NDA (II) 2023 General Ability Test · Question 136 of 146

Correct — C, 3. All three statements stand. Vinoba Bhave was the leader who carried Gandhi's programme forward after 1948, gathering the constructive workers into the Sarvodaya fold and giving them the work of non-violent social transformation — Bhoodan itself grew out of that Sarvodaya thinking and out of the idea of gram swarajya, so statement 1 is right. Jayaprakash Narayan, one of the biggest names in the socialist camp, walked away from party politics to work for the land-gift movement in 1953, which is what statement 2 says. And the movement began on 18 April 1951 at Pochampally, in the Nalgonda district of what is now Telangana, when the landowner V. Ramachandra Reddy offered 100 acres of his 3,500 to the landless families Bhave had just spent the evening with — later raising the gift to 800 acres. That makes statement 3 right as well, so the count is three.

• (a)1 — Only one statement being correct would mean two of them carry planted errors. None does — the Sarvodaya link, the Jayaprakash Narayan move and the Pochampally donation are all part of the standard account of the movement.
• (b)2 — This is the answer a candidate reaches by rejecting statement 2 over its year. The year is the only thing about that statement anyone doubts, and the paper follows the dating in which Jayaprakash Narayan left active politics for Bhoodan in 1953.
• (d)None — Rejecting all three is untenable: the Pochampally donation of 18 April 1951 is the single most documented fact about the Bhoodan movement, and it is stated here without any alteration.

Bhoodan, the land-gift movement, was Vinoba Bhave's attempt at land reform by persuasion rather than legislation. Walking from village to village, he asked landowners to treat him as one more son of the family and give him a share of the land for the landless. It began at Pochampally in April 1951 and widened in 1952 into Gramdan, the gift of an entire village, in which land was to be held by the village community rather than by individual owners. The moral framework was Sarvodaya — the post-independence Gandhian movement for self-determination and equality reaching every stratum of society.

The one statement candidates hesitate over is the second, and the hesitation is about the year rather than the fact. That Jayaprakash Narayan left party politics for the land-gift work is not in dispute; he is named in every account of the Sarvodaya workers alongside Vinoba Bhave, Dada Dharmadhikari, Shankarrao Deo and K. G. Mashruwala. The paper uses the 1953 dating from the standard reference account, and the key treats the statement as correct, so do not throw the statement away over a single year. Read statement 3 carefully too: it says the first donation was made at Pochampally, not that the movement was formally launched there by an organisation, and the first donation is exactly what happened there. The examinable core is a short chain — Sarvodaya as the ideal, Bhoodan from 1951, Gramdan from 1952, and the movement's failure to become a mass force despite the acreage pledged.

• The Bhoodan movement was initiated by Vinoba Bhave on 18 April 1951 at Pochampally village, Nalgonda district, in present-day Telangana.
• The first donor, V. Ramachandra Reddy, offered 100 acres out of his 3,500 and later donated 800 acres.
• In 1952 the movement widened into Gramdan, the donation of an entire village rather than a plot.
• Vinoba Bhave drew his philosophy from the Sarvodaya movement and gram swarajya; Jayaprakash Narayan, Dada Dharmadhikari, Shankarrao Deo and K. G. Mashruwala were among the Sarvodaya workers of the 1950s and 1960s.

• Placing the first donation in Andhra Pradesh; Pochampally is in Nalgonda district, now in Telangana.
• Mixing up Bhoodan with Gramdan — the village gift came in 1952, a year after the land gift.
• Discarding a statement because one date in it feels a year off, when the rest of the statement is plainly true.

Asked in the count format across three statements that each test a different corner of the same movement — its ideology, its recruits and its starting point.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  The Bhoodan Movement widened in 1952 into a programme under which whole villages were donated. That programme was called

  • (a)Gramdan
  • (b)Sampattidan
  • (c)Shramdan
  • (d)Jeevandan

  Answer(a) Gramdan — the village gift, in which land was to be held by the village community rather than by individual owners.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  In which district was the village where the first Bhoodan donation was made ?

  • (a)Nalgonda
  • (b)Guntur
  • (c)Warangal
  • (d)Nellore

  Answer(a) Nalgonda — Pochampally, in Nalgonda district of present-day Telangana, where 100 acres were donated on 18 April 1951.