To Educate People on Kashmir, a 71-Year-Old Has Taken to the Streets All Alone
Vipin Tripathi and his wife work out of the dimly-lit basement of their two-storey house in Sarvodaya Enclave. His wife takes tuitions and he is former IIT professor and a full-time activist. Tripathi runs an organisation called Sadbhav Mission. Their aim is to educate people on secularism and nonviolence at the grassroots level.
Tripathi runs classes for children living in urban slums, teaching them about the perils of communalism. He also marches around the streets distributing pamphlets on the need to cultivate secular minds and live a nonviolent life. A Gandhian at heart, Tripathi first stepped into activism after witnessing the brutal killings of Hindus and Muslims in the Bhagalpur riots in 1989, he told The Wire.
This episode shaped a lot of what he is doing today – fighting communalism across the country by sparking conversations in not just lecture halls but on the streets too. Communal tendencies seem to be “at their peak in India right now”, he told The Wire, referring to the opinions of a majority of Indians on Kashmir. “It is imperative to tell people what the truth is,” he said.…
