The Bhoodan and Gramdan Movement in India: A Critical Assessment of Achievement and Failure

Abstract

The unique Indian movement of bhoodan and gramdan is explained as one of the attempts to come to grips with the urgent and chronic problems of agrarian reform. Government measures failed, the peasant’s selfhelp was quelled by the army or faded away. Bhave instead aimed at a substitution of State activities and revolutionary coercion by persuasion and politics of love. The aims were set higher and higher both in quantity of land to be donated and redistributed and in quality, calling for a general, radical, non-violent reshaping of Indian society. These high-flying goals were to be achieved by prayer, preaching, good example. No technical, administrative steps were offered or planned to implement the follow-up or to achieve the goals.