Who started the Bhudan movement?

Land-redistribution efforts in independent India took two broad forms: state-enforced land-ceiling / zamindari-abolition legislation, and voluntary donation-based campaigns rooted in the Gandhian idea of trusteeship, where landowners were persuaded — not compelled — to gift surplus land to the landless.

The Bhoodan ("land-gift") movement belongs to the second, voluntary category. It was started by Acharya Vinoba Bhave on 18 April 1951 at Pochampally village (Telangana region, then part of Hyderabad State), after a landless farmer's appeal for land moved him to ask the village's landlords to donate land voluntarily. Encouraged by the response, Vinoba undertook a long padayatra (foot march) across India over the following years, appealing to landowners everywhere to donate a portion of their holdings for redistribution to the landless. The movement later broadened into Gramdan ("village-gift"), where entire villages pooled land for collective management — a phase to which leaders such as Jayaprakash Narayan lent considerable momentum in the 1960s, especially in Bihar.

• Jaiprakash Narayan — joined and energized the movement's later Gramdan phase in the 1960s, but the campaign was already under way for years before he joined it.

• J.B. Kripalani — a Gandhian political leader who served as Congress President around independence, with no role in founding this land-donation campaign.

• Narsi Mehta (Narsinh Mehta) — a 15th-century Gujarati poet-saint, centuries removed in time from this 20th-century movement.

So among the offered options, only Vinoba Bhave both originated and led the founding phase of the Bhoodan movement.