Mohandas Gandhi on the Importance of Land Ownership for the People of India
"Real socialism has been handed down to us by our ancestors who fought: 'All land belongs to Gopal, where then is the boundary line? Man is the maker of that line and he can, therefore, unmake it.' Gopal literally means shepherd; it also means God. In modern language it means the State; the People. That the land to-day does not belong to the people is too true. But the fault is not in the teaching. It is in us who have not lived up to it.
"I have no doubt that we can make as good an approach to it as it possible for any nation, not excluding Russia, and that without violence. The most effective substitute for violent dispossession is the wheel with all its implications. Land and property is his who will work on it.
"Unfortunately the workers are or have been kept ignorant of this simple fact.
"Continuous unemployment has induced in the people a kind of laziness which is most depressing. Thus whilst the alien rule is undoubtedly responsible for the growing pauperism of the people, we are more responsible for it. If the middle-class people, who betrayed their trust and bartered away the economic independence of India for a mess of pottage, would now realize their error and take the message of the wheel to the villagers and induce them to shed their laziness, and work at the wheel, we can ameliorate the condition of the people to a great extent."
Source: Jagdish Saran Sharma. (1962) India's Struggle for Freedom: Select Documents and Sources. Vol. 1. Delhi: S. Chand, 29
This complete Gandhi, Mohandas K. contains 273 words. This
article contains 1,234 words (approx. 4 pages at 300
words per page).
