Acharya Vinoba Bhave

Subject: History

Context: The Prime Minister, Shri Narendra Modi has paid tributes to Acharya Vinoba Bhave on his Jayanti.

Concept:

Vinayak Narahari also known as Vinoba Bhave (11 September 1895 – 15 November 1982) was an Indian advocate of nonviolence and human rights.
He is considered a National Teacher of India and the spiritual successor of Mahatma Gandhi.

Role in Freedom Struggle

Association with Mahatma Gandhi: Under the influence of Mahatma Gandhi, Vinoba also got involved in the Indian freedom struggle. He took part in programs of non-cooperation and especially the call for use of Swadeshi goods instead of foreign imports. He took up the spinning wheel churning out Khadi and urged others to do so, resulting in mass production of the fabric.
Life in prison: In 1932, accusing Vinoba Bhave of conspiring against the British rule, the government sent him to jail for six months to Dhulia. There, he explained the fellow prisoners the different subjects of ‘Bhagwad Gita’, in Marathi. All the lectures given by him on Gita in Dhulia jail were collected and later published as a book.
Individual Satyagraha: Mahatma Gandhi, on 5 October, 1940, introduced Bhave to the nation by issuing a statement. He was also chosen as the first Individual Satyagrahi (an Individual standing up for Truth instead of a collective action) by Gandhi himself.
Quit India Movement: Bhave also participated in the Quit India Movement

Social Work

Vinoba Bhave worked tirelessly towards eradicating social evils like inequality.
Influenced by the examples set by Gandhi, he took up the cause of people that his guru lovingly referred to as Harijans.
It was his aim to establish the kind of society that Gandhi had envisioned in an Independent India.
He adopted the term Sarvodaya from Gandhi which simply means “Progress for All”. The Sarvodaya movement under him implemented various programs during the 1950s, the chief among which is the Bhoodan Movement

Bhoodan Movement

In 1951, Vinoba Bhave started his peace-trek on foot through the violence-torn region of Telangana. On April 18, 1951, the Harijans of the Pochampalli village requested him to provide them with around 80 acres of land to make a living.
Vinoba asked the landlords of the village to come forward and save the Harijans. To everybody’s surprise, a landlord got up and offered the required land. This incident added a new chapter in the history of sacrifices and non-violence. It was the beginning of the Bhoodan (Gift of the Land) movement.
The movement continued for thirteen years and Vinoba toured the length and breadth of the country, a total distance of 58741 Km. He was successful in collecting around 4 million acres of land, of which around 1.3 million was distributed among poor landless farmers. The movement attracted admiration from all over the world and was commended for being the only experiment of his kind to incite voluntary social justice.

NaiTalim:

As Gandhi’s disciple, Vinobha Bhave, developed the idea of NaiTalim further as a means of social transformation: “The crux of NaiTalim lay in overcoming distinctions between learning and teaching, and knowledge and work”.
NaiTalim, or Basic Education, is a principle which states that knowledge and work are not separate. Mahatma Gandhi promoted an educational curriculum with the same name based on this pedagogical principle

Literary Work

Some of the books written by him are Swarajya Sastra, Geeta Pravachane, Teesri Shakti or The Third Power
The Gita has also been translated into Marathi language by him with the title Geetai
He stayed for some time at Gandhi’s Sabarmati ashram in a cottage that was named after him, ‘Vinoba Kutir’. These were later published in book form, as Talks on the Gita.
Brahma Vidya Mandir: The Brahma Vidya Mandir is one of the ashrams that Bhave created. It is a small community for women that was created in order for them to become self-sufficient and non-violent in a community.

Awards

Vinoba Bhabe was the first international figure to receive the Ramon Magsaysay Award in 1958. He was awarded Bharat Ratna posthumously in 1983.