Brief note on Rajagopal P.V

PV Rajagopal (known as Rajaji) is from a Gandhian family and schooling in south and he came to the northern part of India in 1970 during Mahatma ’s 100 birth centaury. Rajaji began his work on non-violence. He undertook educational and rural development activities in Chambal region to re-establish peace, as a result large number of rural youth motivated when he spent 6 years working with the dacoits (outlaws) in Chambal region of India. In 1976 more than 500 people gave up arms and moved into settled life and much of this was the result of hard work of Rajaji and others. Then the next two years he moved to Gandhi Ashram Chuchuyimlang (State of Nagaland, northeast border of India) to promote village industries to create employment for Naga youth and also to promote peace in the region. From here he spent the next fifteen years building the capacity of rural youth through training programs and different initiatives. In 1993 became the Secretary of Gandhi Peace Foundation, and subsequently was the Vice-Chair and actively engaged in a process of peace making in areas where armed conflicts were going on. In the mid-1990s the work of Rajaji was galvanized into a mass movement Ekta Parishad to promote the concept of people as main players in democracy, non-violent action for socio- economic change and people’s capacity to make the state accountable. He coordinated a campaign for land reform in Madhya Pradesh. In 1999-2000 he began to carry out long-marches across the country in different states. In 2007 he carried out the largest non-violent march which was known as the Janadesh 2007. In this he led 25,000 people on a one-month march from Gwalior to Delhi. During 2009 – 2010 he trained thousands of rural youth in order to lead mass campaign called Jansatyagraha 2012. In 2011 he led a samvad yatra a yearlong dialogue yatra from to Gwalior (2 nd October 2011 – 28 September 2012) covering around 85000 K M across the country. during this yatra he met more than 2500 social movements struggling for their livelihood rights inorder to involve in the historical march Jansatyagraha 2012. In 2012 Rajagopal led the historical non violent march of 100,000 people from Gwalior to the capital of the nation to demand peoples control over land and livelihood resources, as a result the government of India accepted and signed a ten points agreement on the land issue on the 11 th October 2012 in Agra. During the period of 44 years of his work he trained many youth in India and abroad for non violent social action

More about his initiatives you can see in the videos www.youtube.com/ektaparishad