The Bhoodan movement attempted to persuade wealthy landowners to voluntarily give a percentage of their land to landless people.
[citation needed] Bhave crossed India on foot to persuade landowners to give up a piece of their land.
His first success came on 18 April 1951 at Pochampally village in Nalgonda district, Andhra Pradesh[1] (now Telangana) which was the center of communist activity.
[citation needed] Movement organizers had arranged for Bhave to stay at Pochampally, a village of about 700 families, of whom two-thirds were landless.
The 7th Nizam of Hyderabad, Mir Osman Ali Khan also donated 14,000 acres (57 km2) of his personal land to the Bhoodan movement.
[9] Maharajadhiraj Kameshwar Singh ji of Darbhanga Raj donated 1.17 lakh acres of land in bhudan movement.
During Vinoba Bhave's Surajgarh visit, he was welcomed by headmaster Rambilas Sharma, who was instrumental in spreading the Bhoodan movement in the Jhunjhunu district in the late 1950s and early 1960s.
[7][8] The initial objective of the movement was to secure voluntary donations and distribute them to the landless but soon came to demand 1/6 of all private land.