Vinoba wanted to remove the difference between the exploiter and the exploited. He believed that the two classes emerged because of the general tendency to shirk the labour. He wanted to devalue the importance of money and shift all value to the labour.
He experimented. The name of his experiment was ‘Kanchmukti Yoga’. Vinoba wrote—‘The use of money no more interests me. I am fed up. If I am to take it would be labour and I will give labour only. I don’t like to debate on it. For sometime I have been seized with the wish to get liberated of the bonds of monetary finance. There are many bonds but once one is freed of monetary dealing bonds, the liberation from other bonds becomes easy.
He further elaborated—‘Yashoda’s economy was based on money, I don’t like it. Krishna’s system was distribution. I like his system. He didn’t want the produce of the village, the very nutrient of the kids, butter to go to the markets outside for the sake of money. The villagers sell cotton and buyback cloth, they sell oil seeds and buyback oil, they sell honey and buy jaggery and they sell butter and buy vegetable oil. It all means that they sell nectar and buy poison for the sake of money.
All this pains me. I want internal barter. The villagers must produce goods and barter amongst themselves as required. If it were made possible the heaven would descend on earth.’
Vinoba applied his theory in his own ashram. The 1400 acres of land that ashram owned was put to that use. He tried to grow everything in the farm that the ashram would need. Complete self reliance was the key.
Bhoodan movement
Gandhiji’s followers had started a Sarvodaya programme to further Gandhiji’s ideals and ashram movements. Vinoba had not been able to attend its first meeting. The second meeting was scheduled at Shivrampalli, a place near Hyderabad. Vinoba was specially invited. The organisers felt that without Vinoba the Sarvodya programme was like a wedding without the groom. They said if Vinoba did not attend the outfit would be disbanded. So, Vinoba had to agree.
On 8 March, 1951 Vinoba set out from Pavnar. The idea was to cover entire distance on foot. On his way Vinoba party made stopovers at a number of villages. Wherever they stopped interacted with the villagers, learnt their problems and suggested the solutions. The workers took part in sweeping the streets clean as their first act at the stop over hamlet. Vinoba reached Shivrampalli on 7 April, 1915, after a month long punctuated march.
At that time, Telangana was in the throes of a communist movement in which landless were pitched against landlords. On the objectives Vinoba agreed with communists but disagreed on the means. The communists stood for armed revolution but Vinoba wanted revolution based on non-violence.
He set out on a survey tour of Telangana on 15th April. Nalgonda and Warangal were the communist strongholds. Vinoba entered Nalgonda on 15 April. He happened to turn up in Pochampalli village that was a Harijan colony. They people were in bad state. The poverty, hunger and malnutrition was written on every pitiable face.
The chief of the Harijans told Vinoba that all they needed was 80 acres of land to till to make a living. A local disciple of Vinoba named Ramachandra Reddy happened to be present there. He said, “I have some ancestral land here. I donate 100 acres of it to you for these poor Harijans.”
Vinoba had never dreamt of the solution to present itself so easily. His active mind had seen a new way to work on to solve the problem of the landless farmers. He started asking for land donations at his evening prayers. Telangana tour fetched him 12,000 acres of land. He set up a committee to arrange for the distribution of that land among the landless.
Soon the process blossomed into a full fledged Bhoodan Movement and spread fast all over the country. It further grew into Gramdaan and Tehsildaan or Ziladaan even.
Vinoba noted—‘A new atmosphere is being created through Bhoodan Yajna. The people are realising the importance of moral values. Social injustices are becoming untenable and situation is building up to eradicate them. Today more people agree that the most attention is required to be focussed on helping the most deprived and the most downtrodden. It is the real Prajasuya Yajna or renaissance of dharma. It is the rule of farmers and workers. Now we can’t limit ourselves only with the task of land distribution.
The environment being created will connect every soul which will go into solving of many more problems of the other aspects of human life besides the issue of the landless.
Bhoodan movement grew fast, then slowed down and eventually died down due to several factors namely dishonesty, cumbersome official procedures, non-cooperation of the elected governments etc.
