Moved by Love
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Moved by Love (The Memoirs of Vinoba Bhave) Translated by Marjorie Sykes from a Hindi text prepared by Kalindi First Published : 1994 Published by: Paramdham Prakashan Paunar, Wardha 442111 MS India. Moved by Love MOVED BY LOVE KALINDI joined Vinoba in 1960, soon after taking her Master of Social Work degree. As his companion, she took notes of his speeches and conversations, and acted as his representative in dealings with the Press. When Vinoba started the Hindi monthly magazine Maitri in 1964, she became its editor, a position she held for about 40 years. She is a member of the Brahmavidya Mandir, the ashram founded by Vinoba at Paunar. The material translated into English for this book was originally published as a special edition of Maitri in 1985. MARJORIE SYKES spent the greater part of her life in India, and became an Indian citizen in 1950 when this became constitutionally possible. Having graduated with First Class Honours from Cambridge University, she first went to India at the end of 1928 to teach at a girls’ school in Madras. Ten years later she moved to Bengal to work with Rabindranath Tagore at his innovative university at Shantiniketan. Already fluent in Tamil, she learned Bengali, and at Tagore’s request translated some of his works into English. After Indian Independence was achieved she was free to accept Gandhi’s invitation, given two years earlier, to help with his Basic Education programme at Sevagram. In 1957 Vinoba invited her to convene the first all-India Shanti Sena (Peace Army) Committee, which he wished to be led by women. She later went to the U.S. and Canada as a consultant to the non-violent Civil Rights movement, and from 1964-67 was a member of the Peacekeeping team monitoring the ceasefire between the Indian Government and the Nagaland Independence fighters. She died at the age of 90 in 1995. Her published work includes biographies of Rabindranath Tagore and C.F. Andrews, translations of Vinoba’s Thoughts on Education and other works, and (in collaboration with Jehangir Patel) a book of personal reminiscences of Gandhi, Gandhi: his gift of the fight. A biography, Marjorie Sykes: Quaker Gandhian by Martha Dart, was published in 1993. www.mkgandhi.org Page 2 Moved by Love PREFACE By Kalindi This book is not Vinobaji’s autobiography. He himself used to say that if he were to sit down and write, the result would not be ‘the story of the self’1, but a story of the ‘not-self’, because he was ‘Vinoba the forgetful’. But he neither wrote nor dictated any such story of the not-self. But during the course of his thousands of talks he used to illustrate his topics by examples from experience, and these naturally included some incidents from his own life. This book is simply an attempt to pick out such incidents from various places and string them together. It follows that there are limits to what can be done. This is not a complete life story, only a glimpse of it. There is no attempt to give a full picture of every event, every thought, every step of the way. It brings together only those incidents and stories which are to be had in Vinoba’s own words. Some important events may therefore not be found in it, and in some places it will seem incomplete, because the principle followed is to use only Vinoba’s own account. Nevertheless, in spite of these limitations the glimpses will be found to be complete in themselves. Children are fond of playing with a ‘jigsaw puzzle’, where a complete picture, painted on a wooden plank, has been cut up into small pieces of many shapes and sizes; the aim is to fit them together in their proper places and so re-build the picture. Sometimes the players make mistakes and insert a piece into the wrong place, so that the picture is spoiled. The trouble is with the child’s lack of skill, not with the original painter of the picture. It is possible that in putting together these fragmentary ‘glimpses’ of Vinoba’s life similar mistakes may have crept in. But then, as Jnanadev asks, how can one number the Infinite, or add lustre to the Supreme Radiance? How can the mosquito grasp in its fist the illimitable sky? As he goes on to say, there is one basis on which it can be done. The work www.mkgandhi.org Page 3 Moved by Love has been undertaken in a spirit of utmost devotion on the basis of the ‘gift of fearlessness’ received from Vinoba. Vinoba has both given and received gifts of many kinds, but this gift of fearlessness which we have received from him is the quintessence of his own quest for non-violence, and shows that the quest was successful. There can be no doubt that these glimpses of his life will inspire and strengthen us to carry on that quest with enthusiasm. They are offered here in the name of the Lord. 1. The Hindi word for 'autobiography is atma-katha, literally 'story of the self'. www.mkgandhi.org Page 4 Moved by Love FOREWORD By 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 www.mkgandhi.org Page 5 Moved by Love 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. www.mkgandhi.org Page 6 Moved by Love INTRODUCTION By Satish Kumar Vinoba Bhave was a man of great purity. I worked with him from 1955 to 1962, during his twenty-year campaign to give land to the poor. He was a man who was able to move the hearts of landlords and touch them so deeply that, in all, they voluntarily donated four million acres of land. This extraordinary happening, unprecedented anywhere in the history of the world, cannot be explained in any other way than by recognizing that his demand for land came from the heart of a saint untainted by any self-interest, desire for personal glory, or pursuit of material gain. Vinoba was doubtful of the value of formal education: he used to remark to his friends that the existing schools and colleges were only large factories for training ‘your most obedient servants’. After leaving school without taking his final examinations he prepared for his future life by going to Benares to study, contemplate and discuss with sadhus and scholars.