The Sarvodaya Movement

Manmohan Choudhury

Translated by Sailen Routray

Vinoba Bhave during the Bhoodan movement
Photo credit: Wikimedia Commons

After my father’s death, everyone slowly started to put in their efforts to systematise the work of sarvodaya in Odisha. The mobilisation for gramdan slowly gathered momentum in Koraput, Ganjam, Baleswar and Mayurbhanj. The distribution of land collected through bhoodan and gramdan also began to progress through Bhoodan Samiti. The cooperation from the government was also a lot better as Shri Sadashiva Tripathy expressed keen interest in the work. In the city of Cuttack, the sarvodaya fund collection was going well under the supervision of Fakir Mishra. It was also decided to conduct an annual funds collection drive by the state-level Sarvodaya Mandal. A vision was adopted in 1960 to train the sarvodaya functionaries in training camps, first at the state level, and then at the district and local levels. Training camps used to take place for sarvodaya functionaries intermittently even earlier. But in these camps, the practice of discussions had vanished. We would call senior sarvodaya leaders and thinkers like Dada Dharmadhikari, and have them lecture twice a day. The lectures, of course, were very useful; however, we organisers never thought whether these went above the top of the heads of the activists or enter their minds. Such camps continued for four, five days at a stretch.

Slowly we realised that for the functionaries to understand these brilliant lectures, some prior intellectual preparation was needed. To be able to work towards social work and social change, one needed both familiarity and knowledge in the various sciences that relate to the human mind and social structure, and my belief in this had become stronger. Apart from that, our village-level functionaries were also lacking in common intellectual knowledge on politics, economics and the social system. Therefore, a curriculum was developed for these camps to ensure excellence in their intellectual attainments. Plans were made to provide a general understanding to the activists on the subjects mentioned above, the path of development of human civilisation, the role of self-awareness and science in this, and the contributions of literature, with the help of professors and other knowledgeable people. Along with this, the practical work of sarvodaya and issues related to these were also to be discussed. In the camps, everyone learnt the art of collective living as well.

The first such training camp took place in the Cuttack Town Hall. After that these were organised in Cuttack, Bhubaneswar and other nearby places. At first, these were all lecture-based, but later enough time was set aside to enable the activists assimilate the subjects through discussions with each other. Questions directed at the speakers were also encouraged. These training camps usually extended from seven to ten days. Initially, it was feared that the functionaries would not be able to appreciate such intellectual matters, that they would get bored. However, it was found that the activists had great interest in all these discussions. Eighty to hundred functionaries from all over the state were invited for these camps. However, the total number of activists who would be present was usually larger than this. Village level functionaries from places like Koraput would arrive spending around fifty rupees from their own pocket towards travelling. On one occasion, when a rural worker from Koraput started debating with an economics professor from Utkal University, we realised that the goal of the camps had been achieved. Later, we started experimenting with two-level camps. For those who had attended camps in the previous years, there was an advanced programme, whereas for those who were new, there was basic training. Once there was a three-level camp as well in which an advanced programme was kept for important state-level functionaries.

Later Gandhi Vidya Sansthan started supporting these camps in a major way. It was established in 1960 by the efforts of Shankarraoji, Nabakrushna Choudhury and Jayaprakash Narayan. They had felt that such an institution was needed after realising the need for debates, discussions and research in the social sciences for the sarvodaya movement. Sugata babu, the coordinator of this institute and its other faculty used to help according to their capacities towards the success of these camps. Professors from Utkal University and the University of Agriculture, especially Dr Baidyanath Mishra, Dr Bidyadhara Mishra, Dr Shri Ramachandra Das, Dr Radhanath Rath, Dr Laxman Mohapatra, faculty member Kulamani Mohapatra, etc. used to help in these with a lot of interest.

After the state-level camps, there were plans for conducting three to four days long camps at the district level and two to three days long camps at the block level as well. The activists trained in the state-level camps used to organise these camps. In this manner, in a year, five hundred to a thousand activists used to get trained in one way or the other. I feel that due to this reason the general level of knowledge and understanding of activists from Odisha had become more robust in comparison with those from other states working at the same level. Apart from these, future work plans were also discussed in these camps and as a result, the work progressed smoothly.    

Note: This is a translation of a chapter from 'Kasturi Mruga Sama', the autobiography of Manmohan Choudhury (1915-2003). Choudhury was a freedom fighter and sarvodaya activist from Odisha who participated in almost all the popular socio-political movements of his times that happened in the state. He was also a noted writer of non-fiction in the Odia language who won major awards for his writing.