Context
The Prime Minister paid tributes to Acharya Vinoba Bhave on his Jayanti on 11th September.
About Acharya Vinoba Bhave
- He was born on September 11, 1895, in a Chitpavan Brahmin family at Gagoda village of the Konkan area of Maharashtra.
- His Original name was Vinayak Narahari Bhave.
- He was a freedom fighter and a spiritual teacher.
- He dedicated his life to religious work and the freedom struggle.
- He wrote Ishavasyavritti and Sthitaprajna Darshan in jail.
- Gandhi chose him as the first participant in the individual satyagraha campaign in 1940.
- He always followed the path of truth and Non-violence, as guided by Mahatma Gandhi.
- He participated in the activities at Gandhi's ashram, like teaching, studying, spinning and improving the lives of the community.
Some of his works
- The essence of Quran
- The essence of Christian teachings
- Thoughts on education
- Swarajya Sastra
Political Efforts
- Bhoodan Movement: In 1951, Vinoba Bhave started his land donation movement at Pochampally in Telangana, the Bhoodan Movement.
- He took donated land from land owner Indians and gave it away to the poor and landless, for them to cultivate.
- Gramdan:Then after 1954, he started to ask for donations of whole villages in a programme he called Gramdan.
- He got more than 1000 villages by way of donation.
- Out of these, he obtained 175 donated villages in Tamil Nadu alone.
- Brahma Vidya Mandir: It 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.
- This group farms to get their own food, but uses Gandhi’s beliefs about food production, which include sustainability and social justice, as a guide.
- Sarvodaya Movement: 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.
- Sarvodaya is Gandhi's most important social political movement.
- Like Satyagraha, it too is a combination of two terms, Sarva meaning one and all, and Uday meaning welfare or uplift. The conjunction thus implies Universal uplift or welfare of all as the meaning of Sarvodaya.
- Although Sarvodaya was a social ideology in its fundamental form, India’s immediate post independence requirement demanded that it be transformed into an urgent political doctrine.
Awards
- In 1958, Vinoba was the first recipient of the international Ramon Magsaysay Award for Community Leadership.
- He was also conferred with the Bharat Ratna posthumously in 1983.
