Ravishankar Maharaj: Gandhi’s Constructive-Work Partner in Gujarat

He dropped out of school after the sixth standard. He later gave up his family land to join Gandhi.

He was Ravishankar Maharaj. Gujarat’s new Chief Ministers used to visit him for blessings.

1Who was Ravishankar Maharaj?

He came from a farming family in Kheda.

• He was born Ravishankar Vyas on 25 February 1884.
• His village was Radhu, in today’s Kheda district of Gujarat.
• It was the day of Mahashivaratri.
• He is also known as Ravishankar Vyas.
• His parents were Pitambar Shivram Vyas and Nathiba.
• They were a Vadara Brahmin farming family.
• He left school after the sixth standard.
• He then helped his parents on the farm.
• He married Surajba.
• His father died when he was 19.
• His mother died when he was 22.
• The Arya Samaj influenced his thinking.
• People later called him Ravishankar Maharaj.

2How did he join Gandhi?

A meeting in 1915 changed his life.

• He met Gandhi in 1915.
• He joined Gandhi’s work for freedom and social reform.
• He became one of Gandhi’s earliest and closest associates in Gujarat.
• Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel was another close associate.
• Darbar Gopaldas Desai, Narhari Parikh and Mohanlal Pandya worked beside him.
• Together they organised nationalist struggles in Gujarat in the 1920s and 1930s.
• He is counted among the chief organisers of those struggles.
• His work was done mostly in villages.
• In 1918 he took part in the Kheda Satyagraha.
• That campaign ran from 22 March to 5 June 1918.
• It backed farmers who could not pay revenue after famine and plague.
• In 1920 he founded a Rashtriya Shala, or national school, at Sunav.
• In 1921 he gave up his rights to the family property.
• His wife did not want him to do it.

3Which struggles did he join?

He joined almost every Gujarat campaign.

• In 1923 he joined the Borsad Satyagraha.
• It protested against the Haidiya tax.
• In 1927 his flood relief work won him wide respect.
• In 1928 he took part in the Bardoli Satyagraha.
• The British jailed him for six months.
• In 1930 he joined Gandhi’s Salt March.
• He was jailed for two years afterwards.
• In 1942 he took part in the Quit India Movement.
• He also tried to calm communal violence in Ahmedabad.
• For years he also worked among the Baraiya Koli and Patanvadiya Koli communities.
• These groups lived on the coast of central Gujarat.
• Under British law, many such groups were treated as criminal tribes.
• He deposed before a Bombay government committee in 1939 about abuse of that law.
• He said low-paid officials misused it to extract free labour.

4What did he do after 1947?

He turned fully to social work.

• After independence he gave all his time to social work.
• He joined Vinoba Bhave in the Bhoodan Movement.
• He travelled about 6,000 km between 1955 and 1958.
• In the 1960s he backed the Sarvodaya Movement.
• Sarvodaya means the welfare of all.
• On 1 May 1960 he inaugurated the new state of Gujarat.
• In 1975 he opposed the Emergency.
• He stayed active in public life into old age.
• He wrote on education and rural reconstruction.
• His themes were schools, villages and social reform.

5How is he remembered?

He held no office, but he held great respect.

• Newly appointed Gujarat Chief Ministers used to visit him for blessings.
• They went after taking the oath of office.
• He died on 1 July 1984 at Borsad.
• He was 100 years old.
• India Post issued a stamp in his honour in 1984.
• The Gujarat government gives a Ravishankar Maharaj Award for social work.
• The award is worth Rs 1 lakh.
• The state Department of Social Justice gives it.
• The Government of India issued the stamp.
• His memorial is at Adhyapan Mandir, Vallabh Vidyalaya, Bochasan.
• Jhaverchand Meghani wrote Manasai Na Diva from his own experience of working with him.
• Pannalal Patel wrote a novel on his life, Jene Jivi Janyu.
• That novel appeared in 1984.

6What are the exam traps?

Do not mix him up with other Kheda leaders.

• He was jailed for six months after Bardoli.
• He was jailed for two years after the Salt March.
• Do not swap these two terms.
• Mohanlal Pandya also worked in the Kheda Satyagraha.
• Sardar Patel led it with Gandhi.
• Ravishankar Maharaj was a worker and organiser, not a political leader.
• His Bhoodan walk was with Vinoba Bhave, not with Gandhi.
• Gandhi had died by then, in 1948.
• Read about the Kheda Satyagraha.
• Read about Mohanlal Pandya.
• Read about Sarvodaya.