Word: bhave
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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...Walk. Four years after Gandhi's death, disciple Vinoba Bhave (rhymes with save), often called the "son of Gandhi" is leading a one-man land reform crusade. His crusade which began with remarkable success in Communist-terrorized Telingana province (TIME, June 4), now promises to sweep through India. Bhave's target: the redistribution of 50 million acres-one-sixth of the cultivated land-among India's millions of landless peasants. His argument: "In India the ideal of Ahimsa (nonviolence) has deeply influenced people's minds. We can successfully bring about peaceful social revolution by gentle persuasion...
...September, Prime Minister Nehru sent for Bhave. He set out from his ashram at Sewagram in Central India to walk the 795 miles to New Delhi. On the way, his soft words won him 25,000 acres from 3,000 donors, mostly small landowners having less than five acres. One aged woman, after hearing Bhave, gave him half of her two-acre plot. Another gave him her entire 500-acre estate. The land is distributed to the landless on the basis of one acre for each member of the family. Bhave asks cash donors to buy land for him, present...
...Says Bhave: "The Communist path of violence is not in tune with the culture of India. The notion that the Communists serve the poor is wrong...
...Come." One Indian newspaper has called Bhave "the Saint Paul of constructive work." Wherever he goes, roads, huts or houses are decorated with festoons of palm and mango leaves. As he passes through wayside villages at dawn, groups of scantily clad, emaciated people shout: "The God who is distributing land has come!" Or, calling him the "son of Gandhi," they touch his feet, offer him flower garlands and fruit, beat drums, and blow bugles...
Last month, Hyderabad reported only three Communist murders-instead of the usual score. Police arrested the two principal guerrilla leaders. The backbone of the Communist-led rebellion was broken. Some former Communists were said to be attending Bhave's prayer meetings...