The Failure of Bhoodan
RAO, C. R. M.
India's land-gift movement The Failure of Bhoodan By C. R. M. Rao New Delhi For Bhoodan, the Indian land-gift mission, 1957 was to be the year of deliverance." By 1958, the movement was expected...
...The Indian press hailed the movement and gave it worldwide publicity...
...It had all the prestige that could be invoked in the name of Mahatma Gandhi...
...But Bhoodan failed to consolidate initial gains...
...Indian independence brought a gener.al social awakening, as well as Government measures abolishing landlordism and protecting tenant farmers...
...A marriage of convenience seems to have taken place...
...It seemed to show that abiding and qualitative social changes could result from the voluntary, cooperative and creative efforts of free individuals...
...It should have speedily resettled the landless on whatever lands had been collected, and then laid the foundations of democracy by educating the rehabilitated peasants...
...Cooperative farming based on the abolition of all private ownership and pooling of land is now regarded as compatible with the end of Gramdan and the Gandhian social philosophy of Sarvodaya...
...In sum, Gramdan asks the individual peasant to submerge himself in the village collectivity...
...It also bodes ill that no reform movement of any social significance in India can remain independent of Government "assistance...
...Deflation of public faith in Bhoodan's revolutionary potentialities led Bhoodan to digress into every other conceivable kind of "dan" (gift...
...By its emphasis on mass cooperation and mass organization toward a set social goal, it works against individual freedom and initiative...
...Even the Communists, to whose terrorism and banditry in Telengana Bhoodan had come as a dramatic answer, could find no convincing reasons to oppose it...
...And now the Government has found the Gramdan villages a convenient ground to introduce cooperative farming, and the Indian Planning Commission has drawn up a master plan for the cooperative settlement of farmers on Bhoodan and Gramdan lands...
...Land gifts have become stabilized at less than 5 million acres, and only one-tenth of this has been distributed...
...Unfortunately, the state of Kerala has gone Communist in spite of a triumphant Bhoodan there...
...There is already talk of Nagardan (gifts of towns and cities...
...2. Bhoodan's leaders have been trying to bring about a change of heart in the people, which must involve a deeper change of mental outlook...
...Though Bhoodan's leaders insist that the abolition of private ownership will be entirely voluntary in Gramdan villages, in the same breath they set a target of at least one cooperative farming unit in every Gramdan village...
...Considering the pace of the movement's progress in the six years since it started, 50 years would be insufficient to accomplish what it has set out to do...
...The entire process of giving and taking lands is highly dramatized and charged with pathos...
...It may not be long before Gramdan kindles District-dan...
...It is probable that they saw this as the only way of saving the movement from utter failure...
...Bhoodan was also praised as a spontaneous, independent movement which sprang up at a time when economic, political and social life in India were being increasingly concentrated in the hands of the state...
...Bhoodan originally won the applause of many leading Western writers on Asian affairs, who believed its strong spiritual flavor could act as a prophylactic against Communism...
...Few social reform movements came into being under more favorable circumstances than Bhoodan...
...Given these favorable conditions, to say nothing of fairly liberal grants from the Gandhi Memorial Fund and generous private firms and individuals, why has Bhoodan fallen so far behind its timetable...
...On these counts Bhoodan, once a legitimate and modest democratic hope, has become one of the great illusions of our time...
...Apparently, this could not be included in the program of a movement which sought spectacular successes in a short time...
...But Bhoodan has not even come close to achieving its immediate goals or ultimate objectives...
...All this could not have come about if Bhoodan's leaders did not seem to find the movement unmanageable, especially in its Gramdan phase, without some kind of Government assistance...
...In an apparent effort to divert attention from Bhoodan's paradoxical failure, its leader early last year came up with Gramdan, gifts of whole villages...
...All this gives one the unmistakable impression that Bhoodan itself is fading out...
...Prime Minister Nehru himself is seriously interested in this cooperation...
...Three reasons stand out: 1. Much of the popular enthusiasm over Bhoodan was due to the elements of drama, pathos and excitement it provided the participants...
...Its author-leader, Acharya Vinobha Bhave, is himself a dramatic, saintly man who walks and talks dramatically...
...Few seem concerned about the element of coercion involved in achieving this target...
...India's ruling Congress party and the Praja Socialist opposition fought for the role of Bhoodan's champion...
...Thus Bhoodan has gone so far beyond land-gifts that it means all things to all people—i.e., nothing in particular to anyone...
...According to latest reports, too, the Ministry of Community Development is seeking greater cooperation between the Government's Community Projects and development work in Gramdan villages...
...It was born in dramatic circumstances as a dramatic answer to Communist violence...
...With its "year of deliverance" long past, therefore, Bhoodan presents a tragi-comic picture...
...This attack on India's chronic problem of resettling its millions of landless aimed at the same time at a radical, yet peaceful, moral and material reconstruction of Indian society as a whole...
...It certainly is a fall for the high priests of Gandhian Sarvodaya, who stand for a stateless society, to seek Government help in an area which they have always insisted must be free from government...
...Gramdan, unlike Bhoodan, has little use for the individual, except as a guinea pig in its experiments for the larger good of the village society...
...3. Vinohha Bhave and the people around him continually stretched Bhoodan's scope until the gap between professed aims and possible achievements became unbridgeable...
...Many states also passed legislation to ease the transfer of Bhoodan lands...
...By the end of 1957, Gramdan had virtually consumed Bhoodan...
...It has given rise to Shramadan, Buddhidan, Sampatti-dan and Koopdan, all of which lead to Sarvaswadan (or the gift of everything you possess) and finally to Jee-vandan (the "dan" of one's own life...
...Instead, Bhoodan's leaders devoted the bulk of their time to exploring the heights (and depths) of the "dan" idea...
...But changing mental attitudes, especially of a people as steeped in poverty and ignorance as India's, requires long and patient education...
...So not much strength can be derived from the principles or methods advocated, although these have much in them that is commendable...
...Given the present surface-level of democracy in India, the Government's emphasis on more and more cooperatives rather than genuine cooperation, and the naive idealism of Bhoodan's leaders, the dangers of cooperative farming for democracy in India are real...
...By 1958, the movement was expected to have collected 50 million acres in voluntary land gifts and distributed them to landless peasants...
...The movement's leaders, despite their penchant for humility and love of simplicity, do little to discourage this excitement...
...Also, the money lost when Bhoodan renounced financial assistance from the Gandhi Memorial Fund early in 1957 would be regained if the Government came into the picture...
Vol. 41 • June 1958 • No. 22
