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Hallam Tennyson (9-6-1993)
In April 1951
Vinoba Bhave sprang into sudden prominence. He started his
Bhoodan Yagna. This movement—which we translated into English as
‘Land Gift Mission’—was a brilliantly simple conception. Vinoba went
on foot from village to village appealing to landlords to hand over
at least one-sixth of their land to the landless cultivators of
their village. ‘Air and water belong to all,’ Vinoba said. ‘Land
should be shared in common as well.’
The tone of voice in which this was said was all-important. It was
never condemnatory, never harsh. Gentleness—true Ahimsa—was
Vinoba’s trademark. A gentleness backed up by a life of such
dedication and simplicity that few could listen to his pleading
unmoved.
In the first six years of his mission Vinoba walked over five
thousand miles and received land for distribution which amounted to
an area equal to the size of Scotland. No doubt some of this land
was as uncultivable as the Scottish highlands too. And here lay the
main problem of Bhoodan Yagna from the practical point of
view. After Vinoba had walked on to the next village—and he very
rarely stayed more than one night in any single place—many villages
developed factions and disagreements leading to disillusion and the
rapid flickering out of the Bhoodan spirit which Vinoba had
inspired.
When I walked with Vinoba I found this aspect distressing, even
heart-breaking. But today, reading the extracts translated by
Marjorie Sykes, I see the situation in a different light. Vinoba was
a true embodiment of the spirit of the Gita: ‘In every age I come
back, to deliver the holy, to destroy the sin of the sinner, to
establish righteousness,’ Krishna said. He did not promise permanent
solutions; he redirected our gaze to the universal good and
rekindled faith in human capacities.
This is what Vinoba did. He did not worry about the fruits of his
actions. If his actions were sound enough then their influence would
work on the soggy dough of human consciousness and help it to rise
up to achieve something nearer to its full potential. He was
astonishingly—at least to the eye of a Westerner—detached from the
results.
This attitude of detachment coloured every aspect of Vinoba’s life
and thought, as is shown in Marjorie Sykes’ deft translation of
extracts from his recorded speeches. Vinoba did not care what the
world thought; he followed his own glimpse of the truth to its stark
and logical conclusion. He had little of Mahatma Gandhi’s wonderful
sense of drama and little of his playfulness and sense of fun. But
this apparent lack of ‘personality’ was not a defect. It was the
inevitable price he had to pay for the great gift he brought us.
‘Let only that little be left of me by which I may name Thee my
all.’ Vinoba, with his usual mathe- matical precision, had
calculated this sum exactly.
There could be no one better qualified to translate Vinoba’s
thoughts for Western readers than Marjorie Sykes, who has been
interpreting India to the West for well over fifty years ! She
brings to the task great skill, precision and understanding. Thus a
dozen years after his death Vinoba once again confronts the western
reader with his simplicity and subtlety, his courage and his supreme
gentleness.
The radiance goes on. |
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