A Man on Foot

(4 of 6)

Return Before Nightfall. Bhave was restless at Sabarmati, however, and went away to study more Sanskrit, telling Gandhi that if he did not find peace of soul he would be back in a year. Over the ensuing months, the others in the ashram forgot his promise, but one morning at prayers, the Mahatma said that this was the day Vinoba had promised to return. Vinoba was back before nightfall.

In 1932 Bhave suffered his first arrest for taking part in Gandhi's civil-disobedience movement. Thereafter he spent several more terms in British jail, serving a total of about two years. After India won her nationhood, through the bloody communal riots between Hindus and Moslems and through Gandhi's death, Bhave remained in obscurity, except for occasional newspaper articles carrying his strictures against money. To Bhave, money "tells lies and is like a loafing tramp." For a medium of exchange he favored scrip, showing the number of hours a person had worked to earn it.

Two years ago he went to the state of Hyderabad to attend a meeting of Gandhi's old disciples. The Communists were terrorizing Hyderabad, especially the Telingana district, and Bhave was appalled by what he found there.

Culture & Blood Baths. In the 10,000 square miles of Telingana, 8,000,000 peasants had long suffered the worst land tyranny in India. They were virtual serfs, without hope of getting land of their own. Communist guerrillas moved in to correct this—in their own way. They killed or put to flight scores of landowners, distributed the land, seized whole villages and set up their own schools. In battles between guerrillas and state constables backed by government troops, 3,000 people were killed and 35,000 Reds jailed. Both landowners and farmers were caught in the murderous crossfire.

Bhave wandered into areas from which the police had warned him to stay away, but he was unharmed. At first he preached ahimsa (Gandhi's old nonviolence), but he soon saw that this was not enough. "I confess," he said, "that the incendiary and murderous activities did not unnerve me, because I know that the birth of a new culture has always been accompanied in the past by blood baths. What is needed is not to get panicky, but to keep our heads cool and find a peaceful means of resolving the conflict. The police are not expected to think out and institute reforms. To clear a jungle of tigers, their employment would be useful. But here we have to deal with human beings, however mistaken and misguided. When a new idea is born, new repression cannot combat it."

Then Vinoba Bhave thought of asking landowners to give land to the landless, saying (or at least politely implying) that if they did not, the Communists or the government might take it away. Thus Bhoomidan-yagna was born, in bloody Telingana. Even the Nizam of Hyderabad, reputed one of the richest and most miserly men in the world, gave some land, though neither the Nizam nor Bhave would say how much (the merit acquired by giving is lost by boasting of it). Some 35,000 acres were collected and reassigned to the most destitute. Gradually the revolt and the terror died down.