Acharya Vinoba Bhave.

Vinoba Bhave. (1895-1982)


A country should be defended not by arms, but by ethical behaviour.

All revolutions are spiritual at the source. All my activities have the sole purpose of achieving a union of hearts.


Do not allow yourself to imagine that revolutionary thinking can be propagated by governmental power.


Human life is full of the play of samskaras - tendencies developed by repeated actions.


If a man achieves victory over this body, who in the world can exercise power over him? He who rules himself rules over the whole world.


If we could only snap the fetters of the body that bind the feet of the soul, we shall experience a great joy. Then we shall not be miserable because of the body's sufferings. We shall become free.

If we wish our nature to be free and joyous, we should bring our activities into same order.


In nonviolence you must go full steam ahead, if you want the good to come speedily you must go about it with vigour.


In the Bhagavad Gita, there is no long discussion, nothing elaborate. The main reason for this is that everything stated in the Gita is meant to be tested in the life of every man; it is intended to be verified in practice.


In this world of chance and change and mutability, the fulfillment of any resolve depends on the will of the Lord.


Innumerable actions are going on through us all the time. If we started counting them, we should never come to an end.


It is a curious phenomena that God has made the hearts of the poor, rich and those of the rich, poor.


It is only when our life proceeds within bounds and in an accepted, disciplined way, that the mind can be free.


Life does not mean mere karma or mere bhakti or mere jnana.


The main reason why we look constantly to the Gita is that, whenever we need help, we may get it from the Gita. And, indeed, we always do get it.

Vinoba Bhave.



Born of a high-caste Brahman family, he abandoned his high-school studies in 1916 to join Gandhi's ashram. Gandhi's teachings led Bhave to a life of austerity, dedicated to improving Indian village life. Bhave was interned several times during the 1920s and '30s and served a five-year prison sentence in the '40s for leading nonviolent resistance to British rule.

Bhave's idea of the land-gift movement was conceived in 1951, when, while he was touring villages in the province of Andhra Pradesh, a landholder offered him an acreage in response to his appeal on behalf of a group of landless Harijans. He then walked from village to village, appealing for gifts of land to be distributed among the landless and relating the act of giving to the principle of ahimsa, which had been adopted by Gandhi.

According to Bhave, land reform should be secured by a change of heart and not by enforced government action. His critics maintained that Bhudan Yajna encouraged the fragmentation of land and would thus obstruct a rational approach to large-scale agriculture, but Bhave declared that he preferred fragmented land to fragmented hearts.

Later, however, he encouraged gramdan, the system whereby villagers pooled their land, after which the land was reorganized under a cooperative system. Throughout 1975 Bhave maintained a vow of silence over the issue of the involvement of his followers in political agitation. As a result of a fast in 1979, he secured the government's promise to enforce the law prohibiting the killing of cows throughout India. Bhave's original project and his philosophy of life are explained in a series of articles collected and published as Bhoodan Yajna.

Wardha, atown, eastern Maharashtra state, western India, near the Wardha River, southwest of Nagpur. Situated on major routes between Nagpur and Bombay, it is closely linked with the history of Nagpur. The town was important in the national freedom movement; the Sevagram ashram founded by Mohandas Gandhi close to Wardha was later the headquarters of Vinoba Bhave. The town has several colleges affiliated with the University of Nagpur.

The mantle of Mahatma Gandhi fell on Vinoba Bhave, one of his most devoted Maharashtrian supporters. For some years after independence Vinoba led a campaign of social service that culminated in the bhudan movement, which persuaded many landowners and wealthy peasants to give fields to landless labourers. This movement had some small success in rural areas, but it gradually lost momentum. Although the memory of Gandhi continues to be revered by most Indians, his policies and principles carry little weight. The great bulk of social service is performed by government agencies rather than by voluntary bodies, whether Gandhian or other.

Gandhi devised for India the plan of a decentralized society based on autonomous village communes. Gandhi's village India has not come into being, but the movement known as Sardovaya, led by Vinoba Bhave and Jaya Prakash Narayan, has been working toward it through gramdan--community ownership of land.

By 1969 a fifth of the villages of India had declared for gramdan, and, while this remained largely a matter of unrealized gestures, it represented perhaps the most extensive commitment to basic anarchist ideas in the contemporary world.

Vinoba's religious outlook was very broad and it synthesized the truths of many religions. This can be seen in one of his hymns "Om Tat" which contains symbols of many religions.
Vinoba observed the life of the average Indian living in a village and tried to find solutions for the problems he faced with a firm spiritual foundation. This formed the core of his Sarvodaya movement. Another example of this is the Bhudan movement. He walked all across India asking people with land to consider him as one of their sons and so give him a one seventh of their land which he then distributed to landless poor. and compassion being a hallmark of his philosophy, he also campaigned against the slaughtering of cows.