Which of the following statements about the Bhoodan Movement are correct? 1. It was aimed at attaining a non-violent society. 2. It included schemes such as ‘Sampattidan’ and ‘Shramdan’. 3. It began in a village in Andhra Pradesh in 1951. Select the answer using the code given below.
- (a)1 and 2 only
- (b)2 and 3 only
- (c)1 and 3 only
- (d)1, 2 and 3
Correct — C, 1 and 3 only. Statement 1 is right: Bhoodan grew out of Gandhian thought and Vinoba Bhave presented it as a non-violent path to land redistribution, an alternative to both legislative compulsion and the armed peasant struggle then under way in Telangana. Statement 3 is right too: the movement began on 18 April 1951 at Pochampalli, a village in the Nalgonda district of the Andhra region, where the landlord Vedre Ramachandra Reddy offered a hundred acres to landless families after Vinoba's appeal. Statement 2 is the one that fails. Sampattidan, the gift of wealth, and Shramdan, the gift of labour, are separate appeals in the wider Sarvodaya programme that Vinoba built around Bhoodan, not components of Bhoodan itself — Bhoodan is specifically the gift of land, and its own extension was Gramdan, the gift of a whole village.
- (a)1 and 2 only — Keeps statement 2 and drops the founding at Pochampalli, which is the single best-attested fact about the movement.
- (b)2 and 3 only — Drops statement 1, yet non-violence is the movement's defining premise; it was offered precisely as the peaceful alternative to a violent agrarian struggle.
- (d)1, 2 and 3 — Accepts all three, which folds the whole Sarvodaya family of appeals into Bhoodan. The land gift is one member of that family rather than its container.
Bhoodan was launched by Acharya Vinoba Bhave in 1951 and asked landowners to give a share of their land voluntarily for redistribution to the landless. Vinoba walked from village to village collecting pledges, and the movement gathered several million acres, though a large part of what was pledged proved uncultivable or was never transferred. Its second phase, Gramdan, asked entire villages to place their land in common ownership. The wider Sarvodaya programme in which both sat included appeals for gifts of wealth, labour, tools and even a life's work, and Jayaprakash Narayan left party politics in 1954 to join it.
One honest caveat belongs on this card. Some accounts use the phrase Bhoodan movement loosely for the whole Vinoba-led campaign, in which case the other appeals would be counted inside it and all three statements would stand. The stricter and more common usage — and the one this item appears to rest on — keeps Bhoodan to the land gift, with Gramdan as its extension and Sampattidan and Shramdan as sibling appeals under Sarvodaya. A candidate who knows both usages should still be able to answer, because statements 1 and 3 are unarguable and no option pairs them with anything else.
- Bhoodan began on 18 April 1951 at Pochampalli in the Nalgonda district of the Andhra region.
- The first donation was a hundred acres given by Vedre Ramachandra Reddy after Vinoba Bhave's appeal.
- Bhoodan means the gift of land; its extension, Gramdan, meant the gift of a whole village.
- Sampattidan and Shramdan — gifts of wealth and of labour — belong to the wider Sarvodaya programme.
- Jayaprakash Narayan withdrew from active party politics in 1954 to work for the movement.
- Folding every Sarvodaya appeal into Bhoodan, which is specifically the land gift.
- Confusing Bhoodan with Gramdan, its later and more radical phase.
- Assuming the movement's pledged acreage was all redistributed; much of it was uncultivable or never transferred.
Asked as a three-statement code item on a movement whose surrounding programme supplies the false statement — the trap is a related campaign presented as a component.
Which one of the following was associated with Acharya Vinoba Bhave’s Bhoodan Movement at the beginning of the movement?
- (a) Udayagiri
- (b) Rapur
- (c) Pochampalli
- (d) Venkatagiri
Answer(c) Pochampalli
Statement 3 of this item asked directly. The village where the first land gift was made in April 1951 is the most frequently tested fact about the movement.
Consider the following statements with reference to the Bhoodan Movement : 1. Vinoba Bhave organized 'The Sarvodaya Samaj' to take up the work of non-violent transformation in India 2. Jayaprakash Narayan withdrew from active politics to join the Bhoodan Movement in 1953 3. In the wake of the Bhoodan Movement the first donation of land was made in the village of Pochampalli in Telangana How many of the statements given above is/are correct ?
- (a) 1
- (b) 2
- (c) 3
- (d) None
Answer(c) 3
The same movement in a how-many-are-correct form, and a useful check on the relationship between Bhoodan and the wider Sarvodaya work that Vinoba Bhave organised around it.
- practice — not a real PYQ
The gift of an entire village to common ownership under Vinoba Bhave's programme was called
- (a)Bhoodan
- (b)Gramdan
- (c)Sampattidan
- (d)Shramdan
Answer(b) Gramdan — the second and more radical phase after the land gift.
- practice — not a real PYQ
Who received the first land donation of the Bhoodan movement on Vinoba Bhave's behalf in 1951?
- (a)Landless families of Pochampalli
- (b)The Government of Hyderabad
- (c)The Sarva Seva Sangh
- (d)The Congress Socialist Party
Answer(a) Landless families of Pochampalli — a hundred acres offered by the landlord Vedre Ramachandra Reddy.