are those of Vedanta,
Science and Trust. Vedanta here stood for the end of all
conventional religions of the world; Science denoted
discovery of the laws of the material world plus a scientific
life on the part of individuals; and Trust implied mutual trust
among human beings, groups and nations, without which
conflicts would never cease between them. A Sanskrit shloka
composed by Vinoba on it meant that Vedanta, Science and
Trust are the three forces without which there could be no
stability, peace and prosperity in the world.
Martin Luther King Jr. was not the only Westerner to meet
Vinoba during this period. If he alone had been mentioned,
it is because of the consideration of space. Many others too
had been interested in Ms ideas and movement, and some of
them were visiting India and meeting him. They were
generally Western pacifists who felt a special closeness to
Gandhi.
10
Gramdan Period: Later Phase
VINOBA HAD DECIDED, as already told, to proceed to

Assam in his old manner of padayatra. This had irked
some who wanted him to reach Assam at the earliest. His
reply to them was that if he did so, the Assamese would feel
that they had committed some serious wrong to compel
Vinoba to leave his other works and to hasten to Assam, but
what had really happened was that they had been carried
away by a wind blowing all over the country. When someone
also complained to Pandit Nehru of it, his reaction was: “I
would have done the same, had I been in his place.”
Passing through Jabalpur and Varanasi, Vinoba reached

Bihar on the Christmas Day in 1960. He reminded the Bihar
people of their target of 32 lakh acres falling short by some
ten lakhs, and for its fulfilment he launched the Bigha-Kattha
movement of securing from every landowner one-twentieth
of his cultivated land for the landless. The last date fixed for
the fulfilment of target was 3 December 1961, the 3rd of
December being the birthday of Dr Rajendra Prasad, their
beloved leader. The movement, however, was conducted only
for a few months in 1961-62, during which one and a half
lakh Katthas were collected and 80 per cent c f it was
distributed immediately. The reason why the movement was
conducted for a short period only was that after its initiation,
the Bihar legislature under its Chief Minister Dr. Shrikrishna
GRAMDAN PERIOD : LATER PHASE 91
Sinha passed an act imposing a higher levy on land, which

naturally diverted the energy of the workers towards its
implementation. But Dr. Sinha died and the two successive
chief ministers gave up its implementation, despite their
assurances to Vinoba about it.
This Bigha-Kattha movement involved a dilution of

Vinoba’s old demand for one-sixth of land, and when
questioned about it, he said: “A mother has to stoop down to
lift the child. We have also to lift the people and to take the
movement onwards. I hope that by doing so we will get
workers and through them land.” The movement had another
significance as well. It acted as a prelude to the Easy
Gramdan movement initiated by Vinoba in 1963 and dealt
with later,
There is another aspect of it. The Gramdan movement was

experiencing a period of lull, leading to frustration amongst
Sarvodaya workers. The proceedings of the Sevagram
Sarvodaya Sammelan of 1960 reflected it, and with time the
feeling was on the increase. Vinoba probably had sensed it,
and his Bigha-Kattha movement can also be looked upon as
involving a change of strategy to enthuse the workers again. It
may, however, be mentioned here that Vinoba personally saw
no valid reason for frustration as he observed later in Assam:
“The little achievement we have made so far is not at all
negligible. It is, in fact, inspiring. Till today no political party
or organisation of this country has been able to distribute one
million acres, nay, not even half as much land to the poor ”
To resume the story of Vinoba’s padayatra, he entered the

Goalpara district of Assam on 5 March 1961 via West
Bengal. In his first prayer meeting he asked the people to
recognize the cosmopolitan character of the State as the
abode of various religious and linguistic communities. He
told them that with time it would prove to be an asset to
them. In Goalpara he even visited those areas which had
witnessed shocking scenes during the linguistic riots. At a
meeting in Dhubri, he appealed to the people to uphold the
fair name of Assam. At Guwahati on 8 April, he said to the

welcoming crowd: “I have come to Assam to speak little and
to listen more. I wish to see this beautiful land spreading the
message of love in the country.”
He entered North Lakhimpur district on 12 May and
decided to stay there for a year so that the whole district be
declared a Gramdan area. Addressing a local youth
organisation, he observed: “I am sorry to know of the
language riots here. It is a narrow mentality which gives rise
to such violence, and it is surprising that the people could be
so parochial in this age of science.... Such narrowness may
be excused in the older generation, but the youths should be
the harbingers of tomorrow and not the followers of
yesterday.” Addressing women, he asked them to come
forward to show a better way of resolving differences. And
the women there did play an important role in arranging mass
meetings and in getting about a thousand Gramdans. Vinoba
was impressed by this women’s power in the State, It
contrasted with the paucity of male workers there.
It was suggested to Vinoba by somebody there that he
should also visit Nagaland. Vinoba was willing to do so
provided he could go there unprotected. The matter, it
appears, was referred to Pandit Nehru by Shriman Narayan.
Nehru was not prepared to allow him to go there
unprotected. It could only be possible if Phizo approved of it.
The matter went up to him in London but his cryptic reply
was, H won’t say don’t come. But I won’t welcome.” Hence
the matter ended.
Vinoba returned to West Bengal via East Pakistan, whose

National Government after some hesitation, permitted him to
do so. Before leaving Assam, Vinoba had founded a new
Ashram in North Lakhimpur, called “Maitri Ashram”,
signifying thereby its purpose to serve as a Friendship Centre.
It has gradually developed into an important nucleus of
constructive work in Assam. It is a women’s Ashram like the
Brahma Vidya Mandir of Paunar.
However, before taking up Vinoba’s trek in East Pakistan,

a few ideas of special significance must be mentioned here. A
group of the Sap/a Seva Sangh had met Vinoba. in Assam and
discussed with him for several hours various questions
troubling the minds of Sarvodaya workers. One of them
concerned the state of the movement. Vinoba told them: “It
cannot be gainsaid that we could not make the trends (in the
country) as congenial for our purpose as we wanted. This is
due to some lack in our sacrifice and suffering. However, I
am certain that God has rewarded us with far greater fruits
than our labour deserved. Now you say that the movement
has no prospects and that a new chapter should be begun.
When I ponder over it, I find a far better basis for the
movement today than it was two years back. And then this
work is a basic work. Therefore, I feel that I must continue to
devote myself to it. In order to complete the movement, you
can surely add allied programmes to it and work them up, but
we must not give up our base.” It may be mentioned here that
even leaders like Jayaprakash Narayan and Dhirendra
Mazumdar favoured change of programme at that time. The
former was giving importance to the experiment of
democratic decentralization which the Government had
launched on the recommendations of the Balwantrai Mehta
Report, and the latter was advocating an educative
programme named “Grambharati”.
The group also tried to elicit Vinoba’s opinion on the

Indian military action in Goa. Vinoba though not fully
disclosing his mind on it, did observe that the military action
could not be condemned outright. Nor could it be looked
upon as an insult to nonviolence.
Speaking on his birthday in 1961, he made a significant

observation about himself. He began by saying: “Whatever I
know of myself I feel that there is nothing like an individual
life left in me now. It is true that I exist as an individual entity,
I also eat and drink, and this will go on till death. But I do not
feel any personal desire or craving within me. I may make
I 94 ACHARYA VINOBA BHAVE
4f
mistakes in speech or behaviour, and I myself realize them

but they do not worry me now.... I feel that my sole mission
is to serve the Universal Being through the service of this
country.” He said ‘this country’ not out of any partiality for it,
but because his own capacity was limited.
Vinoba set his foot on the soil of Pakistan on 5 September

1962, and left it on 21 September. In his address to the
welcoming crowd on his entering into East Pakistan, he first
expressed his gratitude to the Pakistan Government for
allowing him to pass through its territory and then said that
he did not feel being in a different country from his own. He
also told them that he had come with a message of love and
peace for the people of Pakistan; and on the third day he
even disclosed that he had asked his fellow companions that
in case he died there, he should be cremated there and that
his ashes too should not be carried to India.
He continued to convey his message of Bhoodan to them

as well, a message fully in consonance with thex teachings of
Islam or any other religion. On the very' first day, he had
received the gift of an acre, and by the time he left it, he had
received 150 Bighas, which were distributed to the landless,
both Hindus and Muslims, during the period itself. It was
estimated that about one and a quarter lakh persons must
have heard him during his stay there.
In special meetings a few embarrassing questions were

sometimes put to him, but Vinoba’s calm and clear thinking
prevailed over them. For example, he was asked at a meeting
of lawyers that there being paucity of land in East Pakistan,
would he plead with the Government of India to part with
some land for them? Calling it a good question, „ Vinoba
remarked that the same problem faced India and that
whatever the country, it would have to solve the problem by
itself internally. As regards the Government of India, the
solution could not be one-sided. There was a lot of land in
West Pakistan and India could well make the same request to
it. Such a solution could only be possible when there was a
confederation between the two countries. Charity was one

thing and an action at state level another.
He was even asked about the communal problem and the

basic democracy in force in Pakistan. About the first he
observed that he did not find the masses communal either '
there or in India, and that communalism was a creation of
politicians. When questioned about communal riots in India,
he said that they militated against his philosophy. The
question on basic democracy had arisen because of Vinoba’s
own reference to it at a place. Asked if he would like its
introduction in India, Vinoba clarified: “I have not eulogised
it in the sense you mean. I only tried to drive home the fact
that it is a good beginning. If the Union Councils take up
village development work in a spirit of love and compassion,
they would promote real democracy.1’ He also added that
“whenever I have referred to Basic Democracy, I have done
so with the Idea that good work is only possible at the
grassroots.” A question on Kashmir was: “If you talk of love,
then why do you not make efforts to solve the Kashmir
problem?” Vinoba’s reply stated: “This is a political question.
I am not here to discuss politics. If I have to do that, I shall
approach President Ayub Khan rather than friends like you.”
The reply was appreciated with laughter.
On his final day, Vinoba observed: “God has purposely

created more than one race, one language, one religion to
create diversity. He could have as well created a single race, a
single religion, a single language.... Whatever the divisions
and variations, we must realise that we are one as homo
sapiensDuring his 16-day stay there, 8000 copies of the
Gita Pravachan were sold both to Hindus and Muslims.
Between 500 to 700 persons used to enquire daily about his
Ruhul Koran, which was shortly to be published, and none
seemed to have taken seriously the tirade the paper Dawn
was carrying on against Vinoba for compiling it. So much so,
that the Dawn's own correspondent accompanying Vinoba
was not happy at the attitude of his paper. ,
From there Vinoba entered West Bengal for the third time,
his previous two stays having been transit visits on way to
Orissa and Assam. This time he had come to tour it
extensively and was there from 21 September 1962 to
9 August 1963, though on a few occasion he had to
cross over to Bihar. The important places he visited this time
included Shantipur and Navadwipadham, associated with
Lord Chaitanya,V Kamarpukur, the birth-place of Shri
Ramakrishna Parmahansa, Santiniketan, founded by Dr
Rabindranath Tagore, Gangasagar, a famous place of Hindu
pilgrimage, and Calcutta where he stayed from 13 to 28 June.
Then there were events like the Gramdan of Plassey, the Sarva
Seva Sangh session at Arambagh, his last meeting with Pandit
Nehru at Nabagram and the All India Khadi Workers’
Conference at Nadia. It was a period which had witnessed the
Chinese invasion in October greatly disquietening the public
mind but failing to divert Vinoba from his mission of
Bhoodan-Gramdan. He had called Gramdan “a defence
measure” at Yelwal, and the Chinese invasion had only
reinforced this idea of his.
At Shantipur, the birth-place of Lord Chaitanya, he said

that the influence of great men on society was not confined to
space and time. Sometimes their society had refused to treat
their message as practical, as happened with Lord Chaitanya
himself, but there was no alternative today to his message of
love. At Kamarpukur where he was on 18 April, just twelve
years after his first land gift, he said: “Rama worked with bow
and arrows, Krishna won the world with flute, Gautam by
Dhvanayoga, the yoga of meditation, and Ramakrishna
through tyaga, renunciation.” He declared that from that day
he was commencing his tyagayatra, a pilgrimage of
renunciation, a detached and liberated way of life which was
also elevating. At Shriniketan, the rural institute in the
Shantiniketan campus, he explained why no religion has the
whole truth. He said that a person with religious experience
was a seer who had seen God, but that happened in a state of
samadhi, which is a supra-human state, whereas religion is

practised on a human plane by men and women before men
and women and for their benefit. As such the verbal
expression of samadhi experiences come to be influenced by
those who are around us and imperfections creep in. This is
true of scriptures as well. While some parts of theirs have
permanent validity, others have only a temporary one. One
has to discriminate between the two.
On his way to Gangasagar where he reached on 27 May,

Vinoba touched Calcutta, where he said: “The first phase of
my padayatra, I believe, has completed today, with my coming
to Calcutta, or, perhaps, it will end at Gangasagar, where,
God willing, I may reach in a few days. I had meditated on
the beach of Kanya Kumari, Cape Camorin, by the sea, on
the uncovered peak of Pir Panjal in Kashmir, and now I shall
meditate at the confluence of the Ganga with the sea and that
will mark the end of my yatra!\ And this he did after a dip in
the sea.
His long stay in Calcutta was marked by many meetings in

different parts of that metropolis, including a few of the
intellectuals and a press conference. At one meeting he said:
“Resist evil strongly and vigorously but do it without hatred
or bitterness. It is a misconception that an enemy cannot be
fought without hatred.” At another meeting, he drew
attention to an anomaly in the educational system in that both
planning and unemployment continued side by side. While
the Government detained communists, schools and colleges
turned out unemployed youths who joined their ranks. At the
press conference, when asked if the Nehru Government had
turned its back on Gandhism, his reply was that it had not
given up its respect for it, but a prophet is like a pole star
when statesmen have to work in actual circumstances with
the pole star as their guide. He further pointed out that the
Government was veering round to the realization of the
importance of cottage industries and that the Planning
Commission had admitted their place in the national
98 ACHARYA VINOBA BRAVE
economy. He declared, “Gandhism is not dead and cannot

die. It is an eternal truth.”
The last question was: “You believe in satyagraha and

nonviolence. Then why did you not go to meet the Chinese
aggressors at the border, either alone or along with young
workers?” The answer was: “So far there has been no
experiment in nonviolence on the international plane. If our
people had realized that Independence had to be defended
by nonviolence and satyagraha and that the building up of
the army was wrong, they would have opposed its
maintenance. That would have strengthened the country. At
present an attempt is being made to create that atmosphere.
There are problems of nonviolence that never arose during
Gandhiji’s time. The nuclear science then had not developed
to its present level. However, when a democratic
government had decided to use the armed forces, satyagraha
against aggression would have only created confusion. And
even if the Government had permitted and a few hundreds of
us had gone there, we would have simply become a wing of
the army. The armed forces draw their strength from public
opinion. Satyagraha too can work only if there is popular
support at its back.”
Vinoba was very keen on the Gramdan of Plassey, and he

felt that its Gramdan had washed away its old disgrace of
1757. At the Arambagh session of the Sangh, he defended
the Vedchhi Sarvodaya Sammelan statement on the
Sino-Indian conflict which had said:
“The Sino-Indian conflict presents the world today with a
very grave problem and is a test for all those who believe in
world peace and the concept of ‘Jai Jagat’, i.e., world unity.
We believe that this conflict has been forced upon India, for
India has been working consistently for a peaceful solution of
the border question. An attempt by one party to force a
decision by the use of arms when the other party is prepared
for a settlement through peaceful methods, is an act of
aggression. Therefore, though we remain firm in our
fundamental faith of non-participation in war, our full

sympathy is with India.
“We hope that India will remain true to her policy of

friendship towards all and emnity towards none, even in the
present emergency. For, enmity can never check enmity. As
an index of this attitude of enmity towards none, the door
must always be kept open for negotiation, arbitration etc. We
should be ready to come to a settlement which will preserve
the honour and dignity of both nations. Even in the midst of
conflict, we should see that hatred is not aroused against the
people of the other country and that there is no war fever.
Chinese residents in India and Indians in China should receive
humane and considerate treatment.
“While we are alive to the gravity of the present situation

and the limitation of our nonviolent strength, we wish to
reiterate here our firm faith in nonviolence and peace. No
good can come to anyone from armaments, much less from
war. No problem can be solved by such means, especially in
this Atomic age. Therefore, a believer in nonviolence or a
Shanti Sainik cannot participate directly in any war. It is his
first duty to do his utmost to end this war as soon as
possible.... We believe that all men and women in China
who have faith in peace will come forward and help in these
efforts in the belief that war can only lead to evil.
“.... We honour and admire the unprecedented spirit of

devotion and sacrifice for the defence of the country that has
been awakened among the people and we believe it would
eventually be developed into the nonviolence of the brave.
Therefore no one who believes in nonviolence should remain
inactive at this hour of crisis. Rather, he must devote all his
energies to the task of increasing the people’s power of
nonviolence resistance....”
The statement going to the front declared “a programme

which in the present conditions could only be taken up after
serious consideration. The important programme for the
near is to awaken the capacity for non-violent resistance
among the people of border areas. Wherever suitable, Shanti

Sainiks may visit border villages and inspire the people to
adopt a programme of self-reliance and non-cooperation with
the aggressor.”
Vinoba characterised this statement as a balanced one and
synthesising the various viewpoints. He also defended his
own attitude in the matter against the criticism of some
Western Pacifists and Sarvodaya workers. While admitting
that his attitude did not correspond to the highest level of
nonviolence, he said: “I don’t contradict those who adopt the
position that war is an unmitigated evil. I even respect them.
But I also plead this much that, along with it, discernment too
must be appreciated.... I neither want to be dogmatic nor
can I become so.... My whole inclination is towards
outlawing of war, towards opposing it. I do not take up any
middle position. I am with those who are opposed to war, but
despite being with them, I hold that there should be
discernment.”
At the first All-India Khadi Workers Conference, he

pointed out that the direction of Khadi was not correct.
Greater production of it for commercial purposes was not
enough. The true spirit behind Khadi was one of self-reliance,
not of subservience or dependence. The important thing was
the outlook. The question was not of receiving assistance
from the Government but one of pervading the entire
governmental structure with the spirit of Khadi. He pleaded
that Khadi be viewed in the context of Gram Swaraj, and
interpreted as a part of a broader philosophy of life and
development. He said: “Gandhiji had all along stressed that the
wearer should be a spinner and the spinner should be a
wearer. Browning has said, ‘I was ever a fighter, so—one fight
more. The best and the last!’ The workers engaged in Khadi
should imbibe this spirit and make a last determined bid to
put Khadi on an independent footing. Khadi should be
self-reliant or it should die.”
Vinoba went to Orissa from Bengal via Bihar, and then

proceeded towards Raipur where the Sarvodaya Sammelan

was scheduled to be held at the end of December 1963. He
had not attended any Sammelan since 1959. There he outlined
his three-fold programme of Easy Gramdan, Shanti Sena and
Village-Oriented Khadi. The Easy Gramdan concept,
referred to earlier, had acquired a form at the Arambagh
session to work as a defence measure in view of the Chinese
aggression. According to it, any village or some recognized
part of it was to be considered as Gramdan if at least 75 per
cent of its landowners holding 71 per cent of the total land
donated one-twentieth of their lands to the Gram Sabha for
the landless. They had also to agree to surrender their right of
ownership over their whole land to the Gram Sabha on the
condition that they or their heirs would not be deprived of it
without their consent. They, however, would have the right to
transfer it to the Gram Sabha or to any member-family of it
with its consent. The tillers had also to undertake donating
each year one-fortieth or any other part decided upon by the
Gram Sabha, of the net produce of their land to the village
fund. Those who earned in cash had to agree to donate
one-thirtieth of their income or of the amount drawn for
personal expenditure out of their business, or any other part
decided by the Gram Sabha, to the village fund. The amount
so collected was to be utilised for invalids and orphans of the
village, for education and the establishment of village
industries in it for its economic development. The Gram
Sabha was to be composed of either all the adults of the
village or by one from each member-family. It was to look
after the villagers and its decisions were to be arrived at by
consensus.
The Easy Gramdan idea was defended by Vinoba on the

basis of its gentler process and as making allowance for
individual incentive which was wanting in the old Gramdan
concept based on social motive. As such, it was expected to
prove more palatable to the land-holders. It had also the
additional merit of ever keeping the spirit of donation alive,
something which was not in the old concept.
The Shanti Sena programme was the same old one with
added emphasis on making the movement a success by
opening peace centres, forming youth peace corps, proper
training, etc. The Village-Oriented Khadi was based on the
^ ideas Vinoba had expressed at the Navadwipadham
conference. He also dwelt with the question of participation in
power politics at the sammelan. While accepting that there
were both pros and cons of it, he was for eschewing it since
the attainment of Sarvodaya objectives demanded full
concentration of energy. He was also of the view that a
process of disintegration was working in the world in the
forms of power politics, casteism, communalism, ideological
differences etc., which do great harm in this age of science,
which demands a farsighted approach on the various
questions. He reiterated his old idea that the days of politics
were over.
After the Sammelan Vinoba proceeded towards Wardha,
entering that district on 3 April 1964. A day prior to it, Guru
Golwalkar of the Rashtriya Swayam Sevak Sangh had met
him at Seldoh and had a talk with him. On his death on 6
June 1973, Vinoba had said: “I had great respect for Guru
Golwalkar. He didn’t have any narrow caste feelings. He had
an all-India perspective and faith in spirituality. He
respected Islam, Christianity and other religions. What he
wanted was that they should all join the Indian mainstream."
Vinoba reached Sevagram on the 6th and Paunar on the
10th, staying there till the 20th, and thereafter resumed his
padayatra in Wardha district to make it a Gramdan district,
hallowed as it was by the presence of Gandhi and others. It
was then that Nehru died in May and a month later the new
Prime Minister Lai Bahadur Shastri met him and was
closeted with him for about two hours. However, Vinoba had
to discontinue his trek because of typhoid, and when it was
resumed in November, he had to give it up soon
because of giddiness. He could later undertake the tour of a
few districts of Maharashtra by car, starting on 9 July 1965
and returning to Paunar on 23 August to start for Bihar the
next day to help in the Storm Gramdan Campaign launched

there at his suggestion.
The highlights of this period were the workers’ seminar of

the Sarva Seva Sangh at Paunar from 16 to 19 July 1964, the
convention of Maharashtra workers at Paunar next month,
talks with the members of the Planning Commission, nuclear
explosion by China, taking to silence for an indefinite period
from 12 September, fast on violence in Tamil Nadu over Hindi
in February 1985, and the Sarva Seva Sangh session at
Gopuri (Wardha) in May that year. At the workers’ seminar
he referred to his cdncept of satyagraha with increasing
emphasis on the spirit rather than on action. He cited the
instance of homoeopathic medicines whose potency
increased with less medicine in higher triturations. Pie told
Maharashtra workers that the movement could spread only if
their quality improved with greater feelings of fellowship,
humility and faith in Sarvodaya. He also told them that it
would not be wise to get entangled in reconstruction work in
Gramdan areas. If more and more Gramdans were obtained,
a climate would be engendered in which the Government and
the people would themselves come forward to shoulder that
work. He said to the members of the Planning Commission
that despite all talk about professions in democratic
socialism, in actual practice the Government worked against
the interests of those who were at the bottom and he cited
several examples of it. His feeling at the China’s explosion
was that it was meant to terrorise the neighbouring countries,
but nothing could cow down those who were determined not
to be frightened. After all, those destined to die would die
anyhow. He favoured India's response to it to renounce all
weapons whatsoever.
Vinoba’s decision to go on silence was based on his belief
in its potentiality which, he felt, was largely unexplored,
though some aspects of it were quite familiar, as for example
its capacity to calm down an agitated mind. However, while
- announcing its decision on his birth-day, he made some
revealing statements about himself as well. He said that since

his childhood, his tendency had been to keep away from
psychological involvements which was a must if troubles of
the mind were to cease. He also said that his temperament
was not conducive to the public work he had taken up. He
said: .“It is the command of God that keeps me on
move.... And the command is so distinctly audible as if I am
hearing the voice directly. I have found solution in accepting
its behest.”
Before taking up his fast against the eruption of violence in

Tamil Nadu, an important speech of his at the Brahma Vidya
Mandir on 20 December that year must be mentioned. He
observed in it that there was a dearth of collective will power
in the country and the individual will power too was on
decline. He said: “The tragedy is that we have established an
entire philosophy against collective will power, which turned
some great Hindus into individualists. They interpreted
salvation in a sense just opposite to what it really
implies ... Where there is the question of ‘my salvation’,
there can be no salvation at all, and where there is salvation,
there can be no place for my-ness.” He also then regretted
the Congress not accepting the advice of Gandhiji to convert
itself into a Lok Sevak Sangh, with the result that instead of
becoming a cementing force, it was a disintegrating agency.
He wanted this state of affairs to change and the country to
develop both collective will power and community strength.
The eruption of violence in Tamil Nadu had resulted from

a declaration by the Central Government making Hindi the
principal official language from the Republic Day in 1965. The
violence caused intense agony to Vinoba, and in spite of all
his opposition to fasts undertaken for any such motive, his
inner voice compelled him to go on fast from 12 February;
This perturbed many, from the President of India downwards,
and the Prime Minister Lai Bahadur Shastri deputed the
Home Minister Gulzarilal Nanda to persuade him to give it
up, but Vinoba declined to do so till three conditions were
met. They were: Violence to be eschewed in solving the

language issue, Hindi not to be imposed on non-Hindi
speaking people and English not to be imposed on Hindi-
speaking people. By the 15th all the Chief Ministers had
agreed to it, and on the 16th it was all calm. The two
ministers from Tamil Nadu who had resigned on the issue,
withdrew their resignations and Vinoba broke his fast on the
17 th noon.
Here it would be proper to give Vinoba’s ideas on the
language issue. Speaking in November 1964 in the context of
some remarks eulogising his services to Hindi, Vinoba had
observed: “The truth is just the opposite. 1 did not serve
Hindi but it served me a lot. Had I not the basis of Hindi with
me, I could not have gone from Kanya Kumari to Kashmir and
from Assam to Kerala and conveyed the revolutionary
message of Bhoodan-Gramdan from village to village. I am
therefore, highly indebted to Hindi. I have often said that the
nation needs two languages, namely, the State language and
the National language, even as men have two eyes.
Knowledge of the two languages should, in my opinion, be
compulsory. If a third eye, like Lord Shankar’s third eye of
wisdom, is required, then Sanskrit will be useful and the
English language would serve as a pair of spectacles, which
some need at times.” He was also hopeful that if wisely
propagated, Hindi was bound to be increasingly accepted by
the non-Hindi speaking people, and he added: “The fact Is
that it was the non-Hindi speaking people, not the Hindi
speaking ones, who have made it a national language ” And
he named Swami Dayanand, Lokamanya Tilak, Gandhi and
others among them. At the same time, he wanted the
northerners to learn some language of the south, and for it he
was an advocate of the Nagari script being adopted as an
alternate script by all other languages of the country.
The decision to go to Bihar had been taken during the
Gopuri session of the Sarva Seva Sangh. He had then told the
Bihar workers that if they undertake to raise a storm
campaign to secure ten thousand Gramdans within six

months, he was ready to visit their State. They accepted the
offer. On the announcement of its decision, an interesting
question was put to him by Dada Dharmadhikari. He asked:
“You were bringing about a revision in the conception of
nullity and were trying to see action in inaction, then why this
sudden jump into action?” Vinoba’s reply was that nullity
came near stormy action. Just as a fast moving machine
seemed still, karmayoga and akarmayoga were quite close.
Vinoba expected this campaign to be his last and the best,
and he wanted a storm literature campaign also to be
conducted along with that of Gramdan.
Vinoba set out for Bihar by car on 24 August from Paunar.

Speaking to the inmates of the Brahma Vidya Mandir on the
23rd, he drew their attention to the critical international
situation with special reference to India’s relations with China
and Pakistan, and said: “We should offer our best to meet this
crisis, and I would regard myself blessed if God gives me an
opportunity for balidana, final sacrifice, at this hour.” And he
pointed out, “I am also reminded of the last moment of Christ.
You should bear well in mind that he told his
disciples—‘Love one another even as I love you’. And how
did he love? He offered himself as a sacrifice for their sake.
Gandhiji too did the same. It is time for sacrifice.” Speaking
at Wardha the same evening, he said: “During the freedom
struggle days, the government used to lock our institutions,
which increased both our dynamism and appeal. I would
now like you to lock them of your own accord and move out
for Gramdans.” He also reminded the Maharashtra
Government of his suggestion made in 1962 to make Wardha
a Gandhi district.
While leaving Paunar on the 24th, he had three special

instructions for the Brahma Vidya Mandir. First, no statue,
picture or photograph of any mortal be placed in the
Ashram. Second, the inmates should have no attachment
towards the physical body and live in a spirit of love,
devotion and compassion, basing the Ashram life on physical

labour. While using any article of consumption, they must test
it on the three criteria—whether it was made by hands,
whether it could be made in villages and whether full wages
had been paid for it. Lastly, no further samadhi be erected in
the Ashram. The samadhi of Vallabhswami, an old student of
Vinoba and an important worker who had died in December
1964, be treated as sarva-samadhl It may be mentioned here
that though on the instructions of Vinoba himself, his ashes
were buried at the place he used to sit in his room, it cannot
be treated as his samadhi since the structure of a samadhi is
very different from that of his hut.
Vinoba reached Patna on his birth-day in 1965 via Jabalpur

and Varanasi. At Jabalpur, when the mayor promised to
bring to an end to the misery of the scavengers by Gandhi
Birth Centenary in 1969, Vinoba remarked: “Why wait for four
years? I am sure if you succeed in improving their lot by
1966 or 1967, Gandhiji will not take you to task for it. Begin
here and now, and do what you can to ameliorate the plight
of your most down-trodden brothers.” On reaching Patna, he
observed: “My object is to raise the collective will power of
the people so that, they may, by their own initiative and
strength, establish Gram Swaraj in villages and Nagar Swaraj
in towns.” He met the people from various walks of life in
June 1966 at the Ranipatra Ashram. He then said that
gross actions had their limitations and that it had
been his wish to enter into sooksma, the subtle,
after reaching the limit of gross actions. He said
that this step would lead to an intensification of
actions rather than their reduction. Thereafter, he took his
first step in that direction by avoiding long speeches. After
three months he made them still shorter and in December
1967, he made himself a sort of reference book, avoiding all
aggressiveness. A further step was taken in June 1968 when
he stopped public speaking, limited his conversations,
stopped correspondence and instead of reading newspapers,
read only the summary of new developments especially
prepared for him. ThusL during this whole period, Vinoba

went on reducing his outward public activities.
An analysis of the speeches of this period show that

though, as usual, he touched on many a theme, some of them
occurred more frequently than others. In the early period
which had synchronised with the Indo-Pakistan War, he often
referred to it, and to the two challenges of communism and
communalism presented respectively by China and Pakistan.
Reserving a delineation of his ideas on it for the next chapter,
it should suffice here to mention that in Gramdan he found a
proper answer to both the challenges. The other topics were
the deteriorating condition of the weaker sections of society,
the need of change of direction in Khadi work and the
movement being conducted in Bihar. Only some examples of
each are given below.
We find Vinoba getting more critical of the Planning

Commission and of the Government development policies
during this period. He said on 7 September 1965: ‘The
Planning Commission intends to do justice to the poorest, the
lowliest and the last only in 1985. A drowning man cannot be
consoled by an assurance of saving him twenty years hence.”
Speaking at Daltonganj two months after, he said: “We feed
our children with American milk. I wonder whether they
would, on growing older, follow the doctrine of ‘Bharat Mata
Ki Jai’ or of 4American Mata Ki Jai. Could there be greater
want of imagination? We seem to have lost all vision. It is a
sad picture of barren indiscretion and loss of the sense of
values. Independent in name, we are dependent in practice. I
don’t think that there may be so much gulf anywhere else in
the world between the word and its content.” And then he
observed in July, 1966: “It is no pleasure to me to point out
that though the persons in Delhi find the problem (of the
poor) becoming more and more difficult everyday, they don’t
seem to realize the need of change in the direction of
planning.” And he added: “Though the persons connected
with Planning are given to thinking and are economists, they
do not realize that conditions being different in different

countries, the economy of one country cannot suit another.
Pandit Nehru had begun realising it in his last days." Vinoba
characterised the planning as 'Dhritarashtra Yojna’, a status
quoist planning.
Vinoba had often to address Khadi workers. He observed
at Khadigram in September 1965: “Khadi has been so far
supporting you, now the time has come for you to offer your
support to it. Rest assured that Khadi cannot subsist on
Government subsidy. If it is to stay, it can only do so on the
basis of Gramdan, If you are not prepared to face the
challenge, I would urge upon you to give it a decent burial on
the occasion of Gandhi Centenary." A few days later, he
disfavoured the system of discount allowed on the purchase
of Khadi on the occasion of Gandhi’s birthday every year
since it was against the Khadi spirit and even suggested that
the price be increased on such occasions so that the spinners
might get better wages and justice be done to them.
Vinoba had also to clarify and defend his strategy of Storm
Campaign from the various objections raised against it. They
were three. It was argued that the strategy of getting
thousands of Gramdans, implied in that campaign, was not a
correct one, since it sacrificed quality to quantity when the
former was much more important. The second objection was
that it would prove more effective from the viewpoint of
societal change if efforts were concentrated in some selected
intensive Gramdan areas to present a few models of
reconstruction for others to observe. This would prove
infructuous. The third objection, and it was more widespread,
was that merely getting Gramdan pledges would not do.
Simultaneous steps must also be taken for the fulfilment of
the terms of those pledges. Vinoba did not agree with any of
them, and he had his own reasons for it.
As regards the first, he could not find any inherent conflict
between quality and quantity. To a person who asked him a
few days after his arrival in Bihar why he wanted to have a
large number of Gramdans preferring quantity to quality, he

had Replied: “May I ask you why you should require lakhs of
soldiers for the army! Will not quality soldiers like Napoleon
and Wellington serve the purpose?” And then he also added:
“There is no conflict between quality and quantity. However,
even big persons hold that the two don’t go together. This is a
great illusion.”
With reference to the second objection, Vinoba once said:

“If the English had asked us to present a model of Swaraj in
some one province, we would have told them to leave the
country and then we would try our luck. It is a mistake to hold
that the idea of Gramdan would spread if we present a
model of it.” On another occasion he said that no models
ever brought about a revolution. A model was useful in the
field of education but not in that of societal reconstruction.
As regards the third suggestion, Vinoba claimed that since

he had personally great patience and faith in God, he had no
objection to solid work done slowly. But what the age
demanded was that it should be done at the highest speed. He
also said: “Many say to me that as soon as a Gramdan is
obtained, the work of reconstruction should begin
immediately. You must be aware that there is engagement first,
then comes marriage and it is later followed by family life.
Getting Gramdan corresponds to an engagement, fulfilment of
its terms to that of marriage. After that will begin the work of
reconstruction, which can have no end.”
It was because of such views, with which Jayaprakash

Narayan too was in accord, that the Storm Campaign
concentrated first on getting as many Gramdans as possible,
including block-dans and zila-dans, and then at the time of
the Rajgir Sarvodaya Sammelan when Bihar-dan was
announced, the requisite conditions for it having been
fulfilled, Vinoba then asked the workers to concentrate on the
second stage of the fulfilment of the terms of Gramdans with
even greater speed. He gave them the time of one year to
accomplish that task. However, he could not further stay in
GRAMDAN PERIOD : LATER PHASE i 1 i
Bihar to inspire and goad them, and once having left Bihar he
did not return to it for reasons to be dealt with later in
chapter twelve.
However, before closing this chapter, some more facts

about Vinoba pertaining to this Bihar period need mention.
He had fallen ill in December 1965, which forced him to stay
at Jamshedpur till April 1966. Prime Minister Shastri had
come to meet him there before leaving for Tashkent and had
a 90-minute talk with him. Vinoba had welcomed the
Tashkent agreement and was overwhelmed with feelings on
the news of Shastri’s death. All that he could say was that “he
had to work very hard".
While the Storm Campaign concerned villages, Vinoba had

not forgotten cities and towns, and he outlined his concept of
Nagar Swaraj at Muzaffarpur in October 1965. He then said:
“You will ask me if there is any programme of Sarvodaya for
cities. There should also be Town or City Swaraj like Gram
Swaraj. What I mean is that an urban municipality or city
corporation should be free of the influence of political parties
and that its members should serve the city people without any
bias, be it of party, sect or creed. Members of the political
parties may be elected, but they should work as servants of
the people and not as members of their parties, in the manner
of Hindus and Muslims who go there as citizens and not as
devotees of Hinduism or Islam. I recognize the role of parties
and appreciate their working in Assemblies or the
Parliament, where policies are discussed and decided. But in
a Panchayat or municipal board you do not face such
problems and you have only to see that the people of the
town get milk and other Necessities at reasonable rates, that
the sick and the infirm are adequately attended to, that
education is duly imparted to children, that the town is neat
and clean and its roads are well maintained, etc. There is no
question of parties in these matters."
The realist Vinoba had also been asking the workers that
while explaining the desirability of Gramdan to the people,
they should also tel! them to restrict their sexual indulgence,

to make greater efforts, to share what they had with others
and to take the consent of all before doing things, since the
key to their happiness lay in them. They were also to be
reminded of the old lines, “Live a life of poverty, God is
attained by patience”, and told that mere Gramdan would not
bring change in their conditions.
The Bihar period also witnessed Vinoba giving a new

programme to the country, a programme which continued
during his later Faunar years as well and which has been an
important legacy of his. It is that of Acharyakul. Vinoba was
basically a teacher, both as an informal teacher of the people
and as a formal teacher of students, whether children,
adolescents or youths. The whole process of Sarvodaya
revolution is primarily educational. No doubt, it
simultaneously thinks of structural changes in society along
with the change in the values of individuals, but for structural
: changes in society it relies on persuasion and not compulsion.
If the programme of the Acharyakul emerged late, the
primary reason was that he had given priority to the
programme of compassion—the Bhoodan-Gramdan.
We have already indicated that Vinoba had pleaded for

change in the educational system of the country on the very
day the country had attained Independence. But it
did not happen at all, and Vinoba had to observe in 1968:
“So far as education is concerned, we have made every
possible mistake, gone wrong everywhere. Education today
has no spiritual dimension. It is no longer based on principles
which in the past have been India’s strength and stay and
which are still its strength today. There is no productive work
in our current education. It keeps knowledge and work apart.
There are no jobs for those who pass out of our colleges, and
the result is that if we educate people, we add to
| unemployment, and if we do not educate people, we add to
ignorance.” When Vinoba told Dr Zakir Hussain, the then
i
President of India, who had come to Bihar to meet him, of

the above choice between uselessness and ignorance, the
latter had remarked: “Vinobaji, you said that educated are
useless for work, but it is worse than that. They are useless as
well as ignorant.” And Vinoba had to concur with him.
Vinoba was convinced that the teachers and all others

engaged in the formation of public opinion could become a
force in society for bringing about a revolution. At the same
time, he wanted them to think for themselves. He said at a
meeting of the vice-chancellors, principals and other
educationists of Bihar, convened by the then Bihar Chief
Minister Karpuri Thakur, who also held the Education
portfolio, in 1967: “I don’t want to be treated as an oracle. I
want people to study my ideas thoroughly, to discuss them'
fully and to accept what they find to be satisfactory in them.
There is an ancient saying that the seer who proclaims the
truth is like a signpost at the crossroads of the path of
D harm a. The signpost only points the way to a place. It does
not carry you bodily there.... Similar is my attitude ” He also
urged them to assert as an independent force. He said:
“The moral leadership of the country should be in the
hands of teachers. They must show themselves capable of
ridding the land of its miseries of poverty, disease, ignorance
and ever-increasing violence.”
As a result of it and some other addresses among the

teaching community, the Acharyakul was formed on 8 March
1968, at village Kahlol near the ancient university of
Vikramshila, with the objectives of raising the moral statuie
and the social status of teachers, of getting the principle of
their independence recognised on the lines of that of the
judiciary, of building the power of the people which is
opposed to the power of violence and different from that of
the law, of fostering attitude and disposition conducive to
world peace, and of initiating a nonviolent revolution in
education. A member of the Acharyakul had to sign a pledge,
as advised by Vinoba. He had said in 1968: “There should be
a form of pledge which teachers may sign. It should contain a

statement that we regard it as a duty of our position to offer
our guidance to the whole nation, and that we will, therefore,
take no part in party politics or power politics, whether local
or national. It should also declare that we regard ourselves as
soldiers of peace, armed with the best of all weapons for
peace—education, i.e., the education for true knowledge.
What better tool can there be for the establishment of peace?
with that weapon in our hand and our students by our side
we shall carry out our duty, working for the peace of the
whole country, and maintaining our complete freedom from
political entanglements.”
That is how Acharyakul came to be formed as a wing of

the Sarvodaya movement. Its subsequent history belongs to
the later period.
/
11
Rapport with Pandit Nehru
SURPRISING THOUGH IT be, the first occasion on which

Vinoba met Pandit Nehru was at the Constructive Workers
Conference held at Sevagram after the death of Gandhi to
which a reference has already been made. This first
interaction gave birth to a rapport between them which
increased with time and lasted till the death of Nehru, leaving
a goodwill for his daughter Indira whom Vinoba looked upon
as a niece.
The first meeting had taken place at a time when the

constructive workers were highly dissatisfied with the
Government of India’s policy regarding Khadi and village
industries. This resentment was particularly against Nehru,
whose disagreement with the economic ideas of Gandhi was
well-known. But Vinoba’s speech at the conference was, in
every way, very comforting for him. He had assured Nehru
that he did not look upon him as a representative of the
Government but as a member of Gandhi family which they
all had been for the last twenty five years. He even claimed
the right of guidance from him, as Gandhi’s nominated heir.
Realizing the difficulties faced then by Nehru, he had said:
“We belong to you and you to us. Your difficulties are our
difficulties. Tell us what you want from us and we would do
it." He, at the same time, told the constructive workers that
the Government was not indifferent towards their work. In
116 ACHARYA VINOBA BRAVE
fact, it had had no opportunity till then to promote village

industries. Revealing his own attitude, he said: “Even if the
Government promotes textile mills, I would not make an
issue of it. I would do my best to make Khadi self-reliant. If I
am not able to do so, I would not find fault with the
Government, but take it as my own shortcoming. If we could
promote Khadi during the British regime, we can do it as well
now.”
All this combined with the fact that the method of
nonviolence resistance did not have much appeal for Viiloba
as evidenced by the fact that he was not favourably inclined
to name the association of those who believed in the ideas
and ideals of Gandhi as “Satyagraha Mandat”, must have
further impressed Nehru of his cooperative attitude. And
then Vinoba’s offer of his services to Nehru was not mere
verbosity. He reached Delhi at his request at the end of that
very month for relief and rehabilitation work among the
refugees in and near about Delhi, later went to Hyderabad at
his suggestion and finally to Assam.
Despite all this, the two differed on the issue of planning or
the economic development model, but this difference was
more than offset by their faith in the honesty and sincerity of
each other and by the support Nehru always received from
Vinoba in matters of foreign policy. This support was natural,
since the foreign policy of Nehru in Independent India was
merely an application and extension of the principles on
which the foreign outlook of the Indian National Congress
was based in the pre-independence era. Nehru had been its
chief architect then, and Gandhi had agreed with him. The
fact was that Nehru had imbibed well Gandhi’s ideas of
nonviolence and peace in that field, and his policy, naturally
then, enjoyed Vinoba’s full support, who was fully aware of
the limitations imposed on Pandit Nehru as the head of a
representative government of the people, and he was
convinced that Nehru was doing his best under the
circumstances, guided by the legacy of Gandhi and playing
RAPPORT WITH PANDIT NEHRU 117
more the role of a leader and moulder of public opinion than

of its follower.
There was also an additional factor for the rapport

between them. Gandhi’s death had created a serious void for
Nehru. He had not only lost a political leader in him but a
“Bapu” as well, on whom he always relied for advice in
matters both public and private. That void must have been
increasingly felt by him as his old trusted comrades and
friends began disappearing by death one by one, leaving
behind the next generation who could not be expected to play
the role of independent advisors. This brought him closer to
Vinoba, who was gentle and without ego, but, at the same
time, fearless, frank and objective. As time passed, Nehru
must have come to recognize these qualities in him more and
more, and then the Bhoodan Movement and the originality of
Vinoba’s thinking must have further convinced him that
Vinoba was a person whom he could consult and rely upon.
It was probably because of it that he had asked Shriman
Narayan to keep in touch with Vinoba’s tour programme, so
that he could meet him from time to time. Nehru had said at
a public meeting held on Vinoba’s birthday in 1963: “I have
been in close contact with many great people and in my
official capacity I have come across many eminent men but
there is no such person among them as Vinobaji in the whole
world. He is true product of our India. He is unique mould of
Mahatmaji.”
As a result of it they met seven times between 1954 and

1963 before Nehru passed away in 1964. On these occasions
Nehru used to take Vinoba into confidence and consult
him on issues that perturbed his mind. They met mostly alone
and Nehru himself used to take down notes of his talks with
him. They sometimes corresponded too, Vinoba’s letters
being invariably in Hindi. During his last days, Nehru was
also realizing more and more the relevance of Gandhian
economy in the conditions of this country. This was
mentioned by Vinoba in reply to a question in Calcutta in
June 1963 at a press conference, and it is corroborated by
what Nehru said at a seminar in New Delhi on 22 September,

1963. To quote him: “We put up big steel plants and the like,
which please us and build up our morale and all that, but
hundreds of millions of people cannot be asked to wait for
some future age for betterment in their living standards. It is
too much for them to do so. Therefore, we have to think also
of other kinds of developments for the mass of our people,
even if it raises them only slightly.” And then he added:
'Therein lies the virtue of Mahatma Gandhi’s teachings.”
A month prior to his death, Nehru desired Vinoba to be in
Delhi since he wanted to consult him on some issues, but
Vinoba could not do so. On the news of his death, tears
welled up in his eyes several times, tears not of grief but
gratitude, for Vinoba was above grief over the death of any
person. At his evening meeting that day, he said, with
reference to a suggestion of some journalist to Nehru to
nominate his successor and Nehru’s reply that he looked
forward to live many more years, did not mean any
desire on his part to cling to life for its own sake. It was a
longing to complete the important work that lay before him.
Vinoba had been especially impressed by Nehru’s adherence
to certain moral principles and values not only in his personal
life but also by his efforts to conduct the public affairs of the
country on their basis.
With regard to the concrete issues of defence and foreign

policies, we find Vinoba agreeing with Nehru from the very
beginning. Before leaving for his visit to the USA in 1949,
Nehru had laid the foundation of the National Defence
Academy near Pune. At that time, he had expressed the
oddness of life that he was doing so, though he was an advocate
of nonviolence and peace. Vinoba’s comment then on his
observation was: “Such contradictions, as Nehru referred to,
are found in humankind as a whole. Man or woman is
composed both of spirit and body, and their demands appear
to be contrary to each other. However, since life depends
upon both, he or she is forced to satisfy both, and that is why
it looks odd. This is true of a country as well, which too

possesses both a spirit and a body.... The spirit of India is
nonviolence and we have to reach that stage of the spirit,
but, prior to it, restricted militarism becomes unavoidable in
certain circumstances. We need not be ashamed of it.” One
may also mention here that Nehru had once told Vinoba that
he had been forced to increase country’s military strength
because of the Chinese threat.
The first challenge to the policy of Nehru came in the early

sixties on the issue of Goa, when he was compelled to take
military action. Vinoba was not happy about it, but
considering the Portugal’s intransigency to come to a
settlement unlike France, he was not prepared to condemn
Nehru for it, as already mentioned in the previous chapter.
Then followed the strained relations between India and China
on the border question. On repeated questioning, he
once said: “The incident on the Sino-Indian border has
created a wave of excitement all over the country. But we
should realize that excitement has become outdated in this
age of science, which demands a calm, cool and calculated
judgement.” And he added: “India and China are bound to
come together in friendship and love. The (present) great
displeasure is just a prelude to that friendship. In the next
step, the dis’ will disappear and ‘pleasure’ alone would
remain.”
Once finding two persons discussing exdtedly Tibet and

China, one for each side, he told them that all knew that the
Tibetans did not like the Chinese and that the Chinese action
was not proper. But the matter had to be considered coolly
and objectively. It was somewhat natural for a country more
advanced scientifically to attack an undeveloped one and for
the people of a more populated country to move to a less
populated one. The Chinese action in Tibet could also be
born of a fear of some external invasion. Knowing neither the
Chinese nor the Tibetan language, it was not possible to
correctly gauge the attitude and thinking of the two peoples.
/
Thus Vinoba stood for a calm and dispassionate

understanding of the Sino-Tibetan issue. At the end of his
Kashmir tour, as mentioned in the eighth chapter, he had said
that India’s granting asylum to Dalai Lama and other Tibetan
refugees was no political action but one based on
compassionate grounds and in accordance with the teachings
of Lord Buddha. Despite it all, when China invaded India
and the Government decided to resist it by armed force,
Vinoba saw no reason to blame India, though he was
convinced that no good could result from an armed conflict.
He had found China an aggressor, since India had not
thought in terms of war and was prepared to thrash out the
border dispute by negotiations. He felt that the China’s action
was born of an expansionist motive, and her use of the language
of communism was merely to justify its conduct in the eyes of
the communist world. India, he said, had never been
expansionist as testified by her history. Hence his sympathy
lay with India, and he defended Nehru’s policy and action
against the criticisms of the Western pacifists, who even
wanted the Gandhians in India to oppose the war efforts of
their national government. Vinoba did not favour it, but did
express the hope that the Indian Government would fight
without enmity or hatred, doing it simply for the reason that
it had become necessary for it to take to armed fight. At the
same time, he was always urging Nehru not to miss any
opportunity for a peaceful settlement of the dispute, including
acceptance of the Colombo Proposals, though they did not
meet the Indian viewpoint. He had thus strengthened Nehru’s
hands in that hour of crisis by voicing publicly his
support for Nehru’s attitude and policy against those
who thought otherwise. He even praised Nehru for getting
those proposals accepted by the Parliament with the help of
his prestige and influence.
Vinoba’s view had been that the main struggle with China
lay on the ideological front, and to strengthen the country on
that front, Gramdan movement must be made successful,
since it would help in removing India’s poverty and uplift the
condition of the weaker sections of society, a condition which

created a fertile soil for communism. However, he never
blamed the Chinese people for what had happened. He did
not identify them with their government, since these days
there is a growing distance between the people and their
governments everywhere. He attributed the Chinese
withdrawal to its failure on the front of world’s public
opinion, including world communism. But he was keen for
good relations between the two countries who were faced
with similar problem of poverty and whose experience of
imperialism had also been much the same. Therefore, both
the countries should realise the need for a harmonious
relationship between them, and he was ultimately hopeful of
that. He once said that if there was a Mao-Tse in China, there
was also a Lao-Tse, and it belonged as much to the latter as
to the former. With his way of thinking, Vinoba probably
thought that Lao’s influence would prove more abiding.
As regards relations with Pakistan, it centred round the

issue of Kashmir, and we have seen his views expressed
elsewhere on the question when he visited East Pakistan. We
may, however, draw special attention to his view that the
solution of that question lay in an Indo-Pak confederation,
which could only come about if the people of the two countries
favoured it. It was not something to be imposed by force. He
was against Kashmiris right of secession from India because
of its Muslim majority. Pie once said: “We were goaded into
partitioning India by the exigencies of circumstances. We do
not want to reverse history, but it would be a mistake to come
to an agreement that since Kashmir has a Muslim majority, it
has a right to secede and it should not remain in India.” In this
matter also his views tallied with those of Nehru.
Such was the position when Nehru died. The later armed
conflicts between the two countries belong to the periods of
his two successors, Lai Bahadur Shastri and Smt. Indira
Gandhi. About the 1965 Indo-Pakistan War, which had
originated with Pakistan’s attack on Chhamb sector in
Kashmir, Vinoba had observed: “A war is going on between

India and Pakistan. After giving careful thought to it, I have
reached the conclusion that this war had been imposed on
India and I, therefore, support the stand taken by the
Government. But this does not mean that I am happy about
it. I am sure that the Government also feels the same way.”
The war ended with the Tashkent Pact in which Kosygin, the
Prime Minister of the USSR, had played the role of an
intermediary. Vinoba welcomed the Pact, and was especially
pleased to see the provision in it for peaceful settlement of all
disputes without recourse to war between the two countries.
The second Indo-Pak war had resulted from the events of

Bangladesh in 1970. Tire problem of the influx of refugees from
that part of Pakistan into India \pd created a very serious
problems for it. Shrimati Indira Gandhi had shown
commendable patience in the matter. She even visited several
countries to prevail upon them to use their influence on
Pakistan to exercise restraint in Bangladesh, but they were
not prepared to do so. In the circumstances, Vinoba had even
favoured/ recognition of the independent government of
Bangladesh, though it could involve giving of military aid to
those fighting for their ,independence. He did so because
there was no democracy in Pakistan and General Yahya
Khan was in no mood to see it thrive. Ultimately, the
situation went on worsening and a state of war developed in
that region, involving India into it.
Vinoba was not sure as to who started the armed conflict,

but the question being debatable and also immaterial taking
into consideration the action of the Pakistan Government in
Bangladesh, he supported India’s action. He was even
criticised for it by some western pacifists, but he stuck to his
views. Plowever, in line with his pacifism, he was happy that
the Indian army had behaved in an exemplary way and that
the country had fought the war in accordance with the
principles of the Gita handing over the country after victory
to the people of Bangladesh themselves. Vinoba was as

opposed to war fever then as he had ever been.
Vinoba’s view was that the only way for the world to escape
from an annihilation by war is to accept disarmament by all
countries at the initiative of the UNO, and the UNO should
have an unarmed peace brigade at its disposal to intervene on
the occasions of conflict between any two countries. He had
also warned Indians, in the context of Bangladesh war, of any
exultation in their hour of victory to avoid creating any sense
of humiliation in Pakistan at her defeat.
Thus, Vinoba had always been standing for restraint and

calm action, even when he was against opposing the
war efforts of the Government of India in wars not of her
seeking but imposed upon her.
V
12
Final Return to Paunar
VINOBA WANTED TO remain in Bihar to complete the

work of consolidating the pledged Gramdans, but it was not
to be and he had to leave for Sevagram after the 1969 Rajgir
Sarvodaya Sammelan. The circumstances in which he had to
do so have been revealed in some detail by Kanti Shah in a
voluminous work, titled Jayaprakash, jointly edited by him and
Narayan Desai for the jayaprakash Narayan Arnrit Kosh.
According to it, Badshah Khan, the Frontier Gandhi, had
come to India to attend Gandhi Birth Centenary celebrations
and was eager to meet Vinoba. He was scheduled to do so on
the occasion of the Rajgir Sammelan, but he could not reach
there because of the Ahmedabad communal riots. Hence his
meeting with Vinoba was only possible if Vinoba reached
Sevagram. Vinoba was unwilling to do so. It was not his wont
to leave any work taken up by him halfway and the Bihar
work needed his continued presence. On the other hand,
Jayaprakash Narayan who headed the Reception Committee
arranging Badshah Khan’s tour in India, strongly felt that he
must go to meet Badshah Khan and even expressed some
resentment on Vino ha's reluctance. Consequently, Vinoba
decided to leave for Sevagram and from there he naturally
went to Paunar. Once having reached there, he stayed at
that place till his death in 1982.
However, the Bihar work was not off his mind and when
FINAL RETURN TO PAUNAR 125
Jayaprakash Narayan devoted himself to Gramdan work in

Musahari in Muzaffarpur district, he felt that he must also
return to Bihar, jayaprakash Narayan came to know of it and
he wrote to Thakurdas Bang, a prominent Sarvodaya worker
and leader living at Wardha: “It is encouraging that Baba is
thinking of returning to Bihar. But I feel that he should not
come at this time. All of us belonging to Bihar are at present
undergoing a sharpening process, and if he comes there at
this time our bluntness would get covered up under his aura. If
we are made of steel, we shall get sharpened. If our iron is
raw, how long the aura borrowed from Baba would do?” This
made Vinoba drop the idea of returning to Bihar, but he
continued to take interest in work there, especially in Saharsa
district to which he attached particular significance since
despite being the smallest district of Bihar, it bristled with all
those problems which plagued the whole of India. He felt that
the experience acquired there would also prove useful
elsewhere.
But in spite of all Vinoba’s keenness and all-out efforts of
workers in Saharsa, there was no spectacular progress and
Vinoba summoned its leading workers to Paunar. They met
him on 10 September 1973, when Vinoba asked them either
to complete the work within three months (this was later
extended to four months) or to collectively enter the Ganga,
which as he later interpreted as Lok Ganga meaning thereby
that in case there was no satisfactory progress, they were to
give up the work in Saharsa altogether and go to other parts
of the country for work. The workers deliberated amongst
themselves and met Vinoba again on the 12th. They accepted
Ids ultimatum on two conditions. First, they wanted an
additional period of three or four months for preparatory
work before taking the plunge and secondly, they wanted his
presence in their midst.
At this Vinoba reduced their burden by half, saying that he
would be satisfied if they accomplished fifty per cent of work
in the setting up of Gram Sabhas, could get 50 per cent
donors in the village to donate one-twentieth of

their lands for the landless, and distribute it and fulfil other
Gramdan conditions. As regards his presence, he said: “It is a
game of chance which could either result in hundred per cent
success or hundred per cent failure. Ane even if your
optimism be correct, the success will be mine and not yours. I
would never welcome such a success even when it be
hundred per cent, if it hinges on one man’s success and
means a retardation of your strength. The success in Saharsa
is essentially a means to an end. The end is the development
of your strength and that of the people.” However, he assured
them that though he would not be physically there with them,
they would feel the spirit of his presence.
Thus we find that though the Saharsa workers were keen to
have him in their midst, he didn’t agree to it and the reason
he advanced was practically the same which we find in
Jayaprakash Narayan’s letter to Bang, cited above. But there
could possibly be other reasons as well. About three years
had elapsed since Vinoba had left Bihar and he was then at an
age when, after such a long gap, it is extremely difficult, if not
impossible, to resume an activity again. This was still truer of
Vinoba who had since then taken to sookshma karmayoga,
the subtle path of action. Vinoba had great faith in the
capability of abhidhyana, meditation, which is reflected in
what he had said to the Saharsa workers about the spirit of
his presence with them.
It may also be mentioned here that once when Vinoba
learnt that some were faulting him for leaving Bihar, he said:
“I gave Bihar ample time twice and I left it both times hoping
that others would complete the remaining work. After these
two stays, it would not be graceful for me to go there again. It
is true that my going there would impart an impetus to the
work. I have there some influence over ministers and others,
but I would not like to use my personal influence over them.”
He, however, never made any reference to the circumstances
compelling him to leave Bihar for it was not in his nature to
hold others responsible for any action of his, even if he could

rightly do so.
Before proceeding further, however, it would be better to
complete the story of Saharsa since it has been taken up. All
efforts to complete the work there proved in vain, and,
ultimately, it was altogether given up in May 1974 on the
advice of Vinoba himself, who cared little how it would affect
his reputation and prestige. This step of his was appreciated
by Dhirendra Mazumdar, one of the top leaders of Sarvodaya
in his own right, who praised Vinoba for sensing the need of
that advice and for giving it.
Vinoba’s experimentation in sookshma-pravesh, a special
feature of this period, had had its beginning during the Bihar
Storm Campaign. He had even once said that he was thinking of
settling down at some place, to giving up speaking and taking
to meditation, and now at Paunar he got an opportunity for it.
An obvious explanation for this experimentation would be
that at his age of seventy-five when his physical strength was
on the wane, it was but natural for spiritual-minded Vinoba
to think on these lines. However, without fully contradicting
this view, one may say that this experiment, as hinted earlier,
was born of his intense conviction that in their effectiveness
actions were inferior to speech and speech was inferior to
what passed in one’s mind. Speaking at Rajgir, Vinoba had
observed: “It is said that best is action, then comes speech and
still later what passes in one’s mind which only God knows.
But Baba's idea is just the reverse. According to his
understanding, the minimum impact on the word and the
inner self is of action while words have greater impact. But as
compared to the power of words, the powers of the mind and
heart, meditation, samadhi and becoming a zero are far far
greater."
Explaining the whole thing in some detail, Vinoba further
remarked in 1972: “It is already known that I have been in
sookshma yoga and engaged in abhidhyana, meditation,
according to the Shastric practice. But in keeping with our
cultural tradition, I have given it a new content. To the ex¬

tent the mind is cleared of all mundane thoughts and restored
to its clean state of emptiness, to that extent it makes its im¬
pact felt on the world outside. . . . Now 1 have come to the
conclusion that the service of a man engaged in abhidhyana
with his ego reduced to zero would pervade the entire
world.... This f have realised through experimentation and
practice over a period of forty years or so. My present ex¬
periment is to find the results of karma, action,through
a karma, inaction, when one transcends the state of action”
/
This experiment carried an additional advantage as well.

Vinoba did not take the words of anybody as authoritative,
and he was against anyone treating him as an authority. The
various steps that he took in this experiment reduced the
reliance of others on him. They were those of
kshetra-sannyasa or ‘detention’ by confining himself to the
Paunar Ashram, prolonging the daily period of silence,
imposing restrictions on the interviews of outsiders and the
rule that questions be submitted to him in writing to avoid
strain on his ears because of their hearing difficulty. He,
however, retained freedom for himself to speak whenever he
felt like doing it. He also refused to be pestered by questions
on Indian politics and read in the newspapers only the
portions marked out for him for the purpose. This too he
regarded as a concession to others, which was not expected
to last long.
Once when Acharya Tulsi referred to the conditions in the
country and hoped that he would comment on it, Vinoba
remarked: “When several persons once advised me to say
something about the condition of the Congress, I told them
that ‘thereby you want me to assume three
responsibilities—the responsibility of thinking about the
Congress besides my own work, the responsibility of not only
of thinking about the Congress but also of forming an
opinion, and, lastly, the responsibility of tendering my advice
without being asked for it. It is a burden I cannot bear’.”
But this did not mean that he was indifferent to world

happening, its trends and to what was happening in his own
country. His interest in the developments in Bangladesh has
already been dealt with in the previous chapter. It certainly
had lessened with time and this was for two reasons. First, he
did not expect Mujib’s success to lead to any development of
people’s power there, and, secondly, he had left the timing of
the recognition of the independent Government of Bangladesh
to the Prime Minister as its best judge, since she commanded
better sources of information.
j
And then his interest in the realization of Sarvodaya
society never lessened. The subjects of his abhidhyana were
Brahma Vidya, the knowledge of the Supreme Being
indicative of the in-dwelling spirit, Devanagari script,-
Acharyakul, Shanti Sena and Gram Swaraj, indicative of a
nonviolent revolution based on Gramdan and with an
emphasis on village-oriented economy. We deal here only
with the last item of social revolution. The Saharsa work was a
part of the efforts for this nonviolent revolution. Another
programme outlined by Vinoba and related to it was that of
Lok Vastra, people’s cloth. It allowed use of yam spun on
8 to 10 spindle Charkhas operated by electricity and weaving
on power looms. The only condition imposed was that the
cloth so produced would be consumed in the village itself and
not sold outside. Vinoba expected that besides employment
potentiality, it has the merits of infusing a community feeling
in the village and taking it towards self-reliance, especially in
the primary needs of life. He also expected it to serve as a
spark for igniting the revolution.
As against the pessimism of most regarding India and the

world, Vinoba, as ever, remained an optimist. When G.S.
Pathak, the then Vice President of India, asked him when
would there be peace in the world? he said: “I hold that the
world is moving fast towards peace. The present lack of it is
indicative of its last stage. It is like a lamp burning brilliantly
before going out.” And he added: “I always give the example
of a circle whose two extremities are closest to each other.

The same applies to nonviolence and nuclear weapons.”
Once told of the increasing erosion of values among the
politicians, he remarked: “It is not my experience that all
persons in politics are rascals. They are mostly good people
with compassion for the afflicted and living an untainted life.
Some of them are surely bad, but what class is there in which
such persons do not exist, be it the business class, the
politician class or of those in Sarvodaya. The only thing
wrong in the politicians is the idea that they could serve the
people only through power. This cuts them off from contact
with the people and they fail to serve them .”
When Dr. Sushila Nayyar, with tearful eyes, urged him for
a statement against the increasing use of falsehood in the
country, the eruption of violence and the danger of country’s
disintegration, Vinoba first ignored the whole thing by
referring to his study of the Vedas, his daily routine and other
such matters, though at the end, however, he asked her not to
allow her mind to get affected by things in the newspapers. If
the news of communal riots reached people, it was because of
the advance of science in the means of communication. If the
overall percentage of the people killed was considered, it
would not come to many and the remedy lay in better
understanding of the religious scriptures of each other. He
told another person that nonviolence predominated in the
world over violence.
Vinoba, however, readily replied to questions on
spirituality and sundry other non-political subjects. A few of
those of general interest can only find place here. Once asked
about India’s contribution in the field of sadhana, his first
reaction was that it was a difficult question, but later he
mentioned two things, not taking of beef even during famine
and no attack on other countries. Dr. R.R. Diwakar used to
visit Paunar and question Vinoba on diverse topics. Once he
referred to the prevalence of illiteracy in the country and
asked Vinoba for the method to remove it. Vinoba said: “We
have nothing to fear from illiterates in India. The only

possible source of trouble are the literates. The literate gentry
of today has gone astray. The foremost question today is how
to bring it on the right path.” The other question was: “These
days the emphasis of Gandhian constructive workers is on
the Economic Man. Gandhiji’s emphasis was on the Ethical
Man, and of Aurobindo on the Spiritual Man. You too seem
to be laying emphasis on the Economic Man and providing a
structure for him by Gramdan and Gram Swaraj. How can it
bring in ethics in its wake?” Vinoba observed: “The principal
emphasis in Gram Swaraj is on the ethical and the spiritual,
since the movement aims at the ethical and spiritual
regeneration of man. To achieve it, it is also necessary to
change the economic order radically, which may be brought
about by legislation and coercion. We have however,
substituted the method of persuasion in place of coercion.”
There were occasions when Vinoba addressed gatherings
and the ideas expressed on those occasions also deserve
mention. He said on his birth-day in 1971 repeating in
essence what he had said ten years back: “There is no doubt
that now I want nothing more from life. My task is done. And
yet, since the physical entity remains I continue to put it to
whatever use it can be put to. The consciousness that no duty
remains unfulfilled frees my mind of ail worries. In is another
matter that it continues to think.”
On another occasion, he said about a revolution: “There
are certain things to ‘be done’ and some others that ‘happen’.
While a revolution in Individual life is ‘brought about’ or
‘done’, a social revolution ‘happens’. It is like the springing
forth of happiness at the sight of a child.” And he addedf “A
social revolution is similarly a bursting out of a total
cumulative effect of individual purity and discipline leading to
the emergence of a new set of values in life, which, in turn,
influences others to change their way of life.... That is why I
say that a social revolution is only of secondary importance,
while individual revolution is of primary significance. A social
revolution takes place in the fullness of time when individuals

are ready for a take-off.”
Once he cited with approval of Madhavadeva, a renowned
saint of* Assam, who had divided men in four groups. The
first is of the depraved who see nothing but evils in others.
The next higher was of those who saw both good and bad
points in others. The third group was of those who see only
good in others, and Madhavadeva characterised them ‘good’.
But the highest category was of those who say good in a
magnified form. And Vinoba then added that Gandhi
magnified his (Vinoba’s) small good points hundred times
and presented them as such before the people.
An important event of this period was the successful
nuclear explosion by India, which had been differently
reacted by Indians as well. Vinoba was among those who
welcomed it. He had faith in the government assurances that
nuclear power would only be used by it for peaceful,
purposes, and not for making nuclear weapons. H& allayed
the fears of the anti-nuclear lobby by pointing out that the
invention of fire was also suspected in the beginning. He said
that any power could be misused, and it was for spirituality to
decide what was use and what was abuse. The explosion
denoted to him an advance of science which he favoured. He
asked the members of Acharyakul, which he was then
addressing and among whom some had been alarmed at
the explosion, to examine the question from all angles and
then to arrive at a decision and make it public.
Another event of this period was the collection of a fund to

be presented to Vinoba on the attainment of the age of
seventy-five in 1970. It was called Gram Swaraj Fund, and
Vinoba had permitted its collection on the condition that the
amount collected under it would not go to any permanent
deposit account. The sum was actually presented to him by
Jayaprakash Narayan on the Gandhi Jayanti Day that year.
The collection by then had come to Rs.62,56,285.00. The
time limit for it was further extended till the year end and the
final amount collected was Rs.75,19,750.13. On Vinoba’s

advice the amount was utilised for Gramdan.
On the presentation of the fund to him, Vinoba had
expressed his satisfaction at the amount collected. He said
that though in terms of the purchasing power of the rupee it
could stand in no comparison to some other well known
funds like the Tilak Swarajya Fund, the collection drive in
this case could be deemed successful in that in near past a
purse had been collected for presentation to the Frontier
Gandhi and then it was a time when Baba’s own prestige was
at its nadir.
A third event of importance was Vinoba’s programme of
upavasadan, donation of money saved by fast, in September,
1973, to finance the recurring expenditure of the Sarva Seva
Sangh. Under it a person was to keep one day fast every
month and to donate the sum saved thereby to the Sarva Sena
Sangh. The scheme was highly appreciated on ethical grounds,
but it did not make much progress because it needed very
sustained effort and before long differences cropped up in the
Serva Seva Sangh and amongst Sarvodaya workers on the
issue of Bihar movement. Vinoba diverted then his personal
upavasadan from Serva Seva Sangh to Gitai work in April
1975, showing thereby something like his break with the
sangh.
13
Different Approaches in Sarvodaya
IT IS NOT unnatural for differences in approach to

crop up in any movement when it does not appear to be
achieving its objective. They also get intensified if some
alternative programme and leadership is in sight. It had
happened in the twenties and the thirties in the Gandhi era. If
it did not assume serious dimensions then, the cause lay in
the twenties in the compromising attitude of Gandhi towards
the Swarajists, and in the thirties it was a feeling in an
overwhelming majority of workers and leaders that there was
no option to a nonviolent movement and for that the
leadership of Gandhi was indispensable. Gandhi had even left
the Congress then to devote himself to constructive work, but
before long the leaders turned to him for advice and the same
happened in 1940 during the war.
The history of the Sarvodaya movement in India during the

life of Vinoba is divisible into three parts. The first period of
the fifties was a period when the movement was going from
success to success and assuming the form of a people’s
movement, when there was all admiration for Vinoba and his
leadership was unquestioned. It was then purely a
constructive workers’ movement shunning power politics
altogether, and JP, to use henceforth the more popular name
of Jayaprakash Narayan, had been attracted towards it after
he realised the futility of power politics to ameliorate the lot
DIFFERENT APPROACHES IN SARVODAYA 135
of the common people or to usher in a new society, and

though he never regarded himself to be either the disciple of
Gandhi or Vinoba, his loyalty to Vinoba was full and total.
Then came the sixties with the movement experiencing a

lean period, and the land target of fifty million acres to be
achieved by 1957, realised only to the extent of some nine per
cent. This had led some second line leaders to examine the
movement’s strategy, and in this they were influenced by the
views of foreign pacifists, sympathetic to the cause but with
> no such attachment for Vinoba as characterised the Indian
Sarvodayites. They had found in him that lack of
organisational ability which had distinguished Gandhi, and
they faulted him also for its non-use in the movement of
nonviolent resistance or ‘satyagraha’ which they looked upon
as the greatest gift of Gandhi. But since this criticism of theirs
had no impact on the top Sarvodaya leaders, it did not carry
much weight then. However, this had not precluded two top
leaders from thinking of other programmes to enthuse the
workers. It was then, as mentioned in an earlier chapter, that
JP’s mind turned towards making a success of the newly
government, launched experiment of democratic
decentralisation and that of Dhirendra Mazumdar’s scheme
of Gram Bharati. Vinoba, however, persisted in following his
old line, and before long these two also reverted to the
mainstream.
Then followed the Storm Campaign of Bihar when they all

joined together to make a success of it. No doubt, a few
voices were raised then expressing doubts at the wisdom of
getting pledges for more and more Gramdans without
consolidating them, but they were drowned in the general
acclaim since JP agreed with Vinoba. However, the
slow pace of Gramdan consolidation work taken up after the
Rajgir Sammelan, started a process of disappointment not
only in second line leaders but also in some top leaders, the
former giving expression to it first and the latter doing so
after some more consideration. Again there was an
examination of the strategy of the movement, leading to

doubts amongst workers whether the old line still advocated
by Vinoba should be adhered to with greater dedication or
some new elements be introduced in it to make it more
effective in the light of the objective of developing the
people’s power on which they were all one, and to impart
thereby a momentum to the movement.
One need not deal here with all that transpired at various
meetings and conferences, except to point out that with each
of them the doubts came increasingly to the fore and they*
were intensified into differences. The revisionists were in a
minority in the beginning, but as time passed and the efforts
to speed up the consolidation work in Bihar failed to show
tangible results, they went on gaining new adherents and
ultimately had an overwhelming majority of workers on their
side. The points of differences mainly centred around two
issues, namely, the place of nonviolent resistance or
satyagraha in the movement and the attitude towards politics.
The non-changers naturally looked to Vinoba for guidance,
while the changers looked to JP for their leadership.
Before taking up the two issues, it would be better to deal

with these two personalities who by the beginning of the
seventies had come to furrow two different lines in the
Sarvodaya movement. It may, however, be clarified at the
very outset that this difference of lines had not at all affected
their personal relationship, convinced as they were of each
other’s unquestionable sincerity, though it is difficult to claim
it about the second line leaders. Vinoba’s approach was
basically spiritual. He regarded himself an instrument in the
hands of God and believed in doing his best, leaving the
fruits to Him. They were, no doubt the touchstones on which
the correctness of the methods could be tested, but, after all,
they were beyond the control of human beings. In any case, his
one test, and a supreme one, was if those efforts had
personally advanced him spiritually, and if so, he must keep
patience and persist with them. There was no dejection for
him. But it was different with JP, whose approach was

primarily societal, as he himself had once said. With him
results counted much more and there was a limit to his
patience. That accounted also for his big stride from Marxism
to Sarvodaya via democratic socialism. As he says in his
Prison Diary: “I had been bitten by the bug of revolution
during my high school days. It was then the bug of national
revolution, national independence...-. The revolutionary bug
took me to Marxism and through the national movement to
democratic socialism and then to Vinobaji’s nonviolent
revolution through love.... Such being my ancient
occupation with revolution and having become satisfied that
the Gram Swaraj movement was not capable of bringing
about nonviolent revolution.... I was searching for some
other way.” And this search took him away from Vinoba,
not in all matters but in two vital ones which were of not
keeping aloof from politics and the use of satyagraha,
including gherao (encircling a person and not allowing him to
move or work) and handh (stoppage of business and of the
movement of vehicles including railways).
This was not surprising. JP was originally a man of political
field, and on joining Sarv odaya he had only renounced power
politics and not his interest in politics. His criticism of India’s
role in the United Nations Organization (UNO) on the issue
of Hungary in 1956, his denunciation of the Government of
India’s policy on the Chinese occupation of Tibet in 1959, his
interest in the problems of Kashmir and Nagaland,all testify
that he was a Sarvodaya leader with a difference and with an
outstanding personality of his own. His role in ail these
matters was even appreciated in Sarvodaya circles. With the
worsening of conditions in the country at the end of the
sixties and in the early seventies, his attention got more
and more concentrated on the domestic situation which
was characterised by problems of massive unemployment,
accelerating inflation, failure of the green revolution, poverty
of the people and increasing moral deterioration at all levels.
JP held Prime Minister Smt. Indira Gandhi primarily
responsible for it. He read in her a tendency towards

increasing concentration of power in her own hands,
abridgement of the fundamental rights of the people granted
under the Constitution by its amendment, and attack on the
independence of the judiciary observed in the appointment of
the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, overriding the
seniority of several judges. JP suspected the hands of Russia
in all these. Reminiscing on it later in jail, he wrote in Prison
Piary that “I had always believed that Mrs. Gandhi has no
faith in democracy, that she was by inclination and conviction
a dictator” and that “Russia has backed Mrs. Gandhi to the
hilt. Because, the further Mrs. Gandhi advances on her
present course, the more powerful an influence will Russia
have over this country. A time may come when having
squeezed the juice out of Mrs Gandhi, the Russians through
the CPI (Communist Party of India) and their Trojan horses
within the Congress will dump her on the garbage heap of
history and instal in her place their own man.” Thus JP’s
mounting opposition to Mrs. Gandhi was based on the two
grounds of her tendency towards dictatorship which could
lead to the destruction of democracy in the country and the
fears of a communist take-over.
Vinoba, on the other hand, had no bias against Russia or
communism, and it is highly doubtful if he shared JP’s
perception about Indira Gandhi, and even if he might have
done so to some extent, he also knew her great qualities,
including her patriotism, her sympathy for the underdog and
her moral and physical courage not to be cowed down by
anybody, and he also knew well that confrontation with her
would not bear the desired fruits. Vinoba was as keen as JP
to bring the affairs on the right track, but he had faith in his
gentle methods to win friends and influence people, while JP
had lost all faith in her conversion and saw no alternative to
ousting her from power. JP had probably been influenced in
this matter by the ideas and perception of those intellectuals
with whom the Sangh members had come to associate in
order to widen the base of the movement. The first such
formal meet had been held at Bangalore in July 1972 and the
second one of a National Conference was convened by the
Sarva Seva Sangh at Sevagram in September 1973.
At Bangalore, a small group of leading Sarvodaya workers
and some sympathetic social scientists had met to discuss
ways to broaden the movement and to make it more effective.
Some of the ideas discussed were related to Gramdan work
but most of them dealt with political matters. The latter
included, besides voters' education and people’s candidates
which already formed part of the Sarvodaya agenda, active
promotion of electoral reforms, bringing together of all
Gandhians despite their different approaches to political
power, convening a conference of political leaders and
encouraging Gandhians and their sympathisers in Parliament
to act together informally to promote the aims of the
movement. It also suggested launching of a new journal of
political commentary which later materialised as Everyman's
Weekly, published from New Delhi. And what was still more
important was JP’s call to Sarvodaya workers to return to the
mainstream of India’s political life. This emphasis on political
matters had been objected to by some Sarvodaya leaders
attending the conference.
Before the National Conference of September 1973, a
meeting of the Sangh executive had been held in July. It had
passed a resolution on the national situation which gave an
inkling of the tendency towards increasing politicalisation in
the movement. It had expressed serious concern over famine,
poverty, unemployment, inflation, atmosphere of panic
created by the bureaucracy, especially the police, the feeling
of the violation of the constitutional directives, particularly
the one about prohibition, violation of constitutional
provisions such as the imposition of the President’s rule in
the States, increasing concentration of power and widespread
corruption. It was highly critical of the Government’s
take-over of the wholesale trade of grains for it gave rise to
such evils as black-marketing, corruption, infringement of
citizens’ liberty, etc. The language of the resolution indicated

involvement of the Sangh with a wide range of problems, at
variance with its earlier stands. It chiefly blamed the
Government for all problems, and there was even a strong
suggestion that people should exert their power through
nonviolent action.
However, the action plan approved at the National
Conference in September made no departure from the
previous ideas except in so far that it approved of satyagraha
against societal evils for mobilizing the poor against bribery.
As far as the use of nonviolent direct action was concerned,
Vinoba was getting reconciled to it. He had said: “I have
already reconciled myself to the idea of satyagraha provided
it has the sanction of the consensus. What is uppermost in
my mind is to prevent our workers from being divided.
Nemesis will overtake them if they get divided on the
question of satyagraha.” But he differed from Acharya J.B,
Kripalani who had blamed the apolitical approach of the
Sarvodaya movement for impeding the growth of people’s
power and had argued that Gandhi’s approach wvas an
integrated one, with equal interest in politics and constructive
programme. Kripalani was for resistance to eydl for
developing people’s power. When the delegates visited
Vinoba at Paunar, he said to them: “Dada Kripalani says that
we should develop political strength to restrain the
government from going the wrong way and bending it to the
service of the people. Badshah Khan also on coming to India
chided us for keeping away from politics. Why this ‘common
sense’ did not dawn on me? Because I am convinced that
there is only one royal road to the solution of many
problems. It is the solution of the land problem. This was
neglected by those followers of Gandhi who went over to
politics, leaving the people with centuries old problems.” And
then he pointed out that he took up the cause of the landless
whose problem haunted the whole of Asia, and the movement
could distribute ten lakh acres of land and inspire 5,000
workers with moral values. Referring to the National
Conference and to the Sangh session held after it, he said that
corruption was rampant everywhere because it was inbuilt in
the system. The Sarva Seva Sangh too could not claim to be
free of it. It had raised money from time to time, including
from those who earned black money. That was why he had
been insisting on dependence on the people and suggesting
sarvodaya-patra, sampattidan, gramkosh etc., the last being
upavasadan.
At the Sangh session, the secretary had pleaded for
“politicalisation” of Sarvodaya, but he found himself in a
minority. This situation, however, did not last even a year,
when JP in search of youth power to bring about societal
change, welcomed the Gujarat movement and later when
Bihar followed the Gujarat example, he accepted the
leadership of the movement started there. JP had done it in
his individual capacity, but some other Sarvodaya leaders
agreeing with him had also associated themselves with it.
They even wanted to involve the Sarvodaya movement in
it. It would have been better if before accepting the
leadership of the Bihar movement, JP had at least consulted
Vinoba.He probably did not consider it necessary. It was an
old habit of his to present his colleagues sometimes with his
decisions as fait accompli. The same happend this time as
well, but some of his Sarvodaya colleagues were not
prepared to yield to him on principles. JP, in his wishful
thinking, even failed to gauge Vinoba’s opposition to his
politicalisation of the movement. /
However, Vinoba did his best to accommodate JP’s action.
When the Sarva Seva Sangh session which was held at Wardha
in July 1947, failed to arrive at a consensus concerning its
involvement in the Bihar movement, he devised a
compromise. But before dealing with it, it is better to take up
Vinoba’s attitude towards that movement. Even before the
birth of that movement, Vinoba had observed to Siddharaj
Dhadda, a very senior Sarvodaya leader: “I know there are
numerous causes for the people to be dissatisfied. The
country is faced with many problems and the situation is

deteriorating everyday. But violence is no solution to these
problems and under no circumstances it should be
encouraged.... under the present circumstances, even a
nonviolent movement against the government should not be
started. As long as India, Pakistan and Bangladesh are not
able to sort out their differences and until a complete
reconciliation is established on the sub-continent, even a
nonviolent movement against the government should not be
launched. We should confine ourselves to peaceful
constructive work.” This idea was also reiterated later in
April 1974 when he clarified his position at some length. He
had then stressed again the need to preserve country’s unity
and had expressed his fear that any agitation against the
government and an attempt to dislodge it would weaken the
country, even if the agitation be a nonviolent one. It
however, did not mean that the government should not be
criticised or opposed. He himself had done it at the Women’s
Conference held earlier in March, in the very presence of
Smt. Indira Gandhi but it was to be done with love and
affection. He was of the view that for the various ills of the
country the government alone was not responsible, and to
hold it solely responsible for everything implied acceptance
of the idea that the government was everything, something
which ran counter to Sarvodaya thinking.
S had also no objection to their taking up a new

amme to create an awareness in the people and to rouse
their power by creating in them a confidence that they could
solve their problems themselves. But he wanted that the
unity of the movement must be maintained. Vinoba took care
that persons linked with Smt. Indira Gandhi and visiting him,
were not able to exploit his difference on approach with JP in
any way. He held a very high opinion of JP as a person, but
he was doubtful about his political wisdom regarding the
Bihar agitation, and was of the view that nothing would
come out of it. He probably thought so because he knew the
real strength of the Sarvodaya movement in terms of the

number of workers and their capacity, and the fact that
dissatisfaction against the government was one thing while
acceptance of Sarvodaya values was another, and he was
aware that the people were yet to accept those values.
As regards the compromise devised by him on the failure
of the Wardha session of the Sangh to arrive at a consensus,
it was based on adherence to the three principles of truth,
nonviolence and self-restraint. It allowed freedom of action
to all whether to work for Gramdan or to join the Bihar
agitation. .All that one had to see was that he observed the
above three principles. He also advised that the movement
should first be confined to Bihar for the first three or four
months and extended to other parts of the country only after
the success of experiment there. As regards the Sarva Seva
Sangh, Vinoba did not favour its dissolution in the 25 th
centenary year of Lord Mahavir, the founder of Jainism.
However, chasms began to appear again before long
amongst Sarvodaya workers. They were partly bom of the
different interpretation put on the compromise formula ‘by
the two groups and partly on the direction the Bihar agitation
was taking. According to Geoffrey Ostergaard who has made
a special study of the Sarvodaya movement during the
seventies in his Nonviolent Revolution in India, the situation
was a delicate one, especially calling for restraint on the part
of the majority group, but that restraint was not forthcoming.
And then the compromise was still more undermined by
action. The office-bearers of the Sangh, notably the President
and the Secretary, did not always take care to distinguish
clearly between-their actions as individual Lok Sevaks and
their actions as the officers of the Sangh. He writes: “They
were not unhappy if the public got the impression that Sarva
Seva Sangh, as an organisation, was fully committed to the
Bihar movement.” And even more important than this lack of
restraint was the course the Bihar movement was taking
under the fourfold programme spelled Out by JP within a few
weeks of the compromise. Under it, the struggle assumed the

form of attempts to paralyse the administration, except in
matters affecting the daily life of the people. They included
peaceful gherao of the legislators’ houses, gherao of the local
administrative offices and a campaign for withholding the
payment of taxes by the villagers. Later, to impart a
momentum to the movement a further programme of Janata
sarkar, people’s government, was chalked out and by
September it had been decided to extend the movement to
other parts of the country. In the Everyman’s Weekly of 21
September 1974, JP wrote: “The Bihar struggle is no longer a
State issue. It has acquired an all-India importance and the
country’s fate has come to be bound up with its success or
failure.”
After a few months came the challenge of elections by Smt.
Indira Gandhi, and JP took up the gauntlet. However, even
prior to it IP’s mind was working in that direction. He had
said on November 8, “Our struggle will continue and finally it
will all be settled at the next election.” Vinoba, however, had
been maintaining a low profile all along these months after
the compromise, something which had even perturbed the
supporters of JP who expected him to condemn the
government for certain happenings in Bihar, especially the
police attack on JP in a procession. Vinoba had kept silence
on it because of his habit of not condemning anybody, though
he had highly appreciated JP’s nonviolent forbearance at
the police assault. It was under such circumstances that the
Sangh Executive met on 6 December, when the group
opposed to the Bihar movement was in no mood to
compromise and no consensus could be reached. It was then
decided to send a team to meet Vinoba on 12 and 13
December at Paunar. During the discussion with him, it was
clear that Vinoba disapproved of the course being taken by the
Bihar movement. He reminded the team that the basis of the
Sarvodaya movement and the Sangh was spirituality with its
four elements of truth, nonviolence, fearlessness and
non-opposition to any individual person. He also said that
even if nonviolent resistance to injustice was conductive to
I
developing spirituality, nonviolence alone was not enough to
achieve it. Manu’s advice is to speak truth, but not harshly or
bitterly. Lord Mahavir too did not believe in imposing his
ideas on others and was prepared for discussions in terms of
the opponents’ beliefs. Hence Vinoba said, “I agree with
Mahavir Swami and Manu. We must understand the
adversary’s position and try to discuss with him in his terms.”
Referring to the compromise formula of July, he said to the
team: “Now circumstances have changed. 1 don’t favour
elections because it makes for factions and groups, not unity.
You will say that democracy is with you, and so does the other
side. Both sides will say that the other is destroying
democracy. This will not change the system. It will be a case
of Tweedledum and Twedledee.” Vinoba’s opposition to
participation in elections was so strong that he plainly told
them that if the Sangh members worked in elections, he
would leave it. However, he again suggested a compromise
that those who desired to participate in elections might do so
by taking temporary leave from the Sangh. The members
standing for participation in elections were not favourably
inclined towards its acceptance. Vinoba, however, still
anxious to save the oncoming situation, decided to observe
silence for a year beginning with December 25. This he
probably did with the hope that circumstances would so
develop during this period that some way might be found to
avoid all round friction.
Vinoba’s silence led some persons to try for compromise
between the two groups prior to the Sarvodaya Sammelan
scheduled to begin from 15 March 1975 and during its
sessions, but they did not succeed. On the last day of the
Sammelan, Vinoba went to the Guest House where JP was
staying, broke his silence for two minutes and pleaded with
him to give up the conflict with the government, while
continuing the movement. He told him that since he had
already displayed his strength, he should like Lord Krishna
leave the battlefield. Vinoba probably wanted the ball to go
into the court of Indira Gandhi and he expected that such an
*
action would also induce her to give up the path of

confrontation. But JP could not find his way to accept it. The
Sangh, however, also decided to go into silence for the
duration Vinoba remained silent.
Then came the Emergency in July 1975 and JP and many others
were sent to Jail. Vinoba was then only halfway through his
year of silence. Soon after its declaration, Vasant Sathe the
Congress M.P. from Nagpur, visited him and in a written
statement Vinoba characterised the Emergency as anushasan
parva, mistakenly understood as an era of discipline. The
comment was interpreted by Sathe as implying support for
the Emergency and was propagated as such. But what Vinoba
really meant was that it was a period when the views of the
moral leaders of society should prevail. That was made clear
by Vinoba in his very first speech on 25 December 1975 on
the completion of his one-year silence. He said then: “The
Acharyas lay down the dictates of discipline; states lay down
the dictates of the government. We should understand well
the role of the Acharyas and of the state. If the world only
remains under the rule of the state, there would be no rest. If
it is guided by the dictates of the Acharyas, there would be
peace in the world.... If the people behave according to the
guidance of the Acharyas, it will be good for all. This is*
anushasan, the discipline of the Acharyas.”
Smt. Indira Gandhi visited Vinoba at Paunar on 7
September and also participated in his birth-day function on
11 September in the capital. Speaking on that occasion, she
referred to Vinoba’s work for the uplift of the rural masses
and promised to do something about prohibition to which
Vinoba attached great importance. This promise was fulfilled
on Gandhi’s birth-day that year.
The 7 th September visit was not the only visit of Indira
Gandhi to Paunar. The first visit had taken place on 14
October 1972, and the second one in January 1974. The
third one was on the occasion of the Women’s Conference in
March that very year. This 7 th September visit was thus the
fourth one and it had been prompted by the information

about Vinoba’s serious illness due to pneumonia. She came
with her personal physician and stayed there for the night as
well, when the inmates of the Brahma Vidya Mandir had a
very frank talk with her, the only condition attached to it was
that things should not go out. However, I had learnt a few
days later that one question put to her was about her
statement which had been interpreted by the press as a
countercharge of corruption against JP. She was reported to
have acknowledged her mistake and at the same time pointed
out that she did not repeat it.
Leaving, aside a visit or two, no records have so far come
into light of her talks with Vinoba, but one can well presume
that Indiraji who was fond of meeting highly spiritual
personalities must have been deriving some inner satisfaction
from her meetings with him, and she might have also liked to
hear him on the various problems that troubled her, both due
to his objective approach and his sympathy for her. Despite
all secrecy there are indications that Vinoba’s advice had
been on the side of reconciliation, restraint, alleviation of the
misery of the families of those who were in detention,
removal of restnctions on press and holding of elections. It is
a matter of conjecture how far his advice was effective. An
interesting fact may, however, be mentioned here. JP had
been released on 12 November 1975, but he could only visit
Paunar on 18 July 1976. He is reported to have then asked
Vinoba to intercede with Indiraji for restoring democracy in
the country. He had then said: ‘The way you put the issue
facing the country will have a great effect on public opinion
as also on the thinking of the government.” Vinoba had then
told him that if Indiraji happened to see him, he would
certainly tell her all this. The details of this meeting between
Vinoba and JP, combined with other incidents, show the
mutual trust and regard that had continued to exist between
them, despite the difference of approach on certain matters.
Vinoba was the first person to initiate both the fund for the
purchase of a dialyser and other instruments for JP and so
also the fund which was to be presented to him on

completing the age of seventy-five, by donating one rupee to
each of them.
Vinoba’s year of silence was to end on 25 December 1975

and several conferences had been planned for that occasion
either at Paunar or Sevagram. Vinoba broke his silence by
greeting those who had assembled to celebrate the silver
jubilee of the Bhoodan Movement. They numbered some
6,000 delegates and 15,000 other people. Besides clarifying
the meaning of the world anushasan, mentioned earlier, he
said that the Bhoodan-Gramdan Movement should be carried
on with the co-operation of all the five forces including that
of the State, the others being of the common people, social
workers, intellectuals and of the moneyed class of
businessmen and industrialists.
In the context of anushasan in the above speech, Vinoba
had also said: “If the government goes against the path shown
by the Acharyas, then the question of satyagraha against
it would arise. But I have full confidence that the government
here would do nothing against the discipline of the
Acharyas." This indicated that his mind was working in the
direction of calling a meeting of the Acharyas, which was
actually held later at Paunar from 16 to 18 January next year.
The participants selected by Shriman Narayan and approved
by Vinoba numbered 26, consisting of vice-chancellors,
senior professors, eminent jurists, prominent constructive
workers and distinguished men of letters. In his inaugural
speech Vinoba outlined the task before them which was to
consider the gains and losses of the Emergency and to reach
a consensus. Later their view was to be placed before Indiraji.
He also made it clear then that after knowing the reaction of
Indiraji on it, they would have to reconsider fhe matter and
then their final unanimous view would be made public.
The meeting after deliberations reached a unanimous view
which could be regarded as a highly balanced one, but it was
made public even before its submission to Indiraji, in
violation of the procedure laid down by Vinoba. How it all

came about, is not known, but it may be that because of it
Indiraji did not give time to Shriman Narayan for its
presentation, despite his long wait of a week in Delhi.
However, she visited Vinoba on 24 March 1976. What
transpired between them is not known, but Vinoba did
announce in April the idea of a bigger Acharyakul
conference with one Acharya from every district. It was,
however, later given up, since he found that those who were
fearless were not non-partisans and those who were
non-partisans were not fearless.
Then came Vinoba’s fast for ban on cow slaughter, which

would be dealt with in the next chapter. What properly
belongs to this chapter is that with the end of Vinoba’s year
of silence had also ended the Sarva Seva Sangh’s period of
silence, but due to certain circumstances it had not been able
to hold any meeting of Sarvodaya workers before 30 June
1976. While addressing it at Paunar, Vinoba endorsed the
suggestion of Charu Chandra Bhandari, a veteran Sarvodaya
worker of Bengal, for the dissolution of the Sangh, and
instead favoured informal meetings of the Sarvodaya Samaj,
the original fellowship of Gandhians set up in 1948, once or
twice a year to share experiences and ideas. He also wanted
the State district and village Sarvodaya Mandals to continue,
but to function in such a way as not to quarrel and spoil
things. His ideas had the support of Dada Dharmadhikari, a
top Sarvodaya leader, but no decision was taken because
many Sangh members were still behind bars and it was felt
that after their release the matter should be considered as a
special convention. It was ultimately held in May 1977 after
the Emergency was over and since JP was not favourable to
dissolution, it decided against it. However, it lent its support
to the cow protection work of Vinoba.
Meanwhile, Vinoba had announced on 25 September 1976

that from that day he would neither remain patron or any
such thing of any institution nor would he advise any
9
institution even if it had been founded by him, and that he

would only talk with persons in the presence of others and
that too on science and spirituality. However, prior to that, he
addressed the Sarvodaya Sammelan held at Paunar from 23
to 25 December, and said that though the country had many
political problems, they were petty and trivial, and that “Many
Kingdoms will come and go but the names of only those will
survive who provide spiritual guidance to society.” He
asserted that what he had been saying was no small thing and
he asked the workers to further develop in them feelings of
truth, love and compassion. To those whose minds were
occupied by petty problems of politics, he advised patience,
since God helped those who kept it.
Next month in January 1977 came the sudden decision to
dissolve the Lok Sabha with Emergency rules relaxed to
permit legitimate political activities. In the ensuing elections,
the Congress(I) was routed in northern India and the Janata
Party Government was formed with Morarji Desai as the
Prime Minister. Vinoba had abstained from any comment
during the elections, but later when S.M. Joshi, a Janata
leader, met him, he warned him against the prevailing
euphoria in the country. His advice to Siddharaj Dhadda,
who visited him after the elections, was to select one district
in each State and to work there for relf-reliant Gandhian
villages. The Sangh Executive too thought somewhat on the
same lines, but in the context of new JP’s ideology of total
revolution. Despite this difference of approach, something of
a rapprochement had been effected between the Sangh and
Vinoba by mid-1978. Vinoba had notified to State
government that henceforth the members of the State
Bhoodan Samities be nominated in consultation with the
Sangh.
Vinoba wanted Mrs. Gandhi to liberate herself from
politics and even asked her several times when she could be
expected to follow the example of Asoka, but her mind was
not prepared for it and before long she was returned to the
Lok Sabha from the Chigmagiur constituency in Karnataka in

November 1977. At the year end, Morarji Desai was at
Wardha where he met Vinoba and had some talk with him on
cow-slaughter ban and prohibition. However, squabbles in
the Janata Party led to the resignation of the Desai
Government in July 1979 and ultimately Mrs. Gandhi
returned to power. Meanwhile JP had died on 8 October
1979.
On the news of his death, Vinoba could not take his usual
meal and he paid tribute to his character in the words of
Nanak: “No one is an enemy, nor an alien." JP’s ashes were
spread near the Champak tree in the Paunar Ashram, where
the ashes of Vinoba’s closest associates are laid to rest and
where the same had been done with the ashes of Prabhavatiji,
JP’s life partner. In this context an incident deserves mention
here. During his illness, when JP was to be shifted in an Air
Force plane from Bombay to Patna, the original plan was that
the plane would stop at Nagpur so that he could meet
Vinoba, who had agreed to leave Paunar and go to the
Nagpur airport for the purpose. But someone so manipulated
things that later the idea of stopping the plane at Nagpur was
given up and JP was probably not even informed of it. So,
^vhen the plane reached Patna and JP was told that it was
about to descend, he enquired if Nagpur had come.
What further needs to be mentioned in this chapter is that

in spite of all the good personal relations existing between
Vinoba and JP, differences of approach between the Sangh
and Vinoba continued to exist during the last three years of
his life. Not all leaders of the Sangh were enthusiastic
on the issue of cow slaughter ban. Moreover, the increasing
tendency of politicalisation in the Sangh had compelled
Vinoba to form another Shanti Sena, whose new pledge
required the Shanti Sainiks to be non-partisans, which
implied, as interpreted, even abstaining from the exercise of
one’s franchise.
Vinoba had suggested as early as 1973 that the UNO

should have a peace army of seven lakh volunteers, and he

had assured it of a supply of one lakh volunteers from India.
He repeated it at the World Women Conference held at
Paunar in December 1979, and as follow-up action, even
set up this new organization of his. However, it was not liked
byT the Sangh leaders who saw in it a rival of their old
organization, and one of them even went to the extent of
saying that this action was “a gross violation of public
morality”. They failed to realise that the old organization
lacking the non-partisan clause, could not serve the purpose
of Vinoba.
14
The Last Concerns

\
THE CONCERNS OF Vinoba during the last years of his

life, besides the five subjects of his abhidhyana mentioned in
chapter twelve, namely Brahma Vidya, Devanagari script,
Acharyakul, Shanti Sena and Gram Swaraj, were Stri Shakti
or Women’s Power, Khadi Mission and Ban on Cow
Slaughter, the term “cow” standing for the whole bovine
cattle. The subject of Women’s Power was intimately
connected with Brahma Vidya, since whatever might have
been the position of women in Vedic times, In the later
period it had deteriorated in society and several types of
disqualifications had come to be imposed upon them,
including spiritual. It is significant that the women’s Ashram
established by Vinoba in his own Ashram at Paunar, was
named as Brahma Vidya Mandir. The Khadi Mission can be
looked upon as a part of Gram Swaraj and also a later
development of the Village-oriented Khadi, which formed
part of his Triple Programme enunciated at the Raipur
Sarvodaya Sammeian. The concern for ban on cow slaughter
was certainly new in the sense that it had not been insisted
upon before. It has two aspects, economic and cultural. As an
economic demand, it is an essential part of the nonviolent
revolution envisaged by him along with Gandhi and indicated
in the term “Gram Swaraj”, while as a cultural demand, it is a
spiritual activity as had been stated by Vinoba himself.
Brahma Vidya did not connote mere intellectual

(
knowledge or understanding of the Supreme Being, but also

an all round attitude of identifying onself with the atma, the
in-dwelling spirit, and not with the physical body, and this
identification being reflected in every action of the individual.
This implied control over one’s senses and treating theiwholc
creation as a manifestation of God. Vinoba was of the view
that if such an attitude develops in an individual, no power on
earth would be able to suppress him or her.
He further held that mere observance of morality and

disinterested performance of duty were not enough to give
full satisfaction to any person. There was also an inner world
as vast as the outer world whose demands could only be met
by meditation and worship. To quote him: “The service of
humanity and loyalty to one’s self, nij-nishtha, will purify a
person, while attachment to science will enlighten him or her,
but one carl become an emancipated person (siddha) only
when there is a feeling of Divine consciousness having been
awakened in his or her consciousness.” This state of a siddha
is, thus, different from that of purity and enlightenment.
It could be attained in either of the two ways. One was to
start with the service of society and to move inwards and the
other was to live in some special place and to devote oneself to
sadhana, spiritual efforts, while at the same time participating
in group physical work. Vinoba had the experience of both
the methods and he had come to the conclusion that one’s
growth did not lie in shirking any work that came to him or
her, but in performing it in a spirit of worship.
The second method was reflected in the daily life of the
Brahma Vidya Mandir, associated with Vinoba’s wish to
create an awareness in women of their latent power and it
would only be proper to take it up here. The Brahma Vidya
Mandir is not a woman’s Ashram in the sense of being,
exclusively meant for them, for Vinoba, though an advocate
of self-restraint,was no believer in the segregation of the two
sexes at any stage of life, but in the sense that it was to be
exclusively managed by them. In India there has been a hoary
THE LASt CONCERNS 155
tradition of Ashrams managed by men, and it was even so

with those of Gandhi. Vinoba departed from this tradition to
assert the spiritual equality of women with men and to
provide them with an environment in which they had a full
and untrammelled scope for their spiritual development. He
considered the spiritual inequality imposed upon women in a
male-dominated society to be their basic problem, other
forms of inequalities—social, economic and political—being
secondary to it. He also held that change in their social
position demands that someone like a Shankaracharya would
have to emerge from them, someone whose spiritual and
intellectual attainments would be as high as that was his and
who would be a person of high asceticism and capable of
authoring and interpreting the Shastras and living
accordingly.
The realization of the inferior status of women in spiritual

matters in Hindu society in particular, had probably first
dawned on Vinoba when once his mother had said to him:
“Vinya, you talk and try to express so much of vairagya,
dispassion. Had I been a male, I would have shown to you
what vairagya is.” It was further reinforced when his sister
was married and he felt that even if she had preferred to
remain unmarried like her brothers, society would not have
allowed her to do so. These experiences drove Vinoba
towards attempting to do his best to remove their disabilities,
and in this he must have been influenced by the ideas of
Gandhi. His efforts in that direction had their beginnings in
the thirties, but it remained then only a side activity till the
establishment of the Brahma Vidya Mandir in 1959.
However, being then deeply involved in the Bhoodan-
Gram dan movement, he could not stay at Paunar to provide
them personal guidance, therefore, all that he could do was to
guide them through correspondence, which too stopped when
during the Storm Campaign in Bihar, he entered sookshma and
gave up writing or replying letters altogether. On return to
Paunar in 1970, he picked up the thread again. He is reported
to have once said: “While young, I prepared some youths for

service. Let this advance age serve sisters now. I want to spend
the rest of my life in their service.”
Vinoba’s efforts to uplift their condition were two-pronged:
changing the attitude of men towards women and changing
women’s attitude both towards themselves and men. On his
visit to Assam, he had been greatly impressed with their
power in that region and wished to see it spread throughout
the whole country. Hence under his inspiration, a team of
four women, two from Assam and two from other regions,
undertook a 12-year trek in the whole country starting from
Indore in 1967. An account of their activities in places they
visited, may be taken as a part of Vinoba’s experiment to
create an awareness among women of their fatent power.
They would explain to womenfolk at the places they stayed
that it was wrong on their part .to regard themselves as abala,
weak and helpless, when, really speaking,they were mahila,
great and strong. They also told them that marriage should
not be the aim of their life, but instead should be the service
of society and the realization of God. Whether one is married
or not, she must be self-reliant instead of depending on men.
It was within their power to mould human beings and they
could thereby play an important role in society. But what was
really happening was that they themselves were acting as
hindrance in the development of their sex. They
discriminated between sons and daughters, and made the
latter cowards and prone to dependence. Despite the ratio of
females being less than that of males in Indian society, dowry
was in vogue. That was how this team of four women carried
on their awareness campaign among women and attacked
various social evils. The very fact that they were boldly
moving about from place to place, served as an object lesson
to women they met and talked to.
However, this Stri-Shakti movement was formally initiated

by Vinoba only in 1973 when a women’s conference was
held in January that year at Paunar. It was attended by the
THE LAST CONCERNS 157
representative women social workers from all over the

country. Its resolution on it was later endorsed at a Women’s
Sarvodaya Conference held in May that year. It was then
decided to observe an awareness week to carry the message
of women’s spiritual awakening to all parts of the country by
organising padayatras and meetings. The response to it was
unexpected. Some 5,000 women participated in more than
400 padayatras. This led to another women’s conference in
March 1974 at Paunar, and it was this which had been
attended by Smt. Indira Gandhi as an invitee. With the
successful experience of the previous year, it decided to
organize padayatras in every development block of the
country, numbering some three thousand.
A World Women Conference was also held at Paunar from

30 December 1979 to 1 January 1980. The participants of
the 12-year trek were felicitated on the occasion. Some 1300
women had attended it, out of which some 50 were from
foreign countries. The motto of the conference “Women’s
Pilgrimage to Spiritual Freedom”, conveyed the viewpoints of
Gandhi and Vinoba on women’s movement and distinguished
it from the Lib Movement of the West. Elaborating on it,
Amalprabha Das, an eminent Gandhian worker from Assam
and the chairperson of the Reception Committee, said in her
speech: “Vinobaji believes that peace and happiness can only
be established when women get an opportunity to develop
their inner power. Today the world has become aware of the
various areas of women’s power. Women themselves are
becoming aware of it and are doing their best to emancipate
themselves. But there is a power beyond physical power
which can neither be observed by eyes nor measured
physically, but in comparison to which ail physical powers
are insignificant. Without its help women cannot be
emancipated in the real sense of the term.”
Vinoba called this age as “an age of equality” and his

emphasis on spirituality implied equal rights for them in all
fields of life. In the context of the Hindu society, his concept
158 ACHARYA V1NOBA BHAVE
I
of spiritual equality meant women’s right to sannyasa,

renunciation of and non-attachment to earthly ties and
possessions and Brahmacharya, celibacy. His ideas on
women’s liberation expressed on many occasions in his long
career are available in a collection titled Women’s Power.
The second concern of Vinoba was that of the Devanagari
script. He stood for its adoption as a second script by all the
languages of the country, without giving up their own script.
He felt that if this happened, it would be easier for various
linguistic groups to learn other languages of the country, all
the more so since many words of Sanskrit origin are common
in them. As such, he saw four advantages in the adoption of
the Devanagari as a second script. First, the four languages of
south India would come closer, since within a few weeks a
person of the south would be able to pick up the other three
languages of that region. Secondly, it would help in
integrating the south with the north. Thirdly, it would also
help to unify the north. Lastly, it might bring India and other
Asian countries, and ultimately India and the world, closer to
each other. This last hope of his was based on the phonetic
nature of the Devanagari script. He did not favour the
adoption of the Roman script for Indian languages because,
despite some points in its favour, it had some serious defects
on account of which the late George Bernard Shaw had
under his will even left a part of his estate for devising a new
script for the English language.
Vinoba had mooted the idea of the Devanagari script for

all Indian languages as early as 1960. He had again laid stress
on it in 1971 and clarified that he wanted it only as a second
script. However, serious efforts in this direction began only in
February 1974, when a seminar on Devanagari script was
held at Paunar to popularise his ideas on it. It led to the
formation of a Devanagari Lipi Parishad, which, besides
holding conferences, undertakes publication of a self-teaching
series of the various Asian languages in Devanagari with
Hindi as its language. The languages covered up so far are
Chinese, Japanese, Sinhalese, Basha, Indonesian language,

Persian and Arabic. As regards the Indian languages, there
are already many such publications in the market. Vinoba’s
Gita Pravachan, is also available in different languages of
the country in the Devanagari script.
The third subject of Vinoba’s nidhyasana was Acharyakul.

Vinoba believed in the Vedic saying, “Let all good thoughts
come to us from the four corners of the world.” All good
ideas, indigenous or foreign, old or new, were thus welcome
to him. But he did feel that indigenous ideas developed in the
soil of the country in response to its needs had special
importance, and he strongly approved of Patanjali’s Yoga
Sutras, which dealt with education both from the viewpoints
of mental and supramental levels. He said: “It is imperative to
consider education in terms of psychology, since, without it, it
would never be able to make a start. But while the knowledge
of psychology is essential for initial steps in education, some
knowledge is also required of the supramental to underline its
final stage, its goal.”
According to Vinoba, a teacher must have the three

qualities of love and affection for the pupils, the habit of
ever-seeking knowledge and loyalty to society involving
freedom from involvement in active politics. The first two
need no elucidation, but the third does. Vinoba felt that these
days the student mind was already too much obsessed by
active politics, and the condition was bound to worsen by
teachers’ involvement in power politics.
The purpose of Acharyakul was not the acquisition of

power by teachers, but to make them conscious of their
duties and ready to fulfil them. The remedy suggested by him
for their falling prestige in society was “Know thyself’. He
said that a person who knew himself became a new man.
With his stay in Paunar, his interest in Acharyakul led to its
growth. However, in the beginning it had only a Central
Committee and then came State Committees in some States,
/
but it never assumed the form of an effective and influential

organization. The reason probably primarily lay, as Vinoba
himself had once said, in that the educated had gone astray.
Gandhi too had been sorely disappointed at the “hardness of
the heart of the educated”. Consequently, even the first
Acharyaku! conference was only held in November 1973.
Then came the conference of the Acharyas in January 1976,
mentioned in the last chapter. The second Acharyakul
Conference was also held that year, and the third in October
1980. This last conference had been attended by some 900
delegates. Prior to it, an assembly had also been held at
Sevagram in which some fifty intellectuals had participated.
Such an assembly was also held in April 1981.
With time, the membership of Acharyakul was also thrown

open to others besides teachers engaged in the task of
moulding public opinion, though the membership also got
restricted to those only who pledged not to even vote in
elections. With the extension of membership came also the
widening of its scope. Vinoba advised it in 1980 to work both
for Shanti Sena and Stri-Shakti. He was then even of the view
that no separate organization was needed to create an
awakening among women. But later he conceded that they
could have an organization of their own.
The fourth item of Vinoba’s meditation was that of Shanti
Sena. Some mention of it has already been made in the
previous chapter. What may be added here is that the first All
India Shanti Sena Conference was held in October 1981, and
was attended by some 500 Shanti Sainiks, a number beyqnd
the expectations of Vinoba. It had no youth wing, since it was
not considered necessary by Vinoba. The convenor was
nominated by him and he was Achyut Deshpande, whom he
used to call “Mian” because of his knowledge of the Koran.
The last subject of Vinoba’s nidhyasana was of Gram

Swaraj. The Gramdan part of it has already been dealt with
in chapter twelve. As indicated earlier, the Village-Oriented.
Khadi constituted another part of it which engaged Vinoba’s
special attention as Khadi Mission in these later years of his

life. The concept of this Mission was only new in name, the
central ideas behind it were old. Vinoba had carried out
several experiments in the Khadi field, especially in spinning,
in the pre-independence period. In the eyes of its workers in
general, due to the special circumstances of the times, Khadi
was then more a commercial measure related to the
alleviation of the poverty of the rural masses than to the
ushering in of a nonviolent society. Gandhi had both in his
mind, and as Independence seemed to come closer, he was
anxious to re-orientate Khadi in the light of the second
purpose. To Vinoba as well, Khadi was not amere cloth, but
a way of life and an instrument of societal change. Hence he
wanted Khadi workers not to look to the government for
support but to make it stand on its own legs with the support
of the people. That was the view that he had even expressed
at the Constructive Workers Conference held at Sevagram in
March 1948.
Despite it all, the Khadi institutions were losing their elan

vital and becoming commercial houses, looking to the
government for financial support. That was why that though
the production of Khadi continued to go up after the formation
of the Khadi and Village Industries Commission, the real
spirit of Khadi went on declining and the programme had no
impact on the rural scene, if considered in the light of
Gandhi’s thinking. Vinoba had been drawing attention of
Khadi workers to it, whenever he got opportunities for it. He
had said in 1959: “The Khadi work going on at present is like
a preparatory rite performed before death. I call the
government aid ‘oxygen’.” And there were several occasions
in the sixties when he emphasized the underlying spirit of
Khadi and the objective for which those engaged in it must
work. In an earlier chapter we have already referred to his
speeches at the Khadi Workers Conference at Nabagram in
Bengal, at the Raipur Sarvodaya Sammeian and during the
Storm Campaign in Bihar.
In addition to exhorting the workers to re-orientate

themselves, Vinoba was also asking the Khadi Commission to
transform itself into a ‘Khadi Mission’, but it had no impact
upon it. It was slightly different with workers, especially with
those who had worked with Gandhi and were heading the
Khadi and village industries institutions in various parts of
the country. They showed willingness to change themselves,
but didn’t know how to do it. So they met Vinoba in January
1981, who suggested to them to hold a meeting of all those
who were engaged in Khadi work to generate the Khadi
spirit. But then the question arose as to who should call that
meeting, and ultimately it was convened by Vinoba himself in
September that year. Inaugurating it, he asked the Khadi
workers to form a Khadi Mission and gave them some
guidelines for it. Its formation and the names of its first
members were announced on Gandhi’s birthday next month.
The word ‘Khadi’ used above included other village

industries as well, and as such the term ‘Khadi Mission’ stood
for “Khadi Gramodyog Mission”. It is a fraternity of all Khadi
and village industries workers, including artisans, and it
serves as a forum for all institutions in the field. The
guidelines given by Vinoba included the following:
1. Integrate science with spirituality.
2. Be fearless, without malice and non-partisan. Do not
enter politics.
3. Join Acharyakul, build up Shanti Sena and work for
Gram Swaraj.
4. Kakasaheb gave the mantra “A-sarkari asarkari”,
non-government is effective. Work, keping it in
view.
5. Khadi workers should meet from time to time. Thev j
might either meet at Paunar or at Sevagram once a

year.
However such a meeting called “Khadi Sabha” could not

be held again in his life-time after its formation. The next
meeting was held at Paunar in February 1983, three months

after he had passed away.
What remains now to be dealt with as the last topic of this

chapter, is his concern for the cow, leading to his demand for
a total ban on the slaughter of the whole bovine cattle.
Addressing some eminent constructive workers on 16 April
1976, he observed: “The cow is the base of economic
planning and development in India. It gives us wholesome
milk, useful bullocks for agriculture, manure to enrich the
fields, Gobar gas for supplying valuable energy to the
countryside, and bones and skins for rural industries after its
death. We cannot find a more useful animal in the country
than the cow. It must be saved from slaughter in the vital
interests of national economy.” Next month in a conversation
with the Maharashtra Chief Minister, he again laid stress on
the importance of the cow and indicated that if the ban on its
slaughter was not soon imposed, he would have to fast for it.
On 29 May, he issued a statement giving 11 September, his
birthday, as the last date for the ban, failing which he was to
undertake a fast unto death.
On 2 June, while talking to some fellow workers, he told

them that 1976 was the birth centenary year of his mother,
who had taught him to first water the Tulsi plant, then to feed
the cow and to take his meals only after that. She also wanted
him to do something for the cow, saying that it would be very
good for the country if it could be saved. Vinoba said that
though his mother was dead, it would certainly be of
immense benefit to the country if he could save the cow. If he
was able to do it, well and good. If not, he would die happily
with the name of God on his lips. Addressing a meeting of the
Krishi Goseva Sangh on 13 June, he made it very clear that
his demand was not inspired by any narrow religious motive,
and he justified it on four groimds, namely, the cultural
heritage of India, it being a part of the Directive Principles of
State Policy in the Constitution, it being the symbol of the
party in power and its importance in the rural economy.
The copies of the Maitri issue publishing this statement

were seized by the police though they were returned later.
Except for a few periodicals prepared to defy the
government, none others dared publish that statement.
Before, however, narrating the later events, it would be

pertinent to deal with Vinoba’s ideas on cow protection and
the circumstances forcing him to think of the extreme step of
a fast unto death for the ban, if required. According to him,
there were three perspectives from which the cow could be
viewed. One was the traditional perspective of veneration for
the cow which because of its unenlightened nature has led to
its neglect. The second was the scientific Western perspective
according to which the cow can only be reared if it is
economically useful. The third perspective, which was his,
was of Indian socialism. Explaining it, he had once said:
“Western socialism asks for a full and equal protection to all
human beings, but there it stops. We in India have gone a step
further and included the cow as a member of the family.
True, we have not fully acted upon it. We merely revere the
cow but do not look after it in the manner of the West.
Nevertheless, we do have a deep regard for it and consider it
worthy of our care and protection like human members of
the family. We do not drive family members out later when
they get old. Similarly, while we make full use of the cow and
the bullock... we do not kill them.” He, however, wanted
this perspective to be combined with the scientific one by
opening good dairy farms and pinjrapoles. He was convinced
that the preservation of the cow was economically viable.
In this context, it would be relevant to point out that Dr

Satish C. Dasgupta had in his study, The Cow in India,
published in 1945, torpedoed many misconceptions
prevailing among the educated in India. He had refuted the
idea that India’s cattle was a burden on its land and a drag on
its economic development. He had proved the superiority of
the bullock over the engine for ploughing and established the
inter-dependence between the cattle and other animals and
between nature and man. Lastly, he had also shown the

superiority of the cow over the buffalo.
Vinoba knew like Gandhi, that the cow could only be

saved with the help of the enlightened co-operation of the
people, and he was never tired of laying stress upon it. But
since the ban on the slaughter of cows, calves and bullocks
had been included in the Constitution as a Directive Principle
of State Policy, it was a constitutional pledge and the
government was expected to act upon it. The government, on
the contrary, seemed to be going the other way. Vinoba was
highly critical of the draft of the First Five Year Plan from
this point of view as well and had said: “In India you cannot
think in terms of cow slaughter. The Planning Commission
has not the courage to say in plain terms that all useless cattle
should be done away with. And yet the various programmes
included under Animal Husbandry indirectly lead to that
conclusion. We must think in terms of a complete ban on the
slaughter of cattle.” He $ven added that he would even assure
on behalf of the Muslims that they would not stand in the way
of banning cow slaughter totally. It may be mentioned here
that learned Muslims like Maulana Abdul Kalam Azad,
Maulana Abdul Bari and many others were of the view that
Islam does not enjoin slaughter of the cow, and on knowing
of the Vinoba’s decision to undertake fast unto death for the
ban, several religious leaders, Christians and Muslims, had
also pleaded for it.
Vinoba had been greatly surprised to know that cow killing
went on in Calcutta day in and day out in violation of the
laws,but no attempt was made to stop it. A Supreme Court
decision of 1958 justifying the total ban on the slaughter of
cows, calves and useful bullocks and opining that unless a
total ban was imposed, useful bullocks would continue to be
slaughterd in violation of the law, went unheeded. The net
results of all this indifference for reasons best known to the
governments concerned and of the desire of the Government
of India to earn maximum possible foreign exchange by the
export of beef and hides, has been the high price of the
bullocks, affecting adversely the poor small farmers and
doing irreparable loss to the cattle wealth of the country. The
two States of Bengal and Kerala with different vision of
society before them as against the rural civilization envisaged
by Gandhi and Vinoba, have been totally against it, and the
former has even on special occasions been permitting open
violations of the existing laws to please a particular section of
society. Some other States too, Maharashtra in particular, had
turned a blind eye to their, violations. The Central
Government also had been sitting over the issue and this was
despite the report of the committee appointed for the
purpose and its own assurances of commitments given in
1960 and 1979.
The government, however, could not be indifferent to the
proposed fast of Vinoba, and the Tamil Nadu Governor,
Mohanlal Sukhadia, took up the role of a mediator between
the government and Vinoba, probably on "the suggestion of
Indiraji. The Minister of Home Affairs informed the Rajya
Sabha on 3 September 1976 of the various steps that the
State governments were taking towards the prevention of cow
slaughter and Vinoba finding them satisfactory, announced
on 8 September of his decision to give up the idea of
impending fast. He attributed the near solution of the
problem to the blessings of God, his mother and Gandhi, and
to Indiraji.
But this success proved illusory. Vinoba’s demand that all

States, excepting Nagaland, should enact laws in accordance
with the Supreme Court decision, was complied with by
all states lacking it, with the exception of Bengal and Kerala,
though the Central Government had assured Vinoba that
they would also do it within a year. The efforts for it,
however, continued, but without success. And after a lapse of
two years, the workers not only admitted the failure of their
efforts but also informed Vinoba of the worsening situation
regarding cow slaughter in these two States. This compelled
Vinoba to announce that if the required legislations were not
THE LAST CONCERNS 167 ,
enacted by those states by the end of the year, he would begin
partial fast from the New Year Day of 1979 taking only water
and honey, and if this too did not work, he would go on to
full fast.
By this time, it was the Janata Government which was in

power at the Centre, and, even if sympathetic, its difficulty lay
in the ban legislation being within State list. Therefore, the
Centre could only legislate on it if the matter could be
included in the Concurrent List, and this required a
constitutional amendment, which could only be passed if the
Congress (I) co-operated in doing so. The Janata party lacked
the needed majority in the Rajya Sabha. The Congress (I) was
hesitant over it. However, the impending fast was postponed
for 111 days on the request of the workers who wanted more
time to try for the constitutional amendment, but on their
failure, the fast was begun on 22 April 1979. It was ended on
26 April on the statement of Prime Minister Moraiji Desai in
the Parliament assuring the required amendment of the
Constitution. But before it could be done, the Janata
Government had fallen.
However, the efforts for the amendment continued and so

also the campaign for ban in the form of explaining the need
of it to the people and urging them to give a scientific
orientation to their reverence for the cow. It also included a
programme of preventing cows and bullocks from being
taken to Bengal, Kerala or anywhere else for slaughter. All
this continues even today with a special front at Deonar
Abattoir in Bombay, where a gentle form of satyagraha is
being carried on ever since Vinoba gave instructions for it in
January, 1982, under the guidance of Achyut Deshpande, the
convenor of the All India Shanti Sena.
An incident connected with the demand for ban reflects
well on the gentle nature of satyagraha conducted on the
issue. Smt. Indira Gandhi came to meet Vinoba on 10 April
1982. Achyut Deshpande was asked to be present then. This
created an impression that Vinoba would speak to her about
the ban, but he did nothing of the kind, though Indiraji on her
own initiative informed him of the various steps her
government was taking for it. Vinoba simply heard it. While
departing Indiraji asked him if he would like to say anything.
Vinoba simply asked her to say “Ramhari, Ramhari” when
going in for sleep. When she left and someone asked Vinoba
why he did not say anything about the ban or allow Achyut
Desphande to speak to her, his, reply was, “The Deonar
Satyagraha is going on. Isn’t it?”
There are some who feel that the demand for this ban was a
fad of Vinoba. They even sometimes argue that Gandhi did
not favour a legal ban on cow slaughter. Such criticisms are
mistaken. Gandhi was not against ban; only in the particular
climate of the times, he did not press for it. There was
another reason for that too. The number of slaughters then
can stand in no comparison with that of these days. The writer
remembers to have read sometimes in the thirties that the
bovine cattle slaughtered numbered some 2.5 lakhs, of which
two lakhs were slaughtered to provide beef to the British
soldiers posted in India. The situation today is evident from
the statistics of slaughters at Deonar Abattoir alone, which
are being cited here as an example. The bullocks slaughtered
there in 1973-74 numbered 66,787 but in 1980-81, the
number was 1,21,656. The beef exported by the country in
1973-74 was 2,000 tons, while the export in 1979-80
amounted to 42,000 tons. And all this beef was of healthy
cattle for no country would like to pay for meat of weak or
sick cattle. Those who are conversant with Indian conditions
can well understand how easy it is here to bypass the laws. In
the context of the above criticism, one may refer to what a
perspective American wrote in an obituary note on Vinoba in
a USA pacifist periodical Win: “Much of the last ten years of
Vinoba’s life was taken up with attempts to gain an
India-wide enforcement of a ban on cow slaughter. Some saw
it as an act of political senility in a country beset by massive
corruption, poverty, social and religious strife. Others better
appreciated its economic and scientific (even if not its
political) sense, noting that the scrawny Indian cow offers far
more value in milk, fertilizer and organic fuel than it could in
edible protein." And he added: “For Vinoba, however, the
issue went far deeper. For the tens of millions of India’s rural
poor, the sale of the cow for slaughter represents the fast'
break of the family with the land, the cashing in of the last
insurance policy, the final defeat in the attempt to build an
egalitarian peasant and artisan culture. Still further, cow
slaughter for Vinoba represented a triumph of narrow
materialistic foreign values over indigenous ones. Respect for
cow ‘our mother’ as Vinoba was wont to say, symbolised
India’s respect for the natural world. The anti-cow-slaughter
campaign for Vinoba contained within it a revolutionary
critique of contemporary self-destructive world civilization.’’
There is nothing anti-secular in the demand for ban on cow
slaughter. As already told, there is nothing in Islam making it
obligatory for the Muslims to sacrifice the cow. On the other
hand, there is evidence that its flesh was not considered to be
good for health. And then all efforts are and have been made
not to allow it to become a communal issue. The very fact
that the convenor of the Shanti Sena and a scholar of the
Koran was' chosen by Vinoba to direct the Deonar
Satyagraha, points to that. And it may surprise many to know
that In the days of communal tensions in Bombay both the
threatened Hindus and Muslims in the vicinity had been
seeking shelter with these Satyagrahis. That speaks for itself.
The Passing Away
VINOBA HAD CROSSED eighty-seven on 11 September

1982.Death had no awe for him even in his young age, and
with time he had increasingly come to identify himself with
the in-dwelling soul, the atma, which, according to the Gita is
immortal. For the last twenty years or so, he had been feeling
that he had done all that an individual could and that he had
no desire left any more for any material achievement. He had
said several times that after seventy a person’s passport was
ready. All that one needed was visa, and that could come at
any time. The prescribed moment of death could not be
postponed, but one could determine the manner of one’s
death.
By and by Vinoba’s body was growing weaker and weaker.
A person who had covered some fifty thousand miles or
eight thousand kilometres on foot during his Bhoodan-
Gramdan tour, was finding even difficulty in covering a short
distance in the Ashram, but the aura around him was on the
increase, here was inflammation on his legs and the electo-
cardiogram taken on 7 August that year had revealed some
weakness of the heart. The dotors examining him from time
to time had feared that he might need a pace-maker any time,
and one had even been procured and kept in reserve for him.
They sought his permission to implant it, but he refused, on
30 October,he showed some symptoms characteristic of
THE PASSING AWAY 171
heart attack, but they subsided soon and he appeared normal.

The ECG taken on 3 November did not indicate any change
in his heart conditions, but on the 4th he had fever and then a
heart attack next day. Vinoba was co-operative with the doc¬
tors and on the 7th the doctors were satisfied with the im¬
provement in his condition. But he was somewhat reluctant
to take any medicine, food or water both on the 6th and the
7th. However, he had agreed to take them on those days. But
after 10.15 p.m. on the 8th, he refused to take anything. All
attempts to persuade him to take at least medicine and water
failed, including one made by Smt. Indira Gandhi who was
there on the 10th.
The doctors were worried at it, for they feared damage to

his kidneys, bleeding from his duodenal ulcer with intense
pain in it, and the possibility of heart attack again. He was
informed of the danger of his passing into coma, and the
doctors wanted his permission to give him medicine for it if it
happened, but he refused to accord it. However, he had been
feeling weak. On the 9 th, he said to Admit Deshpande who
had reached from Bombay two days earlier, “Baba feels all
exhausted now.” On the 14th night his condition became
highly critical with blood pressure was down to 50mm, and
the doctors felt that it would be all over within a few hours.
But to their amazement, after an hour and a half it went up
by itself to 128, his normal blood pressure, without the
administration of any medicine.
On the 15th morning, he was fully conscious and peaceful.

His feet were marking time with the repetition of •Ramhari,
Ramhari”, going on within him. Then at 9.00 his breathing
slowed down and at 9.30 he breathed his last in complete
peace, without any movement of head, dilation of eyes or
uttering of any sound. According to the doctors, he was fully
conscious an hour and a quarter before his death. None of
their fears had come true. Neither his kidneys had failed, nor
was there any bleeding from the ulcer, and his cough trouble,
somewhat a life companion of his, had even subsided. All this

reminded many of the famous lines of Kabir:
The Master took ten months to shape it

He fabricated the sheet well.
That sheet was used by gods, men and sages,
But they made it dirty by using it.
Kabirdas used it carefully
And left it unsoiled.
v*.
The day of his passing away was the blessed day of the
nirwana of Mahavir Swami, the founder of Jainism, for whom
Vinoba had special regard, and the manner of his death was
one highly commended in Jainism. The Government had
proposed a State funeral for him, but the Ashramites politely
declined it. It would not have accorded with his thinking. The
funeral pyre was lit, against the Hindu tradition, by
Mahadevitai, who had been with him since 1934, and his
ashes were buried in his room at the place he used to sit, in
accordance wjth his wishes. The Government of India
posthumously awarded him its highest honour of Bharat
Ratna on the next Republic Day in 1983, but it too was
declined by the Ashramites as they thought that Vinoba
would not have favoured its acceptance.
Vinoba’s death reminds one of his own ideal of stithprajna,

the ideal of a man of steadfast wisdom described in the
second chapter of the Gita, which Vinoba considered the
ideal of Gita itself. Vinoba’s picture of a stithprajna was that
of a person who was ever in the state of samadhi, not in the
sense of the highest state of dhyanasamadhi, a state of
complete absorption in meditation when one becomes fully
unconscious of the surroundings, so much so that he or she
would not even feel the amputation of any part of the body,
but a state of samadhi in which one remains fully conscious
of everything going on around him, including something being
done to one’s body, and yet he or she is a mere witness
thereof because of his or her complete identification with the
THE PASSING AWAY 173
in-dwelling soul Vinoba’s death testifies how much he had

risen over his physical body and what control he had
acquired over it. He used to say that he believed in
relinquishing his body before it relinquished him, and this
was what he did.
16
As a Thinker and Harmoniser
THE PRECEDING CHAPTERS have dealt with Vinoba’s

life and activities, with special emphasis on the ideas he had
been expressing from time to time. Though his primarily
spiritual personality is too deep to be fathomed unless one
has a requisite spiritual experience, there is none who would
not be impressed by the range and the depth of his ideas, and
his immense efforts to build a nonviolent social order in the
country.
Vinoba presents a unique combination of an Acharya and

a saint. He was, in particular, a child of Shri Shankaracharya
and Maharashtra saints, especially Sant Jnaneshwar, as
pointed out earlier, and, at the same time, a child of the
Indian Renaissance of the last century, as particularly per¬
sonified in the thought and actions of Gandhi.
The 19th century in India was an age of cultural synthesis,
when it produced a long line of thinkers, religious leaders and
social activists, who devoted themselves to the task of an all
round raising of the level of the Indian people in their own
ways, with varying permutations and combinations of what
seemed to them the best in various -thoughts and cultures.
The same is discernible in Vinoba. Consequently, in his life
and thought, there is an emphasis on the synthesis of science
and spirituality. Vinoba possessed a scientific temper, he had
made his personal life as scientific as he could, and he
AS A THINKER AND HARMONISER 175
welcomed every advance in science. But he was also aware

that a rudderless science poses an unprecedented danger for
humankind, and hence he wanted it to be bridled by
spirituality, and his concept of spirituality was not devoid of
moral and social contents, recognised universally.
Vinoba’s spiritual ideas had antidated his association with

Gandhi, whose keen eyes had read it at his very first meeting
with Vinoba. But his social ideas developed later, and they
bear the impress of Gandhi’s thinking. Their spiritual
approach being alike, Gandhi’s social thinking appealed to
him, and the development of his social thought, both prior to
and after Independence, is in accord with the basic ideas of
Gandhi. This can be well illustrated by taking up Vinoba’s
ideas on satyagraha, which have qven been criticised as
“undoing Gandhi through a process of subtle refinement”.
His concept of gentle and gentler satyagraha aimed at making
it more nonviolent, more capable to bringing about change
of heart by assisting in right thinking. All this accorded with
Gandhi’s own search for nonviolent methods, the example
he set in Noakhali when the problem was of changing the
attitude of those who were part and parcel of this very
society, and his ideas as to how he would nonviolently meet
the challenge of the nuclear bomb. The question about it had
been put to him by an American lady correspondent a few
hours before his death and Gandhi’s reply was: “I will not go
underground. I will not go into shelter. I will come out in the
open and let the pilot see that I have not a trace of ill-will
against him. The pilot will not see our faces from his great
height, I know. But the longing in our hearts—that he will
not come to harm—would reach up to him and his eyes *
would be opened.”
And then neither Vinoba claimed that he literally followed

Gandhi, nor Gandhi ever sought it of his followers. At the
1948 March Sevagram Constructive Workers Conference,
Vinoba had said: “Gandhiji gave me freely, but I also received
from others, Whereever 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.” He further clarified in
1949: “Some have begun to look upon me as a representative
of Gandhiji’s ideas.... But there can be no greater mistake
than this. It is true that so far my life has been spent in
carrying out those experiments of Gandhiji which appealed to
me, but this proviso ‘which appealed to me’ was always there.
I gained from his association and ideas and accepted
whatever seemed correct to me, leaving out others ” Thus
Vinoba’s development of Gandhi’s ideas has been in accord
with his own genius and understanding.
As already remarked in the Introduction, Vinoba was a
universal man, a vishwa manush in the words of the Rigveda.
Though he had never been outside the country and hardly
read newspapers, he had an intuitive grasp of the world
conditions and trends, and his thinking was global. He had,
with time, come to look more and more on the problems of
this country in the context of the world problems, and he
always acted on his maxim, seva vyakti ki, bhakti samaj ki,
which implies that the individuals only could be served but
the service must be done keeping in mind the good of society,
i.e., the good of the humanity as a whole. Gandhi’s services to
the country had conformed to this dictum, and so had
Vinoba’s. He also held, like Gandhi, that his search for
nonviolence in India was bound to prove of world
significance. The problem of the landless peasants which he
had raised was a problem shared by many thickly populated
countries of the South-East Asia, and it had a world
importance. It is testified by the fact that Gen. MacArthur’s
government in Japan after its defeat in the Second World
War, took the step of conferring the proprietorship of lands
on their actual tillers.
Vinoba’s thinking reflected the world’s best trends in his

optimistic world-view, ethical conception of civilization,

opposition to the market-oriented way of life, exploitation of
others, over organization and control of public life, loss of
individual freedom and aggressive nationalism. Many of the
best minds of the world like Albert Schweitzer, Bertrand
Russell, Arnold Toynbee, Ivan Illich and some others have
more or less arrived independently at the same conclusions.
When Bertrand Russell regarded Vinoba as symbolising the
“conscience of the world in human affairs”, he might also
have had in mind the trend of his thinking besides the fact of
his being on a very high moral and spiritual level.
Vinoba’s outstanding and major services to this country,

and through it to the world, have been threefold. First, he
clarified many ideas of gandhi, which were being misunder¬
stood or minsinterpreted, and, at places, he developed them
taking into account the changed conditions of India in parti¬
cular and of the world in general. There is no aspect of
Gandhian thought which remained untouched by him, be it
the ethical discipline, the nonviolent interpretation of history,
the concept of revolution, the various principles governing a
nonviolent, social, economic and political order, ideas on
constructive work including those regarding constructive
workers, education, planning or satyagraha. Appendix B has
spelled out this contribution in some details.
Secondly, he kept the Gandhian thought alive in post¬

independent India, when the general tendency was to
forget it as if its relevance was confined only to the freedom
struggle. And he did it creatively, enhancing its relevance in
the eyes of the world.
Lastly, he picked up the thread of nation-building from
where Gandhi had left it by its death. His efforts to build up a
nonviolent social, economic and political order in the
country by starting its process with the Bhoodan movement,
elicited for him both national and international admiration
and praise. We have already cited elsewhere Loui$ Fischer
who had characterised it “as the most creative thought

coming from the East”. True, the movement’s achievements
stood in no comparison to its targets, but they were not
negligible if examined in the light of the national efforts put in
for them. Moreover, the Movement brought into focus a
neglected problem of the landless which the politicians had
neither the imagination to realize nor the courage to take up
in right earnest after they became aware of it.
The movement had given rise to the hope of a moral

^regeneration in the country, as pointed out by Chester
Bowles (vide chapter eight). But it does not seem to have
happened. Why it has been so, needs ah explanation. The first
reason, as it appears to the author, is that the movement had
to contend against the rising trend in the world towards
materialism and amoralism, with its impact on Indian society
characterised by scarcity and poverty. Secondly, the workers,
in general, did not approach the people for land-gifts in the
way Vinoba wanted them to do, by explaining to them the
new values implied in the Movement. They looked upon it as
a time-consuming process without corresponding results.
Hence their preference was for short cuts to acquire
land-gifts, missing the inculcation of new values among the
people. Thirdly, there is a limit to spiritual and moral
development in society unless the general conditions undergo
favourable changes. We notice the truth of it in physical
matters like the growth of hair or increase in height, and the
same is true of morality. Lastly, a moral uplift needs a longer
period of sustained efforts than a decade or two. However,
no effort really goes in vain, and the movement in one form
or another, can be expected to rise again after its period of
hibernation is over.
To end, there is much in the personal life of Vinoba to
inspire all of this or the coming generations to transform their
own lives and to restructure society. His own life, as
mentioned earlier, was highly scientific with full control over
himself, and his social efforts were motivated by a pure
sense of duty with no ulterior motive and ego involved. A
believer in the oneness of the whole creation, all his efforts

were directed towards the joining of hearts, and he was
against all divisive forces, be they the politics of power,
sectarianism or any other. In this context it may be
mentioned that he had taken special pains to extract essence
of the scriptures of the various important faiths, as mentioned
in the Appendix A, to bring about a better understanding
amongst the people of other religions. In all he was
responding to a pressing demand of this age.
Vinoba looked upon Gandhi as an idea and not as a
person, and one can easily presume that he must have liked
to be treated similarly. Hence, if some sitting on his shoulders
and thus looking far ahead, continue to work for individual
and societal transformations, they can well expect his
blessings in their work in the manner he felt he had of
Gandhi.
!
.
i
Appendix A
Vinoba as a Man of Letters:

His Books
VINOBA ATTACHED FAR greater importance to the

spiritual teachers of society than to its political leaders. While
working among the Meos near Delhi in 1948, he once asked
them if they knew Akbar the Great. The reply was that they
knew Allah-o-Akhar, but they were however, familiar with
the name of Kabir, showing thereby that it were the spiritual
teachers of humankind which counted with them and not
the political leaders, no matter how eminent they be. In
consonance with this view, he once questioned Pandit Nehru
if Tulsidas was born in the age of Akbar or vice versa. Nehru
who had in a book mentioned Tulsidas as belonging to the
age of Akbar, could only say that he had followed the
prevailing practice.
Vinoba had also his own ideas what good literature is.
According to him, such literature is for all, attracts all and
people like keeping it. The Sanskrit word Sahitya used for
literature expresses it well. Secondly, a piece of good
literature is open to several interpretations, and it is this
quality which imparts it, its abiding character. Not only
different persons interpret it differently, but the same person
can read different meanings in it at different times. Thirdly, it
is characterised by a deep sense of humility. The sense of
“I-ness” acts as an impediment to an artistic creation. A
literary artist has to forget himself and to become objective
i
like a thermometer. He has to be like an umpire watching the

play going on around him, with deep interest but without any
bias. Lastly, a good literature must observe truth and
nonviolence. A classical example of the observance of truth
is provided by Vyas, the author of the Mahabhardt who
describes his own birth and that of some other members of
the Hastinapur royal family with all frankness and objectivity.
Adherence to nonviolence implies that the literature should
only suggest and not impose its ideas on others, a quality
found in Valmiki’s Ramayana.
However, Vinoba did not consider himself to be a
litterateur, though he felt that his works would find a place in
literature and read for his view of life, reflecting his goodwill
for all. Below is a classified list of his basic books, which have
been mostly translated in several Indian languages, except
those which are in verse.
I Books Written by Him

1. Abhang Vraten, A rendering in Marathi verse of
Gandhi’s prose book. Mangal Prabhat which deals
with his eleven vows and is titled in English as From
Yeravda Mandir.
2. Gitadhyaya Sangati. It gives the correlation between
the various chapters of the Gita and was written at
the suggestion of Gandhi.
3. Gitai. A simple rendering in Marathi verse of the
Gita as desired by his mother.
4. Gitai—Chintanika. Jottings on his own book Gitai,
explaining sublime points implied in it.
5. Gitai Kosh. A lexicon of the words in Gitai.
6. Ishavasyavritti. A commentary in the traditional
style of Ishavasyoupanishad written on Gandhi’s
suggestion.
7. Sarnyasutra and Samyasutravritti. They explain the
Gita in sutra or aphorisms.
8. Vicharpothi. Random thoughts jotted down from
APPENDIX 183
time to time in the twenties. Also available in

English translation as Random Reflections.
II Books prepared from his writings in periodicals, edited by

him or his colleagues.
1. Madhukar.
2. Jivanadrishti.
3. Ramanama Ek Chintan. A critical study of
Gandhi’s book Ramanama.
4. Santacha Prasad. It contains his explanatory notes
in Marathi on some of the poems of Sant Tukaram,
a famous saint of Maharashtra.
5. Upanishadancha A bhyasa.
III Books prepared from his discourses in jails.

1. Gita-Pravachan. A well-known discourse on the
Gita available in its English translation as Talks on
the Gita.
2. Stithprajna-Darshan. They are lectures on the last
eighteen verses of the second chapter of the Gita
the book is available in English translation as The
Steadfast Wisdom.
3. Swarajya-Shastra. It gives an outline of a non-violent
political order and is available in English under the
same name.
IV Books prepared by colleagues from speeches delivered

during the Bhoodan-Gramdan tour.
1. Acharyakul. A summarised version of it is available
in English in Third Power.
2. Adhyatma-Tattva-Sudha.
3. Atmajnana Aur Vijnana. A part of it is available in
English translation as Spirituality and Science.
4. Ashram-Digdarshan.
5. Bhagwat Dharma Sar. It is based on the Oriya book
of Jagannathdas, named Bhagwat.
6. Bhoodan—Ganga in eight volumes, selected and
edited by Nirmala Deshpande.
7. Japuji.
8. Khadi-Vichar. Also contains the speeches delivered
mostly before the Bhoodan period.
9. Karanta-Darshan.
10. Lok-Niti. An English translation based on it is also
available as Democratic Values.
11. Mohabbat Ka Paigham. It is a collection of
speeches delivered in Jammu and Kashmir State.
12. Nagar-Abhiyan. Speeches delivered in Indore on his
stay there in 1960.
13. Prerak Patransh. It contains inspiring portions of
many letters of Vinoba, selected by his younger
brother Balkoba.
14. Prerna -Pra vah.
15. Sapti-Shaktian.
16. Shanti-Sena. It contains his ideas on Peace Brigade.
It is also available in English translation under the
same title.
17. Shikshan Vichar. Most of the matter in it is from the
periodicals and speeches delivered before the birth
of Bhoodan but after the death of Gandhi. It is also
available in English translation as Thoughts on
Education.
18. Stri—Shakti. It is also available in English
translation as Women’s Power.
19. Suchita Se Atmadarshan.
20. Teesari Shakti. Much of it is available in English as
Third Power.
21. Vinoba Vichar Sankalan. It is a short collection of
Vinoba’s ideas on various matters and has been
selected and edited by Vishwanath Tandon. A much
larger version of it is available in English as
Selections from Vinoba.
V. Books edited by Vinoba with subject-wise arrangement.

1. The Essence of Christianity.
2. Gurubodh. It is from the books of Shankaracharya.
APPENDIX 185
3. Manushasanam. It is from Manusmriti.

4. Namaghoshasar. It is from the scripture of the same
name written by Madhavadeva of Assam.
5. Rigvedasar.
6. Ruhul Koran. It is also available in English as The
Essence of Koran.
7. Tulsi Ramayana Sar.
8. Upanishadasar.
9. Vinayanjali. It is a selection from Tulsidas’
Vinayapatrika.
10. Five volumes dealing with the abhangas (verses) of
the Maratha saints with explanatory commentaries
on the poems of Sant Jnaneshwar and with a long
editorial note on Eknath.
Besides these books giving the essence of different
scriptures, some Jain scholars, at Vinoba’s suggestion, also
prepared an essence of Jain scriptures, titled Samansuttam. It
may also be mentioned here that Vinoba was very adept in
extracting essence from various religious books and would
miss no important point. He took much trouble in preparing
them.
/
Appendix B
Vinoba ’$ Contribution to
Gandhian Thought
VINOBA’S CONTRIBUTION TO Gandhian or Sarvodaya

thought has been highly significant, as recognised by even
those who are considered to have been very close to Gandhi
and good interpreters of his thought. Here an attempt is being
made to give in very brief his outstanding contribution.
There is no field of thought which he did not touch. To
begin with ethical principles, Vinoba tried to remove a
prevailing misunderstanding that nonviolence, as indicated by
the construction of the world itself, was something negative. Hence
he generally used the words “love and compasssion” for it,
emphasizing its positive aspect. He applied the ethical principle
of non-possession to institutions as well, something not absent
from the mind of Gandhi but which was not enforced since
he lacked an occasion for it. Vinoba laid special stress on it
by showing how institutions living on permanent funds
violated some Gandhian ethical tenets, and he made his
movement give up reliance on such funds. He also clarified
that the Gandhi’s concept of trusteeship stood for the
abolition of private property. This interpretation of his had
even been questioned by some, but Vinoba had the support
of eminent Gandhians like K.G. Mashruwala, Acharya
Kripaiani and Kaka Kalelkar, and also of Pyarelal, who had
been a secretary of Gandhi. He also explained that the
APPENDIX 187
fearlessness does not simply stand for lack of fear in one, but
also of the tendency to frighten others. He removed the
misconception that Swadeshi implied any narrowness of
mind and behaviour. He said: “If we boycott articles giving an
extreme interpretation to the moral obligation of Swadeshi,
we shall prove ourselves to belong to a past world.... It is all
right to produce our food and cloth, but to try to produce
everything will be returning to a bygone age.”
Vinoba could never appreciate a secularism which

denounced religions, but, like Gandhi, he was a very staunch
advocate of sarva-dharma-samabhava, equal regard for all
religions, and he actively worked for it. Besides trying to get
Hindu temples opened to men of other faiths as well, he
carefully studied, as pointed out in the Appendix A, the
scriptures of other important faiths to extract their essence
for a better understanding of religions of others and one’s
own.
He supported Gandhi’s nonviolent interpretation of history

by citing examples from the cultural history of ancient India,
and he defined the Gandhian concept of revolution, for
which probably Gandhi had not felt any need but which
Vinoba seems to have felt in view of the confusion prevalent
about it in society. A revolution, accordinig to him, implied
an all round social revolution in society and he held that all
such revolutions have their base in spiritual ideas. He defined
it as “‘a change of heart, a change of values”, and said: “My
aim is to bring about a threefold revolution—a change in the
hearts of the people, a change in their way of life and a
change in social structure.” But he wanted to achieve it by
peaceful methods, rejecting violence, even on the pragmatic
grounds of its wanting in wisdom to impose limits on itself, of
bringing many more problems in its train, of lacking in
capacity to strike at the root of any problem and of the
inability of any evil to conquer another evil. He emphasized
the sociological truth behind the principle of the purity of
188 ACHARYA V1NOBA BHAVE
means and rejected violence as it could never be a right

instrument for any real and abiding change.
His process of revolution, as observed in his Bhoodan
movement by JP, was dual, an appeal to intellect and reason on
one hand and on the other an appeal to the hearts of
individuals as well. There was in it a mass campaign of
conversions to persuade people to give up wrong and
harmful ideas, ways and values and to accept the correct
ones. These new ideas and values were so chosen that they
had a direct bearing on a major social problem and their
acceptance was expected to lead to the solution of the problem
and incidently to a radical change in society. Its another
important feature was that a phased programme hacTbeen so
contrived that even common people could move forward, by
easy steps, towards a seemingly difficult goal. And this
programme had a mass character, since it would have been
difficult for an individual to live a moral life in the midst of
immorality. At the same time, it was also so devised that
moved by the new ideas and values, people could co-operate
to create new institutions and forms of social life.
As regards social structure, Vinoba fully agreed with
Gandhi on the desirability of the varna system, which he
distinguished from the caste system as an organisation of
society on the basis of hereditary occupational groups which
takes advantage of inherited tendencies of individuals and of
their upbringing in their particular family environments. He
felt that some such system was necessary in an ideal society,
but he outright rejected the caste system as a perversion of
the varna system in which segregation and inequality of status
had no place.
However, not all Gandhian thinkers agreed with Vinoba, or

with Gandhi, on this issue. But there were no differences on
the emphasis Vinoba laid on the ashram system, which
divides life into the four stages of brahmacharya, grishastha
(the householder stage), vanaprastha (the hermit stage) and
APPENDIX 189
scumyasa (the stage of renunciation). His emphasis on

brahmacharya has been mentioned several times earlier and
what needs special mention here is his strong advocacy of the
hermit stage to provide experienced social workers to society.
At the same time, there was no under-rating of the
householder stage, which he revered and felt that if properly
observed, it paved way for a successful observance of the
next two stages. He did not consider it to be a period of
license for self-indulgence, but one for the purification of
mind and heart and for the development of love and
compassion and a training period for social service.
Regarding the fourth stage, he said that it was an inner
development and not something which could be adopted. He
looked upon the ashram system as a top-pride of the Hindu
view of life.
Winoba did not have a high opinion of city culture. He held

cities responsible for exploiting villages. To reinvigorate
villages, he advised change in the educational system, revival
of village industries and land distribution. But he did not
plead for the destruction of city industries, which could
continue to produce for city consumption and export. At the
same time, he wanted the villages to have the power of
controlling their imports, including total ban on the import of
food stuffs and factory textiles.
Like Gandhi, Vinoba too stood for simple life which he

defined as a life which takes into consideration the standard of
living prevailing in society as a whole. He said: “Some have
presumed that higher the standard of living, the greater will
be happiness. But God has not so constituted a human being.
One is only happy in a middle state, though it is difficult to
define it. Extreme poverty leads to various sins, and so does
affluence.”
His attitude towards science was all favourable, but he
distinguished between science and technology, and his
attitude towards the latter was pragmatic. While rejecting
destructive machines altogether, he accepted the productive

ones which were useful and did not adversely affect
employment. He also said: “A machine helpful in one country
might be harmful in another. A machine helpful in one period
of time might become harmful at another. No set formula can
be laid down to prejudge if a machine is harmful or helpful.
We, therefore, have neither a blind infatuation for machines
nor any irrational opposition to them. Capacity to serve will
be the sole criterion for the acceptance or rejection of any
machine.”
He did not regard industrialism to be a curse. His view was

that though in the beginning the new technology has resulted
in the exploitation of the peoples, it has a purpose to serve in
the world, which is to liberate them from unnecessary physical
labour they are forced to do, and it is possible to do it if
proper use is made of technology. Hence he believed that the
prevailing concept of industrialism would lose its hold on the
mind of the people only after its good points have been
assimilated by society. ‘
He insisted on village industries since the peasantry in
India could not survive on agriculture alone, though one may
also stress here their indispensability for a non violent society
since it implies capacity to resist and that requires
self-reliance in primary needs of life. To the objection that
they were inefficient, his reply was: “We surely want
efficiency, but millions cannot be starved in its name. I want
full employment for all. If village industries help in it, we shall
adopt them. What makes millions to starve for want of
employment, does not deserve to do called ‘efficiency’.” The
principal he laid down for a village industry was that its raw
material was produced locally and local consumption of its
finished product received priority.
The other economic principles advocated by him were
self-sufficiency and co-operation. His concept of
self-sufficiency, following that of Swadeshi, was not narrow.
He had observed: “It need not be an isolating factor. I wish
APPENDIX 191
people to co-operate consciously on as wide a scale as

possible. Self-sufficiency enables a person to co-operate
intelligently with as many groups in the world as one can.
From the village republics to the world government there
can be a continuous and widening sphere of intelligent
co-operation in which all will help one another.” What he
primarily stood for was that villages were self-sufficient in
their primary needs of life. He was for voluntary co-operation
which he regarded to be an eternal principle of life, and
favoured it in various agricultural activities like ploughing,
irrigation, night watch, etc., but as regards co-operative
farming, he did not feel that the country was yet ready for it,
though he personally preferred it.
His political ideal was a government-free society, which did

not mean a society devoid of government, with anarchy
prevailing in it. He meant by it a society in which the citizens
possess control over themselves and discharge their duties,
eliminating the need of an outside control to the utmost. This
is what he also understood by self-government. In
accordance with this view of his, he called a “welfare state”
and “ill-fare state”, and instead wanted a welfare society. But
his process for a government-free society was a gradualist
one, the first step being the establishment of a “good
government” and then progressively advancing towards a
government-free society. His criteria for a “good government
included promotion of international brotherhood, intelligent
cooperation of all elements within a nation to the best of their
ability, the most extensive distribution of power, the least
amount of governing, the simplest governmental machinery,
the smallest organisation of defence, and spread of knowledge
everywhere, a knowledge which was free in the sense that it
did not have to follow any approved or established lines.
Vinoba did not deny the importance of politics, but he was
certainly against a politics which created divisions amongst
the people and laid too much stress on power politics to the
neglect of developing the power of the people. He said: “We
do not deny the importance of politics, nor do we want to run

away from it.... On the contrary, our politics is based on
stark realism. We want to change the spirit of politics.” He
felt that a government coming into power on the bare
majority of 51 per cent votes or even less, could not be said
to represent people, and he wanted to correct that deformity.
Though he conceded the superiority of democracy over other
politics, he did not find the existing democracies to be
satisfactory enough, since they depended on bureaucracies
and their ultimate reliance was on the military. He held that'
the form of democracy adopted by this country was a
senseless imitation of the West, and unless we adopt a form
suited to our conditions, the country’s troubles would not
end.
i
Though he was ideally opposed to political parties with

their narrow loyalties and ideas and regarded them as
outdated in this age of science, he was not for their
immediate abolition but wanted them to be reformed so that
their mutual animosity was replaced by good relationship
between them. He did not, however think that only organised
opposition could keep the party in power on the right track.
For that, he attached greater importance to the existence of a
band of workers who, while keeping aloof from power
politics, would stand between the rulers and the people,
pointing out to both their mistakes, fostering mutual trust
between them, and working for strengthening the power of
the people.
His suggestion for the reform of the existing political

system included a common programme of work on which
all parties agreed, decision by consensus rather than by
majority votes, indirect elections at all levels except at the
lowest combined with political decentralization, which he
termed as Gram Swaraj in the context of this agricultural
country, but whose outlines could be suitably modified to
serve the purpose of urban India as well. His concept of
Gram Swaraj was based on Gandhi’s concept of village
APPENDIX 193
republics with some additional ideas thrown in, while

outlining further his own picture of it. Its main features, as
thought out by him, were settlement of the village disputes in
the village itself, defence of the village by its own strength,
control over village exports and imports, and self-sufficiency
in the primary needs of life, food in particular. And to this he
had also added provision of medical help through indigenous
system of treatment, provision for the education of all
children, no private ownership of land, and village
cooperative shops. He considered Gram Panchayats to be
India’s unique contribution to social thinking.
However, all this did not mean that his outlook was
parochial. He envisaged a world without walls and a world
federation based on nonviolence in which all powers to
serve would vest in lower institutions, the higher ones
having advisory functions regarding them and commanding
moral sanction based on public opinion. His attitude towards
disarmament, war and pacifism have been sufficiently spelled
out in various chapters, and so also his attitude towards
crimes along with the events in Chambal Valley, and they
need not be repeated here.
The outline picture of thex society of his conception

delineated above may seem utopian to many and some may
even have genuine differences with him on it, but what rather
• matters more is if his basic approach is correct, and of this
there is probably no doubt. Many ideas of Gandhi rejected by
his contemporaries are being hailed today as highly relevant,
and amongst the persons praising them now are also some former
critics of his who are living today. In any case, the primary
question is how to work for its realization. Vinoba was aware
of the difficulty of the task and he preferred moving towards
it patiently step by step, every step directed towards the
objective. His technique, as advocated and practised by him,
can be divided under the four heads of constructive work,
education, planning and satyagraha. Vinoba was basically a
constructive worker and an educationist. His various
constructive programmes and his ideas about that work have

been dealt with in the various chapters.
It has not been possible to deal in this book much of his

ideas on education, expressed mostly in the intervening
period between the death of Gandhi and the birth of the
Bhoodan movement. It may suffice to say here that he stood
for a complete overhaul of the educational system, its
reorganisation on the principles of Basic Education or Nai
Talim, and its complete freedom from state control like
judiciary. He expected the teaching community, in particular,
to spearhead a nonviolent social revolution in society by
playing their legitimate role as an educator of the public.
As regards planning, enough has been said in the book

proper in the context of his criticism of the various Plans and
his increasing disappointment at their failure to solve the
country’s problem of colossal unemployment and to better
the condition of the weaker segments of society. We have
also dealt with his ideas on satyagraha in the context of the
changed national and international situation since the days of
Gandhi. All that needs no repetition, but it may be pointed
out that the critics of his ideas may well prove to be as
shortsighted as were the critics of the economic ideas of
Gandhi during his life-time. The spiritual thinking of Vinoba
with its penetrating insight and habit to see realities beyond
appearances may, before long, prove to be correct.
This, in very brief, is Vinoba’s contribution to the Gandhian
social and political thinking. His name would ever be
remembered along with that of Gandhi.
Abdul Ghaffar Khan, Khan (Bad- Allies, 39
shah Khan; Frontier Gandhi), Amarnath, 80
124, 133, 140 Ambassador's Report, 66
Abhanga, 3 Andhra, 48, 70, 71, 87
Abhidhyana, 126, 127, 128, 129, Angul, Orissa, Second Sarvodaya
153 Sammelan, at, 50
Acharyakuh 113, 114, 129, 132, Animal Husbandry, 165
153, 159-160, 162; Conferences, Annapurna, idol of, 6, 8
149, 160; programme of, 112 Annasaheb Sahasrabuddhe, 69
Acharyas, 148; Conference of, 160; Anushasan, 146, 148
role of, 146 Arambagh, Sarva Seva Sangh ses¬
Adoni, 71 sion at, 96, 98, 101
Advaita (non-duality), 18 Armaments (see also Disarmament)
Afghanistan, 80 99
“(An) age of equality". 1 57 Arvind, 1 1
Agitation, 143 Ashram(s), 7, 20, 21, 22, 33, 106,
Agra, 54 107, 155, 170; Ashram life, 42;
Agricultural Labour, landless, 52 ’Ashram principles, 23: Ashram
Ahimsa, 47 system, 188, 189; three episodes
Ahmed, Z.A., 74 of, 21-22; Ashramites, 172
Ahmedabad, 77; Communal riots Assam, 84-;s5, 90, 93, 96, 105, 1 16,
in, 124; Gandhi's Ashram in. 18; 132, 156, 157; Linguistic riots in,
Vinoba Bhave with Gandhi, in. 84-85; women power in, 92
19-23 Atma, 154, 170
Ajmer, 46, 76, 79; Sarvodaya Sam- Aurobindo, Shri, 131
mclan. 78 Axis powers. 39
A karma, 128 Avub Khan. President, 95
Akarmayoga, 106 Azad, Maulana Abul Kalam, 45,
Akili, 67 165
Akola Jail. 25
Allahabad, Central Prison at Naini. Baidyanathdham incident, 55-56
81 Bajaj, Jamnalal, 24, 27, 34, 79
Balkoba (Balakrishna), 1, 2, 4, 9, phase, 55; Palliative phase, 54-55:

21 phases of, 54-55; Pochampalli,
Balwantrai Mehta Report, 93 birth place of, 70
Bandh, 137 Bhubaneshwar, 68
Bang, 126 Bhusawal, 16
Bangalore, 139 Bigha-Kattha movement, 90, 91
Bangladesh, 122, 123, 129, 142; Bihar, 48, 49, 54, 60, 67, 68, 70,
war, 122-123 89, 90, 96, 100, 102, 106, 108,
Bankura, 56 109, 111, 112, 113, 124, 125,
Bari, Maulana Abdul, 165 126, 127, 136, 143; movement
Baroda, 2, 7, 8, 11, 12, 18, 21, 25; of, 141, 143; storm campaign of,
Baroda College, 12; Baroda High 103, 109, 110, 111, 127, 135,
School, 12; Central Library of 155; struggle of, 144
Baroda, 13, 14; Textile Mills in, 9 Bikaner, Vinoba visited, 46
Bedckar, 16 Block-dans, 110
Benares, 16, 18, 20; Benares Hindu Bochasan Ashram in Kaira district,
University, 18—Gandhi's speech 77
in inaugural week of 18,19 Bodhgaya, Ashram at, 65; Sarvod-
Bengal, {see also West Bengal) 17, aya Sammelan at, 55,65
20, 56, 100, 149, 166, 167; par¬ Bombay, 16, 47, 82, 151, 169, 171;
tition of, 1 1; revolutionary or ter¬ Deonar Abattoir in, 167, 168,
rorist movement in, 1 1; revolu¬ 169
tionaries of, 1 5 Bowles, Chester, 178; books by, 66
Bcrhampur, 69 Brahma Vidya, 129,153-154
Bhagwat, 68 Brahma Vidya Mandir, 2, 42, 49,
Bhakra, 79 109, 106, 147, 153,154,155
Bhandari, Charu Chandra, 149 Brahmacharya, 2, 5, 16, 20, 158.
Bhavc, Vinoba {see Vinoba Bhave) 188, 189 *
Bhavcs. 1 Brahmasutra, Shankar-Bhasya of.
‘Bhoodan campaign', 24 22
Bhoodan days, 3 Brahmins, 17
Bhoodan idea, 53 British Regime (Rulers), 11,116
Bhoodan Movement (Bhoodan- Browning, 100
Gramdan Movement) {see also Buckingham Mills, 2
Gramdan Movement), 6, 49, 50- Buddha, Lord, 16,50,65,80,120
56,67,68,71,72, 74, 85,87, 94, Buddhibheda, 64
96, 105, 1 12, 1 17, 148, 155, 177, Buddhidan, 60
194; Bhoodan—Gramdan tour,
170, 183; Bhoodan lands, 71; Calcutta, 96, 97, 165; press con¬
Bhoodan Samities, 71, 150; j ference at, 117
Bhoodan Yajna, 65; Calling At¬ Cape Camorin, 97
tention, 55; Congress Co-opera¬ Carding, 32
tion to, 57; Extensive land-gift Casteism (Caste System), 102,188
phase, 55; Fortification of Faith “Centre of Worship”, 80
INDEX 197
Cine Industry, 84 Cow slaughter, ban on (Protection),

Civil Disobedience Movement, 24, 53, 149, 151, 153, 163-169
31 Cultivators, hopes for, 49
Chamba district, 81 /
Chambal region (Valley), 81, 83, Dacca muslin, 37
193; Chambal Peace Committee, Dacoits, surrendering of, 81-83
83 Dalai Lama, 120
Chaitanya Mahaprabhu (Lord), 56, Daltonganj, 108
96 Dana, Charity, 70
Chandil, 65; Sarvodaya Sammelan Dandashakti, 62
at, 55, 62 Darshan, 1 8
Charity, 29 Das, Amalprabha, 157
Chastity, 20 Dasgupta, Dr. Satish C, 164; Cow in
Chigmaglur Constituency in Karna¬ India by, 164
taka, 150 Dattapur. Maharogi Seva Mandal
China (Chinese), 51, 80, 98, 99, of, 33
108, 1 19-121; action in Tibet, by, Dattatreya, 1
119; Indo-China relations, 106, Dawn, paper, 95
119-121; invasion of, 96; Nuclear Dayanand, Swami, 105
explosion by, 103; occupation of Defence, 118
Tibet, by, 137; relations with In¬ Delhi (New Delhi), 45, 47, 53, 54,
dia, 106; Sector, 121; threat of, 58, 60, 108, 116, 118, 149; Meos
119 near, 181; refugee camps in, 46;
Christ, Jesus, 85, 106; Christianity, visit to Refugee camps in, 46
102; Christians, 165 Democracy, 51, 86, 138; basic
Colombo proposals, 120 democracy, 95
Communalism (Communal prob¬ Deonar Abattoir in Bombay, 167,
lem), 95, 102; Communal riots in 168, 169; Deonar Satyagraha,
India, 95 168, 169
Communism, 138 Desai, Morarji, 150,151, 167
Communist Party of India (CPI), Desai, Narayan, 124
138 Deshpande, Achyut, 160, 167, 168,
Communists, 51,52, 58, 59 171
Community Development Move¬ Dey, S.K. 74
ment, 74; Projects, 63, 71 Dham, river, 34, 55
Consciousness, Divine, 154 Dhar, 84
Constructive Work (Activities, Dharma righteousness, 28
Programmes), 24, 47, 51, 72, Dharmadhikari, Dada, 106, 149
134, 177, 193, 194; Constructive Dharwar, 75
workers, 163—Conference of, at “Dhritarashtra Yojna”, 109
Sevagram, 115; Co-operation be¬ Dhubri, 91
tween government and, 87-88 Dhulia, 2, 8, 77; Dhulia Jail,. 32, 35,
Co-operation, 190-191 36, 77, 82; Dhulia talks. 41-42
Cow Husbandry, 32 Dhyanasamadhi, 172
Disarmament, 78, 123, 193 Gagoda, village, 1,2,8, 44

Discourses in Jails, 183 Gandhi, Indira, 121, 122, 137-138,
Diwakar, Dr. R.R., 130 142, 144, 145, 146-147, 148-
Dvaita (duality), 18 149, 150, 151, 157, 166, 167,
171
Gandhi, Magandas, 22, 24
Economic development, 116;
Gandhi, Mahatma, 2, 3, 7, 8, 9, 10,
Economic Man, 131; Economic
18, 24. 31, 33, 34, 35, 37, 38, 39,
disparity, 77; Economic planning,
41,43,44, 54, 56,61,66,73, 74,
163; Economic principles, 190
77,85,86,89, 98, 100, 102, 104,
Education, 110, 193, 194; Basic
105, 106, 115, 116, 117, 118,
Education (or Nai Talim), 49, 53,
131, 132, 134, 135, 140, 153,
79, 194—Conference, Rajpura,
155, 157, 160, 162, 165, 166,
Punjab, 79; new system of, 44;
separation of, 34; system of, 29, 168, 174, 175, 176, 177, 179,
186-194; All India Village In¬
79, 112-114, 189, 194; Zakir
Hussain Committee, 34 dustries Association by, 9; birth¬
Eknath, 3 day of, 54, 146; Birth Centenary
in (1969), 107, 109, 124; death
Emergency (1975), 146, 148, 149,
150 of, 44; economic ideas of, 194;
idea of non-violence, of, 1 16; In¬
Employment, Self, 190
Eternal, 6 dividual Satyagraha, 38-40;
speech in inaugural week of Be¬
Ethical discipline, 25, 45; Ethical
Man, 131; Ethical vows. Eleven, nares Hindu University, 18, 19;
20 Twenty-one Day (21-day) Hindu-
Europeans, 40 Muslim Unity Fast, 26, 41; with
Everyman's Weekly, 139, 144 Vinoba Bhave in Ahmedabad,
Exploitation, 29; 35, 177 19-23.
Gandhi and Marx by K.G. Mashru-
wala, 51
Farming, Intensive, 49 Gandhi Smarak Nidhi, 71
Fascism, 39, 40 Gandhian concept of revolution,
Fatehabad, 82 187
Fearlessness, 19, 20 Gandhian constructive programme,
Fischer, Louis, 177 33
Five-fold programme, 51 Gandhian Constructive Workers.
Flag Satyagraha, 27 131
Foreign policies, 118 Gandhian economy, 117
France, 38 Gandhian institutions, 49, 77
“Freedom from Government', 61 -62 Gandhian resistance, 85
Freedom from political entangle¬ Gandhian thinkers, 188
ments, 114 Gandhian Thought, 177, 186-194
Freedom Struggle (Freedom from Gandhians, 186
British Yoke), 34, 86, 106 Gandhism, 97
Friendship, policy of, towards, 99 Ganga, river, 18, 97
INDEX 199
Ganga Saran Singh, 74 126, 129, 131, 133, 135, 139,

Gangasagar, 96, 97 143; Easy Gramdan, 91, 101;
Ganjam, 69 Gramdan of Plassey, 96, 98; se¬
Guwahati, 92 ven basic objectives of, 69
Germany, Nazi, 38 Gramkosh, 141
Gherao, 137,144 “Grammer of Lokaniti”, 40
Gita, 8, 13, 22, 23, 25, 31, 32, 35, Green Revolution, 137
36, 41, 65,122, 170, 172 Gris hast ha, 188
Gita Pravachan, 95, 159 Gujarat, 77; Gujarat movement,
Gita Vallari, 41 141
Gitai, 31,35, 36; Gitai work, 133 Gulmarg, 80
Gitarahasya, 15 Gurgaon district, Meos, 46
Goa, issue of, 119; Indian military Gurudwaras, 79
action in, 93 Guruvayur temple, 73
Goalpara, 91
God, 4, 6, 7, 10, 14, 28, 39, 46, 47,
53, 57,-67, 70, 72, 73, 79, 83, 93, Hamirpur, 54, 67
95, 96, 104, 106, 110, 112, 127, Harijan, 38
136, 150, 154, 156, 163, 166, Harijans, 4, 32, 44, 47, 48, 52, 56,
189; God-intoxication, 3 73; Harijan localities, 46; opening
Godse, 44 wells to, in Wardha, 31; Temple
Gokarna-Mahabaleshwar temple, Entry Satyagraha by, Vaikom,
73 25-26; temple entry of, 56
Gopalrao, 1 Himachal Pradesh, 81
Gopuri, session of Sarva Seva Himalayas, 17, 20, 81
Sangh, at, 105 Hindu Raj, idea of, 46
Government: co-operation between Hinduism, 28, 44, 45, 69, 73, 111
Constructive Workers and, 87- Hindus, 46, 94, 95, 104, 111, 169;
88; “Good Government, 190; Caste Hindus, 46; Hindu-Muslim
Government-free Society, 191 Unity Fast, Gandhi was on his
Govindrao, 1 21-day, 26; Hindu pilgrimages as
Golwalkar, Guru, 102 venues of Sarvodaya Sammelanas,
“Grambharati” (Educative Pro¬ 76; Hindu Society, 157; Hindu
gramme), 93,135 temples opened to men of other
Gram Panchayats, 193 faiths, 187
Gram Sabha, 101,125 Hoshiarpur, Shiromani Akali Dal at,
Gram Seva Mandal, 32,33,44 79
Gram Swaraj Movement (Gram Hugo, Victor; Les Miserables by, 13
Swaraj), 72, 100, 107, 111, 129, Hungary, 137
131, 137, 153, 160-163, 192; Hunger, 80
Gram Swaraj Fund, 132-133 Hyderabad, 116; law and order si¬
Gramdan Movement (Gramdan), tuation in, 51; Third Sarvodaya
(see also, Bhoodan Movement), . Sammelan scheduled for (April
54, 57, 61-114, 120, 124, 125, 1951) at Shivarampalli, 50-51
Ideas, Peoples and Peace, 66 Jammu and Kashmir (see also

'ill-fare State”, 191 Kashmir), 81
Illicit, Ivan, 177 Jamshedpur, 111
Illiteracy, 71,130-131 Janata Party, 150, 151, 167; Janata
Imperialism, 39, 40 Government (Janata Sarkar), 144,
Indian Culture, revival and further¬ 167
ance of, 70 Japan, 176
Indian Independence, Centenary Jayaprakash, 124
Year of First War of, 54 Jayaprakash Narayan (JP), 65, 110,
Indian National Congress (Con- 125, 126, 132, 134, 135, 136,
’ gress), 25, 38, 41, 47, 57, 104, 137-139, 141, 142, 144, 145,
116, 128, 134, 138, 146; All In¬ 146, 147, 149, 150, 151; Bhoo¬
dia Congress Committee, 69; dan movement by, 188; death of,
Avadi (Madras) session of, 56; 151; Jayaprakash Narayan Amrit
Congress(I), 150, 167; Co-oper¬ Kosh, 124
ation to Bhoodan Movement, 57 Jerusalem, 76
)
Indian Ocean, 72 Jhansi, 54
Indian Princes, 19 Jnandeva, 3
Indian Renaissance, 56, 174 Jnaneshwar, sant, 3, 76, 174
Individual Civil Disobedience Move¬ Jnaneshwari, 3, 23, 76
ment, 38 Joshi, S.M., 150
Individual Revolution 131-132 Julius Caesar, 13
Indo-China relations, 106, 119-121
Indo-Pak relations, 121-123; Indo- Kabir, 172, 181
Pakistan war, (1965), 108, 121- Kahlol, 113
122 Kala Bhawan, 12
Indore, 83, 84, 156 Kaladi, Ninth Sarvodaya Sammelan,
Industrialism, 190 at, 72
Industries: cottage industries, 83, Kale, Gopalrao, 16
97; Khadi and Village Industries, Kalelkar, Kaka, 186
115, 162; Village Industries, 53, Kamalnavan, 27, 30
65,83,115,116, 190 Kamarpukur, 96
Inflation, 137 Kanchan Mukti, experiment of, 48,
Inner purity, 51 49,50
Intellectually, 42 Kancheepuram, eighth Sarvodaya
Islam, 102, 111, 169; message of, Sammelan, at, 71
78; teachings of, 94 Kanpur, 54
Kanya Kumari, 72, 97,105
Jabalpur, 90, 107 Karma, 128
‘Jai Jagat’, concept of (world unity), Karmayoga, 106
98,74 Karnool, 70
Jainism, 143, 172 Kartrittva-vibhajan, 62
Jaipur, 47 Kashi (Benares) (Varanasi), 16, 18,
Jalgaon, 32 ' 19, 20
INDEX 201
Kashi-Ka-Vas, 79 also Bhoodan; Gramdan), 57;

Kashmir, 74, 78, 79-80, 81, 87, 97, Landless, 51, 54, 90, 94, 101,
105, 120, 137; issue of (Prob¬ 126—Landless agricultural la¬
lem), 95, 121 bour, 52, landless peasants, 176;
Kathua, 80 Landlords, 59, 70; Landowners,
Katju, Dr. Kailash Nath, 81 51, 90, 101; love and affection in,
Katopanishad, series of discourses 69
on, 26 Languages, 158-159; Asian lan¬
Kelkote, temple at, 73 guages in Devanagari, 158; De-
Kerala, 26, 47, 72, 73, 105, 166, vanagiri script, 105, 129, 153,
167 158- 159; Devanagari Lipi Par-
Khaki cloth, 2 ishad, 158; English, 23, 105,
Khadi, 8, 32, 45, 53, 100, 109, 116, 159- teaching, 17-18; Hindi, 23,
161-162; All India Khadi Work¬ 104-105, 158—propagation of,
ers Conference at Nadia, 96, 100; 15; language issue, 105; National
Khadi and Village Industries, language, 105; Sanskrit, 12, 13,
115, 162; Khadi Commission, 17, 21, 105, 159, 181; State lan¬
162; Khadi Gramodyog Mission, guage, 105
162, Khadi Mission, 153, 161, Lao-Tse, 121
162; Khadi Movement, 48; Leprosy work, 33
“Khadi Sabha”, 162; Khadi work, Limb, Village, 1
108; Khadi workers, 109; ‘Khadi Linguistic riots in Assam, 84-85
Yatra’, 32; Khadigram, 109 Literature, good, 181-182
King, Coretta, 78 Livelihood, three types of, 29
King Jr., Martin Luther, 78, 85, 89 Living, standards of, 189
Kochrab, 20 Lok Ganga, 125
Kolaba, 1 Lok Sevak Sangh, 104
Koran, 31, 79, 80, 160, 169 Lok Sevaks, 143
Koraput, 67, 69 Lok Vastra, 129
Kosygin, 122 Lokaniti, politics of people, 40, 87
Kozhikode, 72 Lokman alias Lukka, 82
Kripalani, Acharya J.B., 76, 140, Landless, 101
186 Love, kinds of, 76
Krishi Goseva Sangh, 163
Kshetra Sannyasa, 128 MacArthur, Gen., 176
Machhendranath, Guru, 23
Lajpat Rai, Lala, 11,15 Machine, helpful, 190
Lakhimpur, Ashram in North Madhavadeva, 132
“Maitri Ashram” (Friendship Madhukar, 28
Centre), 92 Madhya Pradesh, 47, 81,82, 83
Land: Land donations (see also Madras, 71
Bhoodan; Gramdan), 59, 101; Maganwadi, 9
Land problem, 75—legislation to Mahabharat, 8
solve, 62; Land Resolution (see Mahadevitai, 172
Mahadevan, Dr. T.M.P., 36 Nabagram, Pandit Nehru at, 96

Maharashtra, 3, 14, 75-77, 102, Nadia: All India Khadi Workers’
106, 163, 166; Convention of Conference, at, 96
Maharashtra Workers, Paunar, Nagar Swaraj: at Muzaffarpur, con¬
103; Saints of, 13, 16, 174; so¬ cept of, 111; in towns, 107
ciety of (Cultural atmosphere of Nagaland, 92, 137,166
Maharashtra), 3-4; Maharashtra Nagpur, 34, 146, 151; Nagpur Jail,
Branch of All India Spinners As¬ 25,44,42
sociation, 33 Nalwadi, 32, 33, 34
Maharashtra Dharma, Monthly, 27, Namboodiripad, E.M.S., 72, 74
28 Namdev, 3
Maharogi Seva Mandal of Dattapur, Nanda, Gulzarilal, 104
33 Napoleon, 110
Mahavir, Lord, 50, 143, 145, 172 Narharirao Bhave, Shambhurao
Maitri, 42, 164 (father), 1, 2, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11,
“Maitri Ashram” (Friendship Cen¬ 12, 20
tre), 92 Nation-building, 177
Man Singh, 81 National Conference, 139,140-141
Manbhum, 55 National Defence Academy, Pune,
Mangroth, Village, 54, 67 118
Manohar Diwan, 33 National Integration, 74
Manu, 145; code of, 77 Nationalism, 177
Manusmriti, 9 Navadwipadham, 96; Conference
Mao-Tse, 121 at, 102
Marx, 28, 51, 77; Capital of, 28 Navapur, 77
Marxism, 137 Nayyar, Dr. Sushila, 130
Mathura, 54, 60 Nazism, 39, 40
Mazumdar, Dhirendra, 93, 127, Nehru, Pandit Jawaharlal, 18, 38,
135 45, 48, 53, 54, 55, 57, 65, 74, 79,
Mazzini, lecture on 15 84, 85, 90, 92, 96, 97, 109, 115-
Meditation, 18 122; death of, 117
Meos, 48 Nevasa, 76
Midnapore, 56 New Dimension of Peace, 66
Military strength, 119 Nidhyasana, 159,160
Milton, 13 Nij-nishtha, 154
Mira, 78 Nirwana, 172
Modi, Ramniklal, 24 Nivedaks, 72
Mujib, 129 Noakhali, 175
Musahari in Muzaffarpur, 125 Non-opposition, 28
Muslim, 46, 76, 79, 94, 95, 111, Non-possession, 20, 29, 49
165, 169 Non-thieving, 20
Muzaffarpur, concept of Nagar Non-violence, 20, 40, 45, 48, 49, 52
Swaraj at, 111 55, 64, 66, 69, 73, 77,81,98,99,
Mysore, 74 116, 130, 143, 145, 182, 186,
INDEX 203
193; Gandhi’s idea of, 116; Non¬ Paunar Ashram, 2, 34, 35, 38, 43,
violent resistance (or Satyagra- 49, 53, 65, 102, 106, 112, 124,
ha), 135, 136; Non-violent Reso¬ 125, 127, 128, 130, 140, 144,
lution, 143; Non-violent Social, 146, 147, 148, 149, 151, 153,
Economic and Political Order, 155, 157, 158, 159, 162, 163;
177, Non-violent Social Revolu¬ Brahma Vidya Mandir, 79, 92;
tion, 194 Sarvodaya Sammelan at, 150;
Nuclear age, 85; Nuclear Bomb, World Women Conference at,
175; Nuclear energy, develop¬ 152, 156-157; Workers Seminar
ment of, 77; Nuclear explosion by of Sarva Seva Sangh, 103
India, 132; Nuclear weapons, 78, Peace, World, 28, 70, 73, 77, 98,
132 99,114,116
Peace Brigade, unarmed, 123
Orissa, 56, 57, 68, 69, 70, 89, 96, Peace corps, 51
100; Manpur in, 67; Sarvodaya Peasantry, 51
Sammelan, second, at Angul Penance, 70
(1950), in 50, “People’s Power”, 62
Ostergaard, Geoffrey, 143, Phadke, Mama, 1, 20
Philosophy, 22; of Life, 36
Pacifism, 193 Phizo, 92
Padyatra(s), 55, 84, 87, 90, 97, 102, Physical Labour, 20, 22, 25, 51,70
157; from Wardha to Delhi, 53- Pir Panjal, 80, 97
54 Planning, 108-109, 116, 193, 194;
Pakistan, 46, 48, 80, 94, 108, 121- Planning Commission, 53, 54, 97.
123, 142; East, 65, 92, 93, 94-95, 103, 108, 165; Plans, Five Year,
121; Indo-Pak relations, 121-123; 63-64; First, 165
War (1965), 108, 121-122; West, Pochampalli Village, birth place of
94 Bhoodan, 52, 70
Pal, Bipin Chandra, 11» Poems, composing, 18
Palani, Sarva Seva Sangh meeting at, Politics, 191; and Political Power,
71 87; importance of, 191-192; Pol¬
Palate, Control of, 20 itical ideal, 191; Political Parties,
Palestine, 76 63, 64, 70, 192; Political system,
Palmyra tree in Wardha, 31 192; Power Politics, 87, 102, 114,
Pandharpur, 78; Sarvodaya Sam¬ 192
melan at, 75-76, 87 Poverty, 59, 69, 71, 80, 112, 120,
Pant, Pandit Govind Ballabh, 74, 82 121,137, 189
‘Paramdham’ Ashram, 35 “Prasthan Ashram”, 81
Patanjali, Yogasutra.of 22,159 Prison Diary, 137,138
Pathak, G.S., 129 Prohibition, 151
Pathankot, 81 Prophet, 79
Patil, R.K.,53 Pune, 2; National Defence Academy
Patna, 107,151 at, 118
Pafnaik,.Vishwanath, 68 Punjab, 48, 79, 81; visit to Refugee
camps in, 46 ment in Bengali, 11

Purandardas of Karnataka, Saint, 3 ‘Rishi’ cultivation,49
Puri, Sarvodaya Sammelan at, 68- Ruhul KQran, 95
69,88 Rukmini Devi, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8,16
Pyarelal, 186 Ruskin, 28
Russell, Bertrand, 177
Quit India Resolution, 41 Russia (USSR), 80, 138
Raipur, 153; Sarvodaya Sammelan Sabarmati, river, 8

at, 101 Sabarmati (Sabarmati Ashram), 1,
Rajaniti, 40 2,21,24, 26,34,77
Rajasthan, 47, 76, 78, 79, 82, 83 Sacrifice, 70
Rajendra Prasad, Dr., 45, 55, 74, 90 Sadhan-dan, 54, 60
Rajgir, 127; Sarvodaya Sammelan Sadhana, 37, 42, 130, 154
at, 110, 124,135 Sagar, 54
Rajpura, Nai Talim Conference at, Saharsa, 125-127, 129
79 Samadhi, 97, 172
Ram Autar Singh, 82 Samansuttam, 185
Ramakrishna Paramhansa, 56, 96 Samanvaya Ashram, 65
Ramanujacharya, 73 Sampattidan, 60, 71, 141
Ramayan, 8 Sampurnanand, 82
Ramdas, Samartha Guru, 3, 4; Das- Samyayoga, 60
bodh of; death anniversary of, 15 Sanatanis, 26
Radhakrishnan, Dr. S., 65 Sane Guruji, 36,42
Rana Pratap, 78 Sanitation drive, 83
Ranade, Prof. R.D., 73 Sannyasa, 189; women’s right to,
Random Reflections, 29 158
Ranipatra Ashram, 107 Santiniketan, 96
Rashtriya Shala (National School), Sarva Seva Sangh, 76, 83, 93, 133,
21 138, 140, 141, 143, 144, 145,
Rashtriya Swayam Sevak Sangh, 149, 150, 151, 152; National
102 Conference of, at Sevagram, 139;
Ratnagiri district, 1 session of, at Arambagh, 96; ses¬
Rau Sarvodaya Sammelan, 49 sion at Gopuri, Wardha, 103,
Razakars, 51 105; meeting of, at Palani, 71;
Rebirth, believer in, 10 Workers’ seminar of, at Paunar,
Reconstruction, work of, 110 103
Reddy, C.R., 52 Sarva-dharma-Sambhava, 187
Refugee Camps in Delhi and Pun¬ Sarvodaya (Sarvodaya Movement,
jab, 46 60,63,75,87,88,102,111,112,
Religions, understanding of, 187 114, 127, 130, 134-152; Sarvod¬
Renunciation, 29 aya Brahma Vidya, 129; Sarvod¬
Revolutionary movement, 17; ‘Re¬ aya Exhibition, 47; Sarvodaya
volutionary’ or Terrorist Move¬ Mandals, 72, 149; Sarvodaya Sa-
INDEX 205
maj, 45, 149; Sarvodaya Sam- Shankar Bhasya of Brahmasutra, 22

melans, 60, 85: Ajmer, 78, Angul Shankaracharya (Adi Shankarac-
in Orissa, 50. Bodhgaya, 55, 65, harya) (Shankara), 3, 16, 26, 36,
Chandil, 55, 62, Kaladi, 72, Kan- 59,'72, 76, 155, 174; Gita Com¬
chccpuram, 71, Pandarpur, 75- mentary of, 36
76, Puri, Raipur, 68-69, 88, 101, Shantatai, 1-2
153, Rajgir, 110, 124, Rau, 49, Shanti Sena (Peace Brigade), 72-73,
Sevagram, 81, 91, Shivarampalli, 74, 75, 78. 83, 101, 102. 129,
Hyderabad, 50, Sevapuri near 151, 153, 160, 162, 169; All In¬
Varanasi, 54, 61, Sarvodaya dia Shanti Sena, 167; All India
thoughts, 186; sarvodaya Vana- Shanti Sena Conference, First
prastha Mandal, 84; Sarvodaya , (1981),160; Shanti Sainiks, 75,
Workers, 83, 84, 87, 91,93, 100, 99, 100, 151
133; “Sarvodaya Yatra", 50-51; Shantipur, 96
Sarvodaya-patra, 74, 75, 89, 141 Shastras, 155
Satara district, 1 Shastri, Lai Bahadur, 102, 104,
Sathe, Vasant, 146 111, 121; death of, 111
Satyagraha, 61, 69, 78, 81, 85, 86, Shatrughna Singh, 67
87, 98, 103, 137, 141, 148, 167. Shaw, George Bernard, 158
175,193,194 Shiva (Shivaji), 1, 2, 8; birthday,
Satyagraha Ashram, Wardha, 24-30 14-15
“Satyagraha Mandal”, 116 Shivarampalli, 50-51
Schweitzer, Albert. 177 Shramdan, 60
Science. 89, 102, 150, 174-175, Shriman Narayan, 92, 1 17, 148,
189-190; and technology, 189- 149
190 Shriniketan, 96
Scientific Temper, 174-175 Shruits, 36
Scriptures, study of, 22 Siddha, 154
Secularism, 187 Siddharaj Dhadda, 141, 150
Self-reliance, 22, 45, L90; pro¬ Sikhs, 46
gramme of, 100 Sinha, Shrikrishna, 55,90-91
Self-restraint, 143, 154 Sino-Indian border, 119; Sino-lndi-
Self-sufficience. concept of, 190- an conflict, 98; Sino-Tibetan is¬
191 sue, 119-121
Seoni Jail, 41,42 Social climate, 69; Social ideas, 175;
Sevapuri, 54, 61,67 Social life, 58; Social order, new,
Sevagram (Sevagram Ashram), 2, 70; Social revolution, 131-132;
34, 35, 102, 124, 139, 148, 160, Social structure, 188
162; Conference of Constructive Socialism, 103, 137, 164
Workers at, 45, 115, 175; Sar¬ Society, strengthening, 69
vodaya Sammelan at, 81,91 Sooksma, 107, 155; Sookshma
Shah, Kanti, Jayaprakash by, 124 Karmayoga, 126; Sookshma pra-
Shambhurao Bhave (grandfather), 1, vesh, 127; Sookshma Yoga, 127
4-5 South-East Asia, 176
Spinning, 32, 33, 34, 37; All India 159-160; teaching community,
Spinners Association, 33; Spinn¬ 194
ing wheels, 33 Tehsildar Singh, 81
Spirituality, 42, 130, 132, 145, 150, Telangana region, 51, 52, 53, 55,
157, 174, 175; Spiritual develop¬ 58,70
ment, 155; Spiritual equality, 158; Temples, 87; Gokarna-Mahabal-
Spiritual ideas, 175; Spiritual eshwar, 73; Kalkote, 73
Man, 131; Spiritual matters, 40; Terrorist (or revolutionary) move¬
Spiritual power, 86; Spiritual ment in Bengal, 1 1
teachers of Society, 181; Spiritual Thakur, Karpuri, 113
thinking, 194; Spiritual values, 77 Tibet, 80, 119; Chinese (action)
Steadfast Wisdom, 42 Occupation of, 319, 137; refugees
Stithprajna, 42, 172; Stithprajna of, 120; Tibetans, 80
Darshan, 42 Tilak, Lokamanya Bal Gangadhar,
Storm Gramdan Campaign of Bihar, 11,14,25,105
103, 109, 110, 111, 127, 135, Tilak Swarajya Fund, 133
155 Tolerance (Toleration), 20, 28
Stri-Shakti, 160 Tolstoy, 27; War and Peace by, 13
Sufis, 76 Toynbee, Arnold, 177
Sukhadia, Mohanlal, 166 Tribals, 68
Supreme Being, 28, 129, 154; real¬ Triple Programme, 153
ization of, 17 Truth, 20, 23, 66, 76, 78, 85, 86,
Surat, 16 89, 143, 183
Surgaon, Village, 43, 44 Tukaram, 3, 10, 15
Sutanjali, 51,61,71 Tulsi, Acharya, 128
Swadeshi, 20, 187, 190 Tulsidas, 181
Swadharma, 36,42 Twenty-three Tales, 13
Swadhyaya, 33, 34 Tyagayatra, 96
Swarajya (self-government) Swaraj,
39,40,60,71, 110, 191 UK (United Kingdom; Great
Swarajya Shastra, 40 Britain), 38
Swarajists, 139 UNO, 137, 151
Synthesis, three kinds of, 36 UP, 47, 54, 55, 60, 67, 81, 82;
Sarvodaya Workers of, 60
Tagare, Shankarrao, 16, 17 USA, 80; American milk, 108
Tagore, Rabindranath, 96 USSR (see Russia)
Talks of the Gita, 31,36 Unemployment, 49, 80, 137, 194
Tamil Nadu, 47, 68, 71, 72, 104, Universal Being, 94
105, 166; violence in, 104-105 Untouchability, 28; removal of, 20;
Tantra-Mukti, 71 Untouchables, 6, 28
Tapa, 70 Upanishadon Ka Adhyayan, 28
Tashkent agreement (Pact), 111, Upanishads, 8, 17, 22, 23, 28, 65
122 Upavasadan, programme of, 133.
Teachers, 113-114; qualities of. 141
INDEX 207
Urulikanchan, 2 on, 3-9; Introduction to K.G. Mash-

ruwala’s Gandhi and Marx, 51;
Vairagya, 155 last meeting with Jawaharlal
Vailabhswami, samadhi of, 107 Nehru at Nabagram, 96; letter to
Valmiki’s Ramayana, 1 82 Mahatma Gandhi, 19, 22; Mem¬
Vanuprastha, 188 ber of Zakir Hussain Committee
Varanasi, 5, 16, 17, 18, 19, 54, 61, on Gandhi’s idea of Nai Talim,
90, 107 34; met Martin Luther King, 78;
Varna System, 188 Mother of, 1,2, 3, 5, 8, 16—death
Vedanta, 36, 89; Science and Trust, of, 7, influence of, on, 5-8; orig¬
89 inal name, 1; philosophy of, 36;
Vedas, 8, 17, 130 reader, voracious, 13-14; visited
Vedehhi Sarvodaya Sammelan refugee camps in Delhi and Pun¬
Statement, 98 jab, 46; release of, from jail 25,
Vellore Jail, 41,42, 43 41; renunciation, 16-18; sacred
Vichar Pothi, 29 thread ceremony, 2; Individual
Vichar-Shasan, 62 Satyagraha (October 17, 1940)
Vidarbha Congress Committee, 25 with Vinoba as the first Satyagra-
Vidyarthi Mandal, 15,23 hi, 38; sentenced and kept in
Vikramshila, university of, 11 3 Dhulia Jail, 32; sentenced thrice
Villages (Villagers) service to, 32, in Individual Satyagraha, 39;
35, 58, 63, 100, 111, 189; Village Series of discourses on Katho-
cleaning, 51; Village industries, panishad, 26; sisters, 1-2; started
32, 116, 189; Village oriented Maharashtra Dharma, a monthly,
Khadi, 101, 102, 160; Village 27; Surgaon activity, 43, 44;
Republics, Gandhi's concept of, teaching English, 17-18; three
192-193; visits to, 33, 43 episode of Ashram, 21-22; Tem¬
Vinoba Bhave (1895-1982): add¬ ple Entry Satyagraha by Harijans
ress on Gandhi's Martyrdom, 44; at Vaikom, 25-26; visits of, 32-
Arrested and kept in Nagpur Jail, 33, 43, 46, 47-48; visit of, to Vil¬
25; Arrested in Jalgaon, 31-32; lages, 32-33, 43; with Gandhi in
Articles by, 27-29; Bharat Ratna Ahmedabad, 19-23
honour, 172; birth, 1; books Vinya, 35
(works) by, 28,29, 31, 35, 36, 40, Violence, 19, 46, 52, 62, 69, 72,
182-185; brothers, 1-2; death of, 105, 130, 188
171; detained again, 41; down Visarjan Ashram, 84
with malignant malaria at chandil. Vittya Mahar, 6
55; drew towards Mahatma Voluntary Poverty, 20
Gandhi, 18, 19; early influences Vyas, author of Mahabharat, 182
on, 3; education, 11-16; father of,
1, 2, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 20; Flag Wai, 1, 22; Vidyarthi Mandal at,
Satyagraha of Nagpur (1923), 25; 23
grandfather of, 1, 4-5; grandmother War, 40, 193
of, 4, 5; in Akola jail, 25; influence Wardha, 2, 21, 33, 34, 45, 47, 48,
ACHARYA VINOBA BHAVE
208
of, 157; Spiritual awakening of,

54, 58, 102, 106, 125,141, 143,
157; spiritual equality of, with
151; Conference of Constructive
men, 155; World Women Con¬
workers of, 32; Kanya Ashram,
ference, Paunar, 142, 146, 152,
34; opening wells for Harijans,
156-157
31; palmyra tree in, 31; Sarva Se¬
Wordsworth, 13
va Sangh session at Gopuri, 103;
Workers, uplift of, 120-121
Satyagraha Ashram, 24-30, 31,
World Pacifists Meeting, Sevagram
32; Wardha to Delhi, 55
session, 47
Weaving, 32, 35
“Welfare State”, 191
Wellington, 110 Yadunath Singh, 81
West Bengal (see also Bengal) 56, Yahya Khan, General, 122
68,91,92, 96 Yajna, 70; Yajnayarn, 37
Western Pacifists, 110,120 Yelwal, conference at, 74, 87, 88,
Win, USA pacifist periodical, 168 96
Women, 153-158: Ashram of, esta¬ Yoga of equality, 60
blished at Paunar, 153; awareness Yoga Sutras of Patanjali, 159
among (Awakening), 154, 156- Yutang, Lin, 3
152, 160; inferior status of, 155-
15(5; lib movement of West, 157;
Zakir Hussain, Dr., 112-113; Za¬
liberation of, 158; organizations
kir Hussain Committee Report on
of, 84; Pilgrimage of, to spiritual
freedom, 157; power of (Stri Gandhi's idea of ‘Nai Talim’ or
Shakti), 79, 153, 158-in Assam, Basic Education, 34
92, 153; Sarvodaya Conference Zi la-dans, 110
ERRATA
Page Reference to chapter, For Read

No. Para and line
xi Introduction, 1st Para, line. 4 Gandhi’s dream. Gandhi’s dream

He and who
xi Introduction, 1st Para, line. 5 Movement and Movement, was
4 1st Chapter, 2nd Para, line. 14 his children His children
4 -do- his eyes His eyes
6 1st chapter, 2nd Para, line. 3 It was It was:
6 1st chapter, 2nd Para, line. 9 Vittya Vitthya
7 1st chapter, 2nd Para, line. 4 suggested her suggested to her
7 1st chapter, 2nd Para, line. 5 Calculating take calculating to take
8 1st chapter, 1st Para, line. 1 Hene Hence
14 Chapter II, Para 1, line. 21 quite good quite a good
15 Chapter II, Para 2, line. 6 Organisation organisation
18 Chapter II, Para 3, line. 6 Now and then (to be deleted)
18 Chapter II, Para 3, line. 7 Complied it complied with it
now and then.
19 Chapter III, Para 1, line. 19 observance of life observance of life
itself
25 Chapter IV, Para 1, line. 14 finding that the finding others
the enrolled enrolling
members were members without
not their
25 Chapter IV, Para 1, line. 15 implications and implications and
the
25 Chapter IV, Para 1, line. 16 Committee and Committee being
being
26 Chapter IV, Para, 1, lines 4 & 5 Sanatanists to Sanatanists, who
change their were opposed
attitude who to the entry,
were opposed to change
to the entry their attitude
27 Chapter IV, Para 2, line. 11 Ordering his life Ordering his life
to accordingly1 to
32 Chapter V, Para 3, line. 7 headquarter headquarters
33 Chapter V, Para 2, line .3 bring to spinner bring to a spinner
34 Chapter V, Para 3, line. 11 mal-nutrition malnutrition
36 Chapter V, Para 2, line. 24 Shruits Shrutis
No. Para and line
38 Chapter VI, Para 1, line. 10 Civil civil

Disobedience disobedience
Movement movement
38 Chapter VI, Para, 2, line. 1 individual Individual
40 Chapter VI, Para, 2, line. 7 imperialism in imperialist war
design
40 Chapter VI, Para 3, line. 12 rajya Rajya
47 Chapter VII, Para 1, line. 1 Instead instead to
48 Chapter VII, Para 1, line. 4 Movement movement
48 Chapter VII, Para 2, line. 23 Movement movement
52 Chapter VIII, Last para, line. 13 the then
52 Chapter VIII, Last para, line. 14 “if I am... “If I am...
53 Chapter VIII, Para 3, line. 8 Government Government
pledged was pledged
62 Chapter VIII, Para 1, line. 7 It instead can If instead I can
62 Chapter VIII, Last para, line. 4 Vichar-shasan vichar-shasan
63 Chapter VIII, Para 2, line. 2 Sarvodai Sarvodayi
63 Chapter VIII, Para 3, line. 11 objection objections
64 Chapter VIII, Para 2, last line. deterimental detrimental
71 Chapter IX, Para 3, line. 10 his idea his ideas and
76 Chapter IX, Para 1, line. 18 Would have Would have been
Jerusalem Jerusalem
77 Chapter IX, Para 4, line. 5 thereby thereby its
significance of significance for
78 Chapter IX, Para 3, line. 2 Leader leader
79 Chapter IX, Para 3, line. 1 on route en route
81 Chapter IX, Para 2, line. 18 Consonance to consonance with
96 Chapter X, Para 1, line. 2 previous two days previous two days
there
99 Chapter X, last para, line. 1 Statement going Statement
to the front declared going to
declared the front as
102 Chapter X, Para 1, line. 7 sammelan Sammelan
103 Chapter X, Para 2, line. 7 1985 1965
103 Chapter X, Para 3, line. 5 birth-day birthday
107 Chapter X, Para 2, line. 1 birth-day birthday
107 Chapter X, Para 2, line. 3 end to the misery end the misery
109 Chapter X, Para 3, line. 11 Infructuous infectious
116 Chapter XI, Para 2, line. 2 Nonviolence nonviolence
No. Para and line
117 Chapter XI, Para 2, line. 23 He is true He is a true

product product
117 Chapter XI, Para 2, last line. He is unique He is a unique
123 Chapter XI, Para 2, line. 2 to accept the acceptance
disarmament of disarmament
123 Chapter XI, Para 2, line. 3 UNO, and the UNO for and the
UNO should UNO to
125 Chapter XII, Para 2, line. 7 which as he which he
126 Chapter XII, Para 1, line. 5 Ane And
127 Chapter XII, Para 3, line. 4 place, to giving place, giving
127 Chapter XII, Para 3, line. 17 word world
127 Chapter XII, Para 3, line. 20 are far far are far
129 Chapter XII, Para 2, line. 16 has had
131 Chapter XII, Para 2, line. 8 In It
132 Chapter XII, Para 2, line. 7 Say Saw
133 Chapter XII, Para 3, line. 5 Sena Seva
133 Chapter XII, Para 3, line. 9 Serva Sarva
133 Chapter XII, Para 3, line. 11 Serva Sarva
133 Chapter XII, Para 3, line. 13 sangh Sangh
134 Chapter XIII, Para 2, line. 10 he realised he had realised
136 Chapter XIII, Para 2, line. 12 non-changers no-changers
141 Chapter XIII, Para 3, line. 3 1947 1974
1 53 Chapter XIV, Para 1, line. 15 also a also as a
155 Chapter XIV, Para 1, line. 12 that was were
155 Chapter XIV, Para 2, line. 17 therefore Therefore
156 Chapter XIV, Para 3, line. 5 instead should instead it should
159 Chapter XIV, Para 1, line. 1 Bhasha. Bhasa
Indonesian (Indonesian
language language)
162 Chapter XIV, Para 2, line. 2 work, work
item 4
167 Chapter XIV, Para 2, line. 3 within State list within the State
list
168 Chapter XIV, Para 2, line. 9 slaughtered slaughtered
numbered annually
numbered
168. Chapter XIV, Para 2, line. 22 perspective perceptive
170 Chapter XV, Para 2, line. 6 here There
170 Chapter XV, Para 2, line. 11 on On
No. Para and line
171 Chapter XV, Para 1, line. 9 p.m. P.M.

171 Chapter XV, Para 2, line. 10 pressure was pressure down
down
172 Chapter XV, Para 2, line. 2 nirwana nirvana
172 Chapter XV, Para 3, line. 4 Gita the Gita
175 Chapter XVI, Para 2, line. 12 Capable to capable to
177 Chapter XVI, Para 2, line. 3 gandhi Gandhi
178 Chapter XVI, Para 1, line. 5 Movement movement
179 Chapter XVI, Para 2, line. 11 Movement movement
179 Chapter XVI, Para 1, }ine. 8 all he all this he
182 Appendix A, Para 2, Serial 6, style of style on
line. 2 Ishavasyoupa- Ishavasyopa-
nishad nishad
183 Appendix A, Para 3, Serial 2, the Book The Book
line. 3
184 Appendix A, Serial No. 9 Karanta Kranta
190 Appendix B, Para 2, line. 8 mind minds
191 Appendix B, Para 2, line. 5 need of an need of any
191 Appendix B, Para 2, line. 8 and “ill-fare an “ill-fare
State” State
192 Appendix B, Para 1, line. 8 Politics Polities

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ACHARYA VINOBA BHAVE

Acharya Vinoba Bhave

PUBLISHED BY THE DIRECTOR, PUBLICATIONS DIVISION,

Sales Emporia • Publications Division

Super Bazar, Connaught Circus, New Delhi-110001

Printed at Allied Publishers Limited, New Delhi-110064

THE OBJECT OF this series is to record, for the present

THIS BOOK ON the life and work of Acharya Vinoba

only been dealt with by Shriman Narayan cursorily. Hence

Chairman, Delhi State Gandhi Smarak Nidhi, for his useful

Gandhi Smarak Nidhi

ACHARYA VINOBA BHAVE, generally called Vinobaji or

While nominating him as the first satyagrahi in 1940,

path-finding thinkers in history have usually been followed by

Night has come again; and tomorrow

preaching in them all. He once expressed his philosophy of

Childhood and Influences

ACHARYA VINOBA BHAVE, whose original name was

with them, it needs pointing out that the influences on Vinoba

personal; while Ramdas is an active saint.” In Vinoba one can

without permission. The house is his and so also the jagree.

in Vinoba and was fully confident that he would never do

restrained and scientific life. Even then, I had left my one

Student Days and Home

WHEN NARHAR1RAO BHAVE shifted his family to

Vinoba was admitted in the third standard of a Baroda

too was so sharp that he could reproduce without taking it

One summer, he was reading in the Central Library with his

like Shivaji could not, in the fitness of things, be observed in

Vinoba who generally kept silent in the class, was quite

It may also be reiterated here that Vinoba had been greatly

However, the actual renunciation came about in March

Vinoba had chosen Varanasi for two reasons. First, it was a

the school was surprised, and enquired if it would do. Vinoba

The other incident concerns discussions between two

Due to the insanitary conditions of the city, Vinoba’s health

With Gandhi in Ahmedabad

GANDHI’S SPEECH IN the inaugural week of the Benares

The idea appealed to Vinoba as it was accompanied by a

country, not inconsistent with universal welfare." It further

Vinoba had not written to his father about his whereabouts.

In the second episode, once while bathing in the river,

my namaskars to Bapu and tell him that though Vinoba has

The third relates to the emphasis Vinoba laid on quality

In that letter, Vinoba had told him of the various books he

of his diet, especially mentioning the observance of the vow

Regarding his other activities, he had mentioned giving free

Vinoba returned to the Ashram exactly after a year.

In Wardha: The Twenties

IN APRIL 1921 Vinoba was deputed by Gandhi to assume

Gandhi maintained touch with the progress of the Ashram

IN WARDHA : THE TWENTIES 25

However, before taking up his‘ Ashram experiments, it

The second Satyagraha which he had to direct at Gandhi’s

against the prohibition of their entry into the temple at Vaikorn

As regards Ashram life, as already hinted, besides

Ail work in the Ashram was done by the inmates, including

scavenging. Vinoba too worked like others. He took his

The ideas he propounded during this period are probably