History of rural Development in Modern India (Vol.2)

The Gandhian Institute undertook, in collaboration with the AVARD in the year 1964, to prepare an authentic history of rural development in modern India. A plan of publication was accordingly announced. The first volume came out in 1967 incorporating the histories of two projects, one at Baroda and the other at Etawah. The latter was introduced in 1948 and the former in the eighties of the preceding century. This is the second volume.
The first part of the volume presents the history of the Vedchhi movement written by Sri I.P. Desai and the second an account of the work done by the Quakers at Hoshangabad compiled by Shri Banwarilal Choudhury. Although Vedchhi and Rasulia were run by two different sponsors they had one thing in common. It was their basic inspiration. Both of them drew heavily from 'trans-material' sources and in doing so, they secularised both spirituality and religion, and gave them a solid material base.
Quakers are dissident Christians. So are the Gandhians. They are the dissident Hindus. Both of them had, however, introduced, if not a 'religion' in the orthodox sense of the term, something that was akin to a religious approach to social work. They did not at any rate use a professionalised method of development. They concentrated all heir work on the apparently undeveloped, and surely brought in programmes and methods of change that helped the needy and the poor.