Acharya Vinoba Bhave Jayanti

In News:

=> Recently, the Prime Minister of India paid tributes to Acharya Vinoba Bhave on his Jayanti, 11th September.

Acharya Vinoba Bhave:

=> Original name: Vinayak Narahari Bhave

=> Birth: September 11, 1895, in a Chitpavan Brahmin family at Gagoda village of the Konkan area of Maharashtra.

=> Personal Life:

• He is regarded as the National Teacher of India.
• Bhave took the vow for celibacy and followed it all his life.
• He dedicated his life to religious work and the freedom struggle.

=> Polyglot:

• He learnt various regional languages and Sanskrit along with reading the scriptures.
• Vinoba Bhave called the “Kannada” script as “Queen of World Scripts” – “Vishwa Lipigala Raani”.

=> Some of his works:-

• The essence of Quran
• The essence of Christian teachings
• Thoughts on education
• Swarajya Sastra

=> Role in Freedom Struggle:

• Instead of appearing for an exam in Bombay in 1918, Bhave threw away his books in the fire.
• This happened after he read an article by Mahatma Gandhi. He was an ardent follower of Gandhi.
• In 1940, Bhave was selected as the ‘First Individual Satyagrahi’ against the British Raj by Gandhi in India.
• Bhave played an important role in the Quit India Movement.

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.