Page 113 - Acharya Vinoba Bhave in 21st Century ISBN

21oha “krkCnh esa vkpk;Z fouksck Hkkos dh izklafxdrk

just 11 days after the advent of Bhoodan, “It needs to be understood that the whole village is one
family. The villagers should unite and realize that land belongs to all. Not only land, but all of our wealth
17
belongs to the village.” Thus blossoming of Bhoodan into Gramdan was natural.
Revolutionaries had always talked of abolition of private property. But the strategy of

Communists brought into being monolithic States, which abrogated individual liberty and ultimately
collapsed under the weight of their contradictions. Anarchists were more sincere, but lack of effective

strategy and lack of clarity about the nature of violence made them ineffective. In the form of Gramdan,
Vinoba presented an effective strategy for the abolition of private property, which was in tune with

liberty, fraternity and equality. Gramdan involved surrender of ownership of land to the village community,
giving it control over land, the most vital natural resource. The village community was thereafter expected

to look after the village affairs, taking decisions by consensus.
Blossoming of Bhoodan into Gramdan could provide foundation for true collectivespiritual

quest: “Up till now, spiritual aspirants concentrated mainly on their own spiritual uplift. Some devotees
tried to bring spiritual practice in society. They brought people together for singing the praise of the

Lord (saha-bhajan). Modern social reformers, not content with this, brought people to dine together
(saha-bhojan). We are not happy with this much, we want that people should live together and share

a joint life (saha-jivan). True spiritual quest begins only when we come to this point.” 18
Vinoba’s genius scaled new heights in unfolding potentialities in Gramdan.Initially, Gramdan

involved redistribution of all the village lands on the basis of family size. That hundreds of villages
voluntarily accepted this was indeed miraculous. People voluntarily surrendered their lands and gladly

accepted a fraction of what they previously owned. While distributing fresh title deeds to the residents
of Akili, a Gramdan village in Odisha, Vinoba claimed and exclaimed, “Such gifts of entire villages

would undoubtedly be considered miraculous in the history of the world. - - - I believe that what such
villages have done can lead to establishment of peace throughout the world. People realize the power

hidden in an atom, but gramdan is more powerful than atomic energy. While atomic explosion pollutes
the environment of the world, a single gramdan purifies the environment of the world” 19

Such was the spirit gramdan was generating. Individuals were merging their self-interestinto
the wider interest of community. That was why Vinoba asserted that gramdan had no place for the

conflict between individual and community, which was a creation of Western sociologists and
philosophers, and “those who are accepting gramdan are creating a new ethics and a new sociology.” 20

But it was too much to expect that five hundred thousand villages in the country wouldaccept
this. And Vinoba was satisfied with nothing less than revolutionary change in the whole country. He

therefore ‘diluted’ the programme to make it more palatable and acceptable, keeping intact the
revolutionary element of abolition of private property.

113