Alternative approaches: Gandhi, Vinoba, JP, socialist thought and the Naxalite movement

1. Gandhi: law, lawyers and the State

In Hind Swaraj (1909) Gandhi, himself a barrister, attacked lawyers and courts as instruments that thrive on quarrels, entrench British rule and teach Indians to depend on the State. His alternatives:

• Satyagraha: truth-force, the non-violent resistance of unjust law, accepting the penalty openly. It is a theory of civil disobedience older than and different from the American one (Thoreau's Civil Disobedience, 1849; Martin Luther King's “Letter from Birmingham Jail”, 1963, which drew on Gandhi), because it aims at converting the opponent, not coercing him.
• Sarvodaya: the welfare of all, the title of Gandhi's 1908 paraphrase of Ruskin's Unto This Last. The good of the individual is contained in the good of all; a lawyer's work has the same value as a barber's; the life of labour is the life worth living.
• Trusteeship: the wealthy hold property as trustees for society.
• Gram swaraj and decentralisation: village self-rule, constructive work (khadi, village industries, removal of untouchability), and settlement of disputes by panchayats rather than courts.
• Ends and means: impure means corrupt the end.

The Constitution absorbed some of this as directive principles: Article 40 (village panchayats), 43 (cottage industries), 46 (weaker sections), 47 (prohibition of intoxicating drinks), 48 (cow protection, organisation of agriculture). Lok Adalats, legal aid camps and mediation are often presented as Gandhian in spirit.

2. Vinoba Bhave: Bhoodan and Gramdan

On 18 April 1951, at Pochampally in Telangana, a region then in the grip of a communist-led peasant uprising, a landowner offered land to landless Dalit families at Vinoba's prayer meeting. That began Bhoodan (land gift): Vinoba walked across India asking landowners to give a sixth of their land to the landless, as to a sixth son. It moved into Gramdan, the pooling of the whole village's land in the village community.

• Law's role. States enacted Bhoodan and Gramdan Acts (for example the Bihar Bhoodan Yagna Act 1954) to give legal validity to gifts, set up Bhoodan boards, and regulate distribution; this is the “socialisation of law” through a voluntary movement the 2010 paper asked about.
• On State and politics. Vinoba distinguished rajniti (politics of power) from lokniti (politics of the people), and looked to a stateless society governed by consensus and moral authority, with the State gradually withering.
• Results. Several million acres were pledged, but much was uncultivable or never transferred, and distribution lagged. Bhoodan showed the limits of moral persuasion, yet it created a climate in which land reform laws were accepted.
• Dacoit surrender. In 1960 Vinoba persuaded a group of Chambal dacoits to surrender; in 1972 a far larger group surrendered before Jayaprakash Narayan in Madhya Pradesh, on assurances of fair trial and rehabilitation. These are the source of the “surrender of dacoits” short note: the episode shows reconciliation and rehabilitation used as an alternative to armed policing.

3. Jayaprakash Narayan: from socialism to Total Revolution

JP was a founder of the Congress Socialist Party (1934). In 1954 he left party politics and dedicated his life (jeevandan) to the Bhoodan movement, developing a theory of “partyless democracy” built on village communities. Returning to politics through the Bihar student movement, he called on 5 June 1974 in Patna for Sampoorna Kranti (Total Revolution): a transformation of social, economic, political, cultural, intellectual, educational and spiritual life. The movement led into the Emergency of 1975 and the Janata victory of 1977. JP's ideas on the right to recall, decentralisation and electoral reform continue in debate.

4. Indian socialist and Marxist thought on law and justice

• Democratic socialists (Acharya Narendra Deva, Ram Manohar Lohia, JP before 1954) wanted State ownership of key industries, land to the tiller, and Lohia's “seven revolutions” against inequality of sex, caste, colour, nation, wealth and weapons, along with a defence of individual liberty.
• Nehruvian socialism: a mixed economy with planning; the Avadi resolution (1955) on a socialistic pattern of society; “socialist” added to the Preamble in 1976.
• Marxism: law reflects the economic base; the State is an instrument of class rule and will wither away after the dictatorship of the proletariat. Indian communists used parliamentary power in Kerala (1957) and West Bengal for land reform.
• The right to property is where these ideas met the Constitution: the amendments from 1951 to 1978 (see the note on agrarian reform), the Twenty-fifth Amendment's Article 31C giving priority to Articles 39(b) and (c), and the deletion of the fundamental right in 1978. Krishna Iyer J.'s reading of Article 39(b) to cover private resources reflected this tradition; Property Owners Association v. State of Maharashtra, 2024 INSC 835, has now rejected that reading.

5. Naxalism and Maoism

Origins. A peasant uprising at Naxalbari in Darjeeling district, West Bengal, in May 1967, led by Charu Majumdar, Kanu Sanyal and Jangal Santhal. The CPI (Marxist–Leninist) was formed in 1969. After fragmentation, the People's War Group and the Maoist Communist Centre merged in 2004 to form the CPI (Maoist), which follows Mao's strategy of protracted people's war: liberate the countryside, then encircle the cities. The CPI (Maoist) is banned under the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act 1967.

Causes. The Planning Commission's Expert Group on Development Challenges in Extremist Affected Areas (2008, chaired by D. Bandyopadhyay) identified land alienation of tribals, failure of land reform, displacement by mines and dams without rehabilitation, denial of forest rights, exploitation by moneylenders and contractors, police high-handedness, and absence of the State's welfare institutions. In short, the failure of the transformation the Constitution promised in the Fifth Schedule areas.

Legal responses.

• Security law: UAPA, State public security Acts, central armed police.
• Rights-based law: PESA 1996, the Forest Rights Act 2006, the 2013 land acquisition Act with consent and rehabilitation, and surrender-and-rehabilitation policies.
• Courts: in Nandini Sundar v. State of Chhattisgarh, 2011 INSC 451, the Supreme Court held the arming of tribal youth as Special Police Officers (the Salwa Judum strategy) unconstitutional under Articles 14 and 21, and criticised a development model that treated tribal resources as available for extraction. In Orissa Mining Corporation v. Ministry of Environment and Forest, 2013 INSC 267, gram sabha consent decided the fate of a mine in a Maoist-affected area.

How this is examined

Essays: Sarvodaya; Gandhi and Vinoba on alternative approaches to law; Vinoba, Gandhi and JP on State and politics; Bhoodan and the socialisation of law; socialist thought on law and justice with reference to property; the causes and solutions of the Naxalite movement. Short notes: Naxalism, Maoism, Naxalite movement, Marxism, India and Marxism, surrender of dacoits, Gandhism as an alternative legal strategy.