socialworkers

Socialworkers part 21Jawaharlal Nehru 2Sarojini Naidu3Mhatma Gandhi4Sindhutai sakpal 5Vinoba Bhave

1 Jawaharlal Nehru

Jawaharlal Nehru was born on 14 November 1889 in Allahabad in British India. His father, Motilal Nehru (1861–1931), a self-made wealthy barrister who was born into to the Kashmiri Pandit community, served twice as president of the Indian National Congress, in 1919 and 1928.[5][6] His mother, Swarup Rani Thussu (1868–1938), who came from a well-known Kashmiri Brahmin family settled in Lahore,[7] was Motilal's second wife, his first having died in childbirth. Jawaharlal was the eldest of three children.[8] The elder of his two sisters, Vijaya Lakshmi, later became the first female president of the United Nations General Assembly.[9] His youngest sister, Krishna Hutheesing, became a noted writer and authored several books on her brother.

Nehru described his childhood as a "sheltered and uneventful one". He grew up in an atmosphere of privilege in wealthy homes, including a palatial estate called the Anand Bhavan. His father had him educated at home by private governesses and tutors.[12] Influenced by the Irish theosophist Ferdinand T. Brooks' teaching,[13] Nehru became interested in science and theosophy.[14] A family friend, Annie Besant subsequently initiated him into the Theosophical Society at age thirteen. However, his interest in theosophy did not prove to be enduring, and he left the society shortly after Brooks departed as his tutor.[15] He wrote: "For nearly three years [Brooks] was with me and in many ways, he influenced me greatly".

Nehru's theosophical interests induced him to study the Buddhist and Hindu scriptures.[16] According to B. R. Nanda, these scriptures were Nehru's "first introduction to the religious and cultural heritage of [India]....[They] provided Nehru the initial impulse for [his] long intellectual quest which culminated…in The Discovery of India.

Nehru became an ardent nationalist during his youth.[17] The Second Boer War and the Russo-Japanese War intensified his feelings. Of the latter he wrote, "[The] Japanese victories [had] stirred up my enthusiasm. ...Nationalistic ideas filled my mind. ... I mused of Indian freedom and Asiatic freedom from the thraldom of Europe."[14] Later, in 1905, when he had begun his institutional schooling at Harrow, a leading school in England where he was nicknamed "Joe",[18] G. M. Trevelyan's Garibaldi books, which he had received as prizes for academic merit, influenced him greatly.[19] He viewed Garibaldi as a revolutionary hero. He wrote: "Visions of similar deeds in India came before, of [my] gallant fight for [Indian] freedom and in my mind, India and Italy got strangely mixed together.

Nehru had developed an interest in Indian politics during his time in Britain as a student and a barrister.[23] Within months of his return to India in 1912, Nehru attended an annual session of the Indian National Congress in Patna.[24] Congress in 1912 was the party of moderates and elites,[24] and he was disconcerted by what he saw as "very much an English-knowing upper-class affair".[25] Nehru doubted the effectiveness of Congress but agreed to work for the party in support of the Indian civil rights movement led by Mahatma Gandhi in South Africa,[26] collecting funds for the movement in 1913.[24] Later, he campaigned against indentured labour and other such discrimination faced by Indians in the British colonies.

When World War II began, Viceroy Linlithgow unilaterally declared India a belligerent on the side of Britain, without consulting the elected Indian representatives.[86] Nehru hurried back from a visit to China, announcing that, in a conflict between democracy and fascism, "our sympathies must inevitably be on the side of democracy, ... I should like India to play its full part and throw all her resources into the struggle for a new order".[87]

After much deliberation, the Congress under Nehru informed the government that it would co-operate with the British but on certain conditions. First, Britain must give an assurance of full independence for India after the war and allow the election of a constituent assembly to frame a new constitution; second, although the Indian armed forces would remain under the British Commander-in-chief, Indians must be included immediately in the central government and given a chance to share power and responsibility.[88] When Nehru presented Lord Linlithgow with these demands, he chose to reject them. A deadlock was reached: "The same old game is played again," Nehru wrote bitterly to Gandhi, "the background is the same, the various epithets are the same and the actors are the same and the results must be the same".[89][90]

On 23 October 1939, the Congress condemned the Viceroy's attitude and called upon the Congress ministries in the various provinces to resign in protest.[91] Before this crucial announcement, Nehru urged Jinnah and the Muslim League to join the protest, but Jinnah declined.[88][92]

As Nehru had firmly placed India on the path of democracy and freedom at a time when the world was under the threat of Fascism, he and Bose split in the late 1930s when the latter agreed to seek the help of Fascists in driving the British out of India.[93] At the same time, Nehru supported the Republicans who were fighting against Francisco Franco's forces in the Spanish Civil War.[94] Nehru and his aide V. K. Krishna Menon visited Spain and declared support for the Republicans. When Benito Mussolini, dictator of Italy, expressed his desire to meet, Nehru refused him

In July 1946, Nehru pointedly observed that no princely state could prevail militarily against the army of independent India.[118] In January 1947, he said that independent India would not accept the divine right of kings.[119] In May 1947, he declared that any princely state which refused to join the Constituent Assembly would be treated as an enemy state.[120] Vallabhbhai Patel and V. P. Menon were more conciliatory towards the princes, and as the men charged with integrating the states, were successful in the task.[121] During the drafting of the Indian constitution, many Indian leaders (except Nehru) were in favour of allowing each princely state or covenanting state to be independent as a federal state along the lines suggested originally by the Government of India Act 1935.

2Sarojini Naidu

Sarojini Naidu passed her matriculation examination to qualify for university study, earning the highest rank, in 1891, when she was twelve.[2] From 1895 to 1898 she studied in England, at King's College, London and then Girton College, Cambridge, with a scholarship from the Nizam of Hyderabad.[4] In England, she met artists from the Aesthetic and Decadent movements

Chattopadhyay returned to Hyderabad in 1898.[6] That same year, she married Govindaraju Naidu, a physician whom she met during her stay in England,[2] in an inter-caste marriage which has been called “groundbreaking and scandalous".[6] Both their families approved their marriage, which was long and harmonious. They had five children.[2] Their daughter Padmaja also joined the Quit India Movement, and she held several governmental positions in independent India.

Beginning in 1904, Naidu became an increasingly popular orator, promoting Indian independence and women's rights, especially women's education.[2] Her oratory often framed arguments following the five-part rhetorical structures of Nyaya reasoning.[7] She addressed the Indian National Congress and the Indian Social Conference in Calcutta in 1906.[2] Her social work for flood relief earned her the Kaisar-i-Hind Medal in 1911[2], which she later returned in protest over the April 1919 Jallianwala Bagh massacre.[citation needed] She met Muthulakshmi Reddy in 1909, and in 1914 she met Mahatma Gandhi, whom she credited with inspiring a new commitment to political action.[8] She was the second woman President of the Indian National Congress and first Indian woman to preside over the INC conference .

With Reddy, she helped established the Women's Indian Association in 1917.[2][9] Later that year, Naidu accompanied her colleague Annie Besant, who was the president of Home Rule League and Women's Indian Association, to advocate universal suffrage in front of the Joint Select Committee in London, United Kingdom.She also supported the Lucknow Pact, a joint Hindu–Muslim demand for British political reform, at the Madras Special Provincial Council.[2] As a public speaker, Naidu's oratory was known for its personality and its incorporation of her poetry.

Naidu began writing at the age of 12. Her play, Maher Muneer, written in Persian, impressed the Nizam of Kingdom of Hyderabad.[citation needed]

Naidu's poetry was written in English and usually took the form of lyric poetry in the tradition of British Romanticism, which she was sometimes challenged to reconcile with her Indian nationalist politics.[5] She was known for her vivid use of rich sensory images in her writing, and for her lush depictions of India.[8][28] She was well-regarded as a poet, considered the "Indian Yeats".[7]

Her first book of poems was published in London in 1905, titled "The Golden Threshold".[29] The publication was suggested by Edmund Gosse, and bore an introduction by Arthur Symons. It also included a sketch of Naidu as a teenager, in a ruffled white dress, drawn by John Butler Yeats. Her second and most strongly nationalist book of poems, The Bird of Time, was published in 1912.[5] It was published in both London and New York, and includes "In the Bazaars of Hyderabad".[30] The last book of new poems published in her lifetime, The Broken Wing (1917). It includes the poem "The Gift of India", critiquing the British empire's exploitation of Indian mothers and soldiers, which she had previously recited to the Hyderabad Ladies' War Relief Association in 1915. It also includes "Awake!", dedicated to Muhammad Ali Jinnah, which she read as the conclusion to a 1915 speech to the Indian National Congress to urge unified Indian action.[5] A collection of all her published poems was printed in New York in 1928.[31] After her death, Naidu's unpublished poems were collected in The Feather of the Dawn (1961), edited by her daughter Padmaja Naidu.[32]

Naidu's speeches were first collected and published in January 1918 as The Speeches and Writings of Sarojini Naidu, a popular publication which led to an expanded reprint in 1919[33] and again in 1925

Naidu died of cardiac arrest at 3:30 p.m. (IST) on 2 March 1949 at the Government House in Lucknow. Upon her return from New Delhi on 15 February, she was advised to rest by her doctors, and all official engagements were canceled. Her health deteriorated substantially and bloodletting was performed on the night of 1 March after she complained of severe [headache]. She collapsed following a fit of cough. Naidu was said to have asked the nurse attending to her to sing to her at about 10:40 p.m. (IST) which put her to sleep.[42] She subsequently died, and her last rites were performed at the Gomati River.

Naidu is memorialized in the Golden Threshold, an off-campus annex of University of Hyderabad named for her first collection of poetry. Golden Threshold now houses the Sarojini Naidu School of Arts & Communication in the University of Hyderabad.[48]

Asteroid 5647 Sarojininaidu, discovered by Eleanor Helin at Palomar Observatory in 1990, was named in her memory.[49] The official naming citation was published by the Minor Planet Center on 27 August 2019 (M.P.C. 115893).[50]

In 2014, Google India commemorated Naidu's 135th birth anniversary with a Google Doodle.[51]

Works about Naidu

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The first biography of Naidu, Sarojini Naidu: a Biography by Padmini Sengupta, was published in 1966.[52] A biography for children, Sarojini Naidu: The Nightingale and The Freedom Fighter, was published by Hachette in 2014.[53]

In 1975, the Government of India Films Division produced a twenty-minute documentary about Naidu's life, "Sarojini Naidu – The Nightingale of India", directed by Bhagwan Das Garga.[54][55]

In 2020, a biopic was announced, titled Sarojini, to be directed by Akash Nayak and Dhiraj Mishra, and starring Dipika Chikhlia as Naidu.

Naidu utilized her poetry and oratory skills to promote women’s rights alongside the nationalist movement. In 1902, Naidu entered the world of politics after being urged by Gopal Krishna Gokhale, an important leader of the nationalist movement.[10] In 1906, Naidu spoke to the Social Council of Calcutta in order to advocate for the education of Indian women.[11] In her speech, Naidu stressed that the success of the whole movement relied upon the “woman question”.[12] Naidu claimed that the true “nation-builders” were women, not men, and that without women’s active cooperation, the nationalist movement would be in vain.

3Mhatma Gndhi

Born and raised in a Hindu family in coastal Gujarat, Gandhi trained in the law at the Inner Temple in London, and was called to the bar in June 1891, at the age of 22. After two uncertain years in India, where he was unable to start a successful law practice, he moved to South Africa in 1893 to represent an Indian merchant in a lawsuit. He went on to live in South Africa for 21 years. There, Gandhi raised a family and first employed nonviolent resistance in a campaign for civil rights. In 1915, aged 45, he returned to India and soon set about organising peasants, farmers, and urban labourers to protest against discrimination and excessive land-tax.

Assuming leadership of the Indian National Congress in 1921, Gandhi led nationwide campaigns for easing poverty, expanding women's rights, building religious and ethnic amity, ending untouchability, and, above all, achieving swaraj or self-rule. Gandhi adopted the short dhoti woven with hand-spun yarn as a mark of identification with India's rural poor. He began to live in a self-sufficient residential community, to eat simple food, and undertake long fasts as a means of both introspection and political protest. Bringing anti-colonial nationalism to the common Indians, Gandhi led them in challenging the British-imposed salt tax with the 400 km (250 mi) Dandi Salt March in 1930 and in calling for the British to quit India in 1942. He was imprisoned many times and for many years in both South Africa and India.

Gandhi's vision of an independent India based on religious pluralism was challenged in the early 1940s by a Muslim nationalism which demanded a separate homeland for Muslims within British India. In August 1947, Britain granted independence, but the British Indian Empire was partitioned into two dominions, a Hindu-majority India and a Muslim-majority Pakistan. As many displaced Hindus, Muslims, and Sikhs made their way to their new lands, religious violence broke out, especially in the Punjab and Bengal. Abstaining from the official celebration of independence, Gandhi visited the affected areas, attempting to alleviate distress. In the months following, he undertook several hunger strikes to stop the religious violence. The last of these was begun in Delhi on 12 January 1948, when he was 78. The belief that Gandhi had been too resolute in his defense of both Pakistan and Indian Muslims spread among some Hindus in India. Among these was Nathuram Godse, a militant Hindu nationalist from Pune, western India, who assassinated Gandhi by firing three bullets into his chest at an interfaith prayer meeting in Delhi on 30 January 1948.

Gandhi's birthday, 2 October, is commemorated in India as Gandhi Jayanti, a national holiday, and worldwide as the International Day of Nonviolence. Gandhi is considered to be the Father of the Nation in post-colonial India. During India's nationalist movement and in several decades immediately after, he was also commonly called Bapu (Gujarati endearment for "father", roughly "papa",

At the request of Gopal Krishna Gokhale, conveyed to him by C. F. Andrews, Gandhi returned to India in 1915. He brought an international reputation as a leading Indian nationalist, theorist and community organiser.

Gandhi joined the Indian National Congress and was introduced to Indian issues, politics and the Indian people primarily by Gokhale. Gokhale was a key leader of the Congress Party best known for his restraint and moderation, and his insistence on working inside the system. Gandhi took Gokhale's liberal approach based on British Whiggish traditions and transformed it to make it look Indian.[79]

Gandhi took leadership of the Congress in 1920 and began escalating demands until on 26 January 1930 the Indian National Congress declared the independence of India. The British did not recognise the declaration but negotiations ensued, with the Congress taking a role in provincial government in the late 1930s. Gandhi and the Congress withdrew their support of the Raj when the Viceroy declared war on Germany in September 1939 without consultation. Tensions escalated until Gandhi demanded immediate independence in 1942 and the British responded by imprisoning him and tens of thousands of Congress leaders. Meanwhile, the Muslim League did co-operate with Britain and moved, against Gandhi's strong opposition, to demands for a totally separate Muslim state of Pakistan. In August 1947 the British partitioned the land with India and Pakistan each achieving independence on terms that Gandhi disapproved.

At 5:17 pm on 30 January 1948, Gandhi was with his grandnieces in the garden of Birla House (now Gandhi Smriti), on his way to address a prayer meeting, when Nathuram Godse, a Hindu nationalist, fired three bullets into his chest from a pistol at close range.[186][187] According to some accounts, Gandhi died instantly.[188][189] In other accounts, such as one prepared by an eyewitness journalist, Gandhi was carried into the Birla House, into a bedroom. There he died about 30 minutes later as one of Gandhi's family members read verses from Hindu

Godse, a Hindu nationalist,[196][187][197] with links to the Hindu Mahasabha and the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh,[198][199][200][201][178] made no attempt to escape; several other conspirators were soon arrested as well. The accused were Nathuram Vinayak Godse, Narayan Apte, Vinayak Damodar Savarkar, Shankar Kistayya, Dattatraya Parchure, Vishnu Karkare, Madanlal Pahwa, and Gopal Godse.[202][203][204][205]: 38 [201][178]

The trial began on 27 May 1948 and ran for eight months before Justice Atma Charan passed his final order on 10 February 1949. The prosecution called 149 witnesses, the defense none.[206] The court found all of the defendants except one guilty as charged. Eight men were convicted for the murder conspiracy, and others were convicted for violation of the Explosive Substances Act. Savarkar was acquitted and set free. Nathuram Godse and Narayan Apte were sentenced to death by hanging[207] and the remaining six (including Godse's brother, Gopal) were sentenced to life imprisonment.[

4Sindhutai Sdaughter

Sapkal was born on 14 November 1948,[1] in Pimpri Meghe in Wardha district in the then Central Provinces and Berar of Dominion of India to Abhimanyu Sathe, a cowherder.[2][3] Being an unwanted child, she was referred to as Chindhi (Marathi for "piece of rag"). Abject poverty, family responsibilities and childhood marriage to an older man forced her to quit formal education after she successfully passed the fourth standardization .[4] Sapkal was married off at age 12 to Shrihari Sapkal, who was 20 years older than her, and moved to Nawargaon, Seloo in Wardha.[5] The marriage did not last long and at the age of 20,[5] she was violently forced out of her home by her husband, leaving her on her own to care for a daughter

Sindhutai Sapkal later found herself in Chikhaldara, where she started begging for food. In the process, she realised that there were many children abandoned by their parents and she adopted them as her own. She had to beg even harder to feed ever the larger family. She decided to become a mother to everyone who came across to her as an orphan. She later gave away her own daughter to the Shrimant Dagdu Sheth Halwai trust of Pune, to eliminate the feeling of partiality between her own child and the adopted children

Sindhutai Sapkal later found herself in Chikhaldara, where she started begging for food. In the process, she realised that there were many children abandoned by their parents and she adopted them as her own. She had to beg even harder to feed ever the larger family. She decided to become a mother to everyone who came across to her as an orphan. She later gave away her own daughter to the Shrimant Dagdu Sheth Halwai trust of Pune, to eliminate the feeling of partiality between her own child and the adopted children

Sapkal fought for the rehabilitation of eighty-four villages.[10] In the course of her agitation, she met Chhedilal Gupta, the then Minister of Forests. He agreed that the villagers should not be displaced before the government had made appropriate arrangements at alternative sites. When Prime Minister Indira Gandhi arrived to inaugurate the tiger project, Sapkal showed her photographs of an Adivasi who had lost his eyes to a wild bear.[11] She is quoted as saying, "I told her that the forest department paid compensation if a cow or a hen was killed by a wild animal, so why not a human being? She immediately ordered compensation."[11]

After being informed of the plight of orphaned and abandoned Adivasi children, Sapkal took care of the children in return for meager amounts of food. Shortly thereafter, it become the mission of her life

Sapkal devoted herself to orphans. As a result, she was fondly called "Mai", which means "mother". She nurtured over 1,500 orphaned children and through them had a grand family of 382 sons-in-law and 49 daughters-in-law. She has been honoured with more than 700 awards for her work. She used award money to buy land to make a home for orphaned children.

2017

2021 - Padma Shri in the Social Work category[20][21]

2017 – Nari Shakti Puraskar from the President Of India[22]

2016 – Honorary doctorate by the Dr. D. Y. Patil College of Engineering, Pune[23]

2016 – Social Worker of the Year award from Wockhardt Foundation[24]

2014 – Ahmadiyya Muslim Peace Prize[25]

2013 – Mother Teresa Awards for Social Justice[26][27]

2013 – The National Award for Iconic Mother[28]

2012 – Real Heroes Awards, given by CNN-IBN and Reliance Foundation[29]

2012 – COEP Gaurav Puraskar, given by College of Engineering, Pune[30]

2010 – Ahilyabai Holkar Award, given by the Government of Maharashtra to social workers in the field of women and child welfare[31][30]

2008 – Women of the Year Award, given by daily Marathi newspaper Loksatta[30]

1996 – Dattak Mata Purskar, given by Non Profit Organization Sunita Kalaniketan Trust[32]

Sahyadri Hirkani Award (Marathi: सह्याद्रीची हिरकणी पुरस्कार)[30]

Rajai Award (Marathi: राजाई पुरस्कार)[30]

Shivleela Mahila Gaurav Award (Marathi: शिवलीला महिला गौरव पुरस्कार)

The 2010 Marathi film Mee Sindhutai Sapkal by Anant Mahadevan is a biopic inspired by the true story of Sindhutai Sapkal. The film was selected for world premiere at the 54th London Film Festival.

The 2023 Marathi TV serial Sindhutai Majhi Mai aired on Colors Marathi and is also inspired by the true story of Sindhutai Sapkal.

She died of a heart attack in Pune, Maharashtra, on 4 January 2022, at the age of 73.

5Vinoba Bhave

Vinayak Narahari Bhave was born on 11 September 1895 in a small village called Gagoji (present-day Gagode Budruk) in Kolaba in the Konkan region of what is now Maharashtra. Vinayaka was the eldest son of Narahari Shambhu Rao and Rukmani Devi. The couple had five children; four sons named Vinayaka (affectionately called Vinya), Balakrishna, Shivaji and Dattatreya, and one daughter. His father was a trained weaver with a modern rationalist outlook and worked in Baroda. Vinayaka was brought up by his grandfather, Shamburao Bhave and was greatly influenced by his mother Rukmini Devi, a religious woman from Karnataka. Vinayaka was highly inspired after reading the Bhagavad Gita, at a very young age.[3]

A report in the newspapers about Gandhi's speech at the newly founded Banaras Hindu University attracted Bhave's attention. In 1916, after reading a newspaper piece by Mahatma Gandhi, Bhave threw his school and college certificates into a fire on his way to Bombay to appear for the intermediate examination. He wrote a letter to Gandhi and after an exchange of letters, Gandhi advised Bhave to come for a personal meeting at Kochrab Ashram in Ahmedabad. Bhave met Gandhi on 7 June 1916 and subsequently abandoned his studies. Bhave participated with a keen interest in the activities at Gandhi's ashram, like teaching, studying, spinning and improving the lives of the community. His involvement with Gandhi's constructive programmes related to Khadi, village industries, new education (Nai Talim), sanitation and hygiene also kept on increasing.

Bhave went to Wardha on 8 April 1921 to take charge of the Ashram as desired by Gandhi. In 1923, he brought out Maharashtra Dharma, a Marathi monthly which had his essays on the Upanishads. Later on, this monthly became a weekly and continued for three years. In 1925, Gandhi sent him to Vaikom, Kerala to supervise the entry of the Harijans to the temple.

Bhave was arrested several times during the 1920s and 1930s and served a five-year jail sentence in the 1940s for leading non-violent resistance to British rule. The jails for Bhave had become the places of reading and writing. He wrote Ishavasyavritti and Sthitaprajna Darshan in jail. He also learnt four South Indian languages and created the script of Lok Nagari at Vellore jail. In the jails, he gave a series of talks on the Bhagavad Gita in Marathi, to his fellow prisoners. Bhave participated in the nationwide civil disobedience periodically conducted against the British and was imprisoned with other nationalists. Despite these many activities, he was not well known to the public. He gained national prominence when Gandhi chose him as the first participant in a new nonviolent campaign in 1940. All were calling him by his short name, Vinoba. Bhave's younger brother Balkrishna was also a Gandhian. Gandhi entrusted him and Manibhai Desai to set up a nature therapy ashram at Urali Kanchan where Balkrishna spent all his life.

He was associated with Mahatma Gandhi in the Indian independence movement. He stayed for some time at Gandhi's Sabarmati ashram in a cottage that was named after him, 'Vinoba Kutir'. He gave talks on the Bhagavad Gita in Marathi to his fellow ashramites. These were later published in book form, as Talks on the Gita, and it has been translated into many languages both in India and elsewhere. Bhave felt that the source of these talks was something from above and he believed that its influence would endure even if his other works were forgotten.

In the year 1940, he was chosen by Gandhi to be the first individual Satyagrahi (an individual standing up for Truth instead of a collective action) against the British rule.[8] It is said that Gandhi envied and respected Bhave's celibacy, a vow he made in his adolescence, in fitting with his belief in the Brahmacharya principle. Bhave also participated in the Quit India Movement.

Paunar ashram

Bhave spent the later part of his life at his Brahma Vidya Mandir ashram in Paunar in Wardha district of Maharashtra. He died on 15 November 1982 after refusing food and medicine for a few days by accepting "Samadhi Maran" / "Santhara" as described in Jainism.[16] Then the Prime Minister of India, Indira Gandhi, who was visiting Moscow to attend the funeral of Soviet leader Leonid Brezhnev, cut short her visit to be at the Bhave's funeral.

V.S. Naipaul has scathingly criticised Bhave in his collection of essays citing his lack of connection with rationality and excessive imitation of Gandhi. Even some of his admirers find fault with the extent of his devotion to Gandhi. Much more controversial was his support, ranging from covert to open, to the Congress Party's government under Indira Gandhi, which was fast becoming unpopular. He controversially backed the Indian Emergency imposed by Prime Minister Indira Gandhi, calling it Anushasana Parva (Time for Discipline). Jayaprakash Narayan in his prison diary during the emergency sarcastically wrote about the meaning of Anushasan Parva.[18] Congress party opponents at that time had coined the derogatory term "Sarkari Sant (Government Saint)" to describe him. Noted Marathi writer Pra Ke Atre publicly criticised him and mocked him by writing an article titled "Vanaroba" which is a disambiguation of the name "Vinoba" and means monkey.

In 1958 Bhave was the first recipient of the international Ramon Magsaysay Award for Community Leadership.[19] He was awarded the Bharat Ratna posthumously in 1983.[20]

Vinoba Bhave, The Man, a documentary film on the social-reformer directed by Vishram Bedekar was released in 1963. It was produced by the Government of India's Films Division.[21] Indian film director Sarvottam Badami had earlier made another documentary on him, Vinoba Bhave, in 1951.

On 18 April 1951,[13] Bhave started his land donation movement at Pochampally of Nalgonda district Telangana,[14] the Bhoodan Movement. He took donated land from landowner Indians and gave it away to the poor and landless, for them to cultivate. Then after 1954, he started to ask for donations from whole villages in a programme he called Gramdan. He got more than 1000 villages by way of donations. Out of these, he obtained 175 donated villages in Tamil Nadu alone. Noted Gandhian and an atheist Lavanam was the interpreter for Bhave during his land reform movement in Andhra Pradesh and parts of Orissa.

Paunar ashram

Bhave spent the later part of his life at his Brahma Vidya Mandir ashram in Paunar in Wardha district of Maharashtra. He died on 15 November 1982 after refusing food and medicine for a few days by accepting "Samadhi Maran" / "Santhara" as described in Jainism.[16] Then the Prime Minister of India, Indira Gandhi, who was visiting Moscow to attend the funeral of Soviet leader Leonid Brezhnev, cut short her visit to be at the Bhave's funeral.

collection of essays citing his lack of connection with rationality and excessive imitation of Gandhi. Even some of his admirers find fault with the extent of his devotion to Gandhi. Much more controversial was his support, ranging from covert to open, to the Congress Party's government under Indira Gandhi, which was fast becoming unpopular. He controversially backed the Indian Emergency imposed by Prime Minister Indira Gandhi, calling it Anushasana Parva (Time for Discipline). Jayaprakash Narayan in his prison diary during the emergency sarcastically wrote about the meaning of Anushasan Parva.[18] Congress party opponents at that time had coined the derogatory term "Sarkari Sant (Government Saint)" to describe him. Noted Marathi writer Pra Ke Atre publicly criticised him and mocked him by writing an article titled "Vanaroba" which is a disambiguation of the name "Vinoba" and means monkey

11 September 1895 – 15 November 1982), was an Indian advocate of nonviolence and human rights. Often called Acharya (Teacher in Sanskrit), heisbest known for the Bhoodan Movement