Bhave Heart
By MEENAKSHI GANGULY
An early and ardent admirer of Gandhi, Vinoba Bhave renounced the comfort of a middle-class home at age 20 to devote his life to the fight for social justice and equality. Bhave started schools and rural development projects across India, campaigned for the end of untouchability and set up leprosy shelters. But his greatest, most memorable endeavor was in land reform. Even as communist extremists were murdering wealthy landlords and socialists were clamoring for legislation to ensure compulsory land redistribution, Bhave in 1951 came up with the concept of bhoodan--the voluntary donation of land. "There is no greater weapon than the faith we place in fellow men," he declared. He did not succeed in his mission of gathering 20 million hectares of land to give out to the landless, but until his death in 1982, he never lost faith.
Bhave was born in 1895 in the western Indian city of Baroda. At the age of 10, he took a vow to remain celibate and dedicate his life to the country. In 1916, he first read about Gandhi and soon joined him. Bhave was jailed several times by the British for taking part in the freedom movement. His austere lifestyle and extreme self-denial, including near starvation, alarmed even Gandhi, who ordered his disciple to eat. The master was overwhelmed by the devotion of Bhave, whom he loved as a son. "I am not fit to measure your worth," he once told Bhave, because like a real son, the younger man had "surpassed what his father has done."
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