Ahimsa Conversation # 14 P. V. Rajagopal
Channel: Ahimsa Conversations
Date: 2020-06-05

Indirect violence generates direct violence. P.V. Rajagopal explains how he learnt this by understanding what drove people to become violent dacoits in the Chambal Valley. In the early 1970s Rajagopal worked with Gandhian leaders Vinoba Bhave and Jayaprakash Narayan on not only the surrender and rehabilitation of dacoits but also the reconciliation process to heal the wounds of their victims. 
Rajagopal talks about how this life-defining experience has shaped his activism and the trainings in nonviolence that he has conducted across India and abroad. 
These experiences shaped the plan for a global peace march Jai Jagat 2020. This march set out from Delhi on 2nd October, 2019 and was to culminate in Geneva in September 2020 – but had to be cut short due to the Covid-19 pandemic. 
Most of this conversation was recorded in August 2019 in Mumbai and a small part, online, in May 2020 while Rajagopal was in Armenia.