Word: vinoba
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...Urgency. Vinoba, as he is known to millions, was a trusted and faithful disciple of the late Mahatma Gandhi. He even looks somewhat like Gandhi, except for a grey beard and frowsy dark hair. He has the same emaciated body, wears the same sort of bifocal glasses, speaks in the same calm, soft voice, with kindly humor. One of the most learned men in India, he has studied Sanskrit, Persian, Urdu, Hindi, Marathi, Gujarati, Bengali, Telugu, Kanarese, Malayalam and English, and this array of languages serves him well on his travels through polyglot India. It is not for his learning...
...doctrine that Vinoba preaches. It only seems so, because the times have given it new urgency. Walking from one to another of India's 700,000 villages, he asks those who have land to share it with those who have none. Without using the words of the gentle Evangelist who preceded him by two thousand years, he tells his audiences that it is more blessed to give than to receive. To those who have land he says: "I have come to loot you with love. If you have four sons, consider me as the fifth, and accordingly give...
Eight Swishes. Vinoba Bhave is a sick man: he has a duodenal ulcer and malaria. For food, he takes only two cups of milk daily, the second laced with honey. Yet somehow he finds the energy to walk a steady ten to 20 miles a day. When he is on the road, he and his disciples get up in some sleeping village at 3 a.m. There is a patter of handclaps, a tinkling bell, the flash of a kerosene lantern, the shuffling of sandals in the dust, and the little group departs for the next village, singing hymns. When...
...truck and to see that everything is in order (including latrine-digging, if a big crowd is expected). The only permanent member of the group is Damadar Das, 38, who joined Gandhi at 18 and became Bhave's secretary after the Mahatma died. Damadar Das mails copies of Vinoba's speeches to the newspapers and keeps track of the land deeds, although each one is shrewdly inspected and initialed by Bhave personally...
Lifelong Celibacy. Vinoba Bhave was born 57 years ago to a Brahman (high-caste) family in Gangoda, a village in western India. His given name was Vinayak, but Gandhi changed it to Vinoba in later years, and the disciple accepted it as his name. At ten the boy began his career of holy man: he made a resolution of lifelong celibacy, gave up sweets and started going barefoot. Gandhi, who in young manhood was a lawyer and a comfortably married man, admired Vinoba's untarnished virginity. The Mahatma frequently said that his only regret in life was that...