Bhoodan Movement - History of Bhoodan Movement

History of Bhoodan Movement

On April 18, 1951, the historic day of the very genesis of the Bhoodan movement, Vinoba entered Nalgonda district, the centre of Communist activity. The organisers had arranged Vinoba’s stay at Pochampally, a large village with about 700 families, of whom two-thirds were landless. Pochampally villagers gave Vinoba a warm welcome. Vinoba went to visit the Harijan (the Untouchables) colony. By early afternoon villagers began to gather around Vinoba at Vinoba's cottage. The Harijans asked for eighty acres of land, forty wet, forty dry for forty families that would be enough. Then Vinoba asked," If it is not possible to get land from the government, is there not something villagers themselves could do?" To everyone's surprise, Ram Chandra Reddy, the local landlord got up & said in a rather excited voice: "I will give you 250 acres for these people." At his evening prayer meeting, he repeated his promise to offer 250 acres of land to the villagers. This incident neither planned nor imagined was the very genesis of the Bhoodan movement & it made Vinoba think that therein lay the potentiality of solving the land problem of India. This movement later on developed into a village gift or Gramdan movement. This movement was a part of a comprehensive movement for the establishment of a Sarvodaya Society (The Rise of All socio-economic-political order), both in India & outside India.

As an experiment in voluntary social justice, Bhoodan has attracted admiration throughout the world. There is little question that it created a social atmosphere in India that presaged land reform legislation activity throughout the country. It also had a tangible effect on the lives of many people: over 5 million acres (20,000 km²) were donated. However, it failed to meet the more ambitious goal of 50 million acres (200,000 km²) that had been set for it.

The initial objective of the movement was to secure voluntary donations of land and distribute it to the landless, but the movement soon came out with a demand of 1/6 share of land from all land owners. In 1952, the movement had widened the concept of gramdan (village in gift) and had started advocating commercial ownership of land. The first village to come under gramdan was Mangroth in Hamirpur Dist of U.P. It took more than three years to get another village in gift. The second and third gramdans took place in Orissa and the movement started spreading with emphasis on securing villages in gift.

Raja Bahadur GIRIWAR PRASAD SINGH C.B.E., Raja of Ranka (Princely State in Garhwa then in Bihar) 1911/1969 donated highest acre of land to the villagers in Palamau area .