Key Points:
Vipin Kumar Tripathi, ex-IIT professor, spends his days walking the streets of Delhi, distributing pamphlets against communal hatred
He has faced hostility from ideological opponents, common citizens and the police, but has continued to stand up for his beliefs for 35 years
He focuses on education and dialogue, to counter issues like communal violence, the Palestinian genocide, CAA/NRC, etc.
Navigating the streets of New Delhi, you may come across a 77-year-old man walking alone, engaging in dialogue with passersby, and distributing pamphlets promoting communal harmony. Vipin Kumar Tripathi is an ex-IIT professor who spends his days fighting against rising hate and intolerance in the country.
Since October 2023, Professor Tripathi has been advocating for the Palestinian cause. He has spent two years questioning the Indian government’s support of Israel, communicating the plight of the Palestinian people to anyone willing to listen, attending protests against Israel’s genocidal action, and holding non-violent demonstrations demanding accountability from the Centre and the general population.
This Independence Day, Tripathi staged a day-long hunger strike at Rajghat protesting India’s complicity in the Gaza genocide. In a public appearance beforehand he said, “From the land of Gandhi, this Independence Day, let’s make our freedom meaningful by standing in non-violent protest against the mass starvation in Gaza.”
This peaceful demonstration was met with hostility and abuse from the police. A video of the incident went viral online, with Tripathi making it onto many headlines. He captured the attention of the internet for his courage and determination to stand against injustice, something he has been doing for over 35 years. In fact, his most recent cause is the cause that also started him down his path of activism.
In 1976, Tripathi moved to the United States to pursue his postdoctoral research at the University of Maryland, College Park. He worked on dialectic heating of fusion plasmas and lived, according to him, an apolitical life. Then, in 1982, Israel bombed a Palestinian refugee camp in Beirut, Lebanon. 20,000 people were killed. Struck by the tragedy and America’s support of Israel, Tripathi left the US in 1983, returning to teach in India. Speaking to Maktoob, he said, “This is when I decided to raise my voice and fight for this.”
He joined IIT Delhi as a Professor of Physics. During his time at the institution, he was a part of several esteemed studies and publications, founded the Plasma Group, a pioneering research initiative, and held open discussions with his students on social issues and ideologies. “The masses do not have weapons and do not have the power to fight those weapons, but they have inner strength to fight off this oppression. I came back with the idea that I will build the power of non-violence,” he says.
Then after six years, in 1989, came the Bhagalpur Riots. This was a series of communal clashes in Bhagalpur district of Bihar lasting 2 months. Over 1000 people were killed, mostly Muslims. That year Tripathi started the Sadbhav Mission, or the ‘humanity mission’.
This is a non-political NGO aimed at “developing grassroots resistance against communalism and mobilizing people on basic issues like education. It was born in the aftermath of Bhagalpur riots and Ramshila Poojan movement in 1990. We stood for clarity of perception in the midst of communal frenzy and organized marches, fasts, corner meetings and poster and flier campaigns, against all major communal offensives and wars,” according to its website. Instead of rhetoric and political whistling, the NGO uses facts and reasoning to communicate its messages.
It's through the Sadbhav Mission, founded with a small group of colleagues and supporters, that Tripathi ramped up his activism. The groups mission statement reads: “We publish Sadbhav Mission Patrika in Hindi and English. We run after-school teaching programs, organize Maths and Physics workshops in schools/ colleges and campaign against non-implementation of government scholarship schemes to minorities and communalization of education. We work for rehabilitation of violence victims and help relief camp students to return to schools, be it in Gujarat, UP, Delhi, MP or Assam. We work in curfew bound areas and mobilize slum dwellers to form Ekta Panchayat.”
It was with this group that Tripathi undertook his first pamphlet distribution drive. In 1990, when the BJP launched its Rath Yatra, he led the Aatm Manthan Yatra, or self-reflection march, distributing more than 4000 pamphlets promoting compassion over hate.
In 1992, after the Babri Masjid demolition, wrote a pamphlet titled Desh Mein Hinsa, or violence in the country, to address the growing distrust between Hindus and Muslims. He distributed more than 40,000 copies nationwide.
Tripathi said in an interview that his message reaches only about 5% of the people he meets. But that hasn’t deterred him.
As a teacher, he has always understood the value of education – something central to his activism. He has spent a lot of time communicating his message to underprivileged groups through dialogues, but also through workshops and education camps. His teachings are not only limited to Maths and Physics but cover socio-cultural topics as well. He focuses on areas and communities with poor academic performance and those affected by violence or disaster.
Tripathi has paid special attention to madrasas in his education mission, saying that they provide opportunities for those with no other means of education. The first madrasa he visited was in 2000, where he was struck by the quality of teaching. In conversation with Awazthevoice, he said, “their style of teaching was very basic as they weren’t exposed to the new techniques of teaching … The teachers teach them with limited resources, they keep their families in villages and they stay here as the salaries are very low.”
This is what inspired him to launch the grassroots ‘teach the teachers’ initiative under the Sadbhav Mission in 2004. “Since 2004 I have been to various madrassas all over India and I’ll say I found the meaning of true India there,” he continues, “Many Madrassas taught the syllabus of NCERT, the students and teachers made me remember the Gandhi Ashram and I felt blessed to have met them.”
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Growing up Tripathi spent a lot of time in Gandhian akharas set up by his father. His father, Hardas Sharma, was a freedom fighter and follower of Gandhi. He, along with his mentor, Ahmed Pahalwan, had led their village as part of Gandhi’s Salt March in 1930 – an act for which both were jailed.
Hardas first saw Gandhi preaching his teachings at his ashram in 1929, when he was only a boy. He came back to his village Lalitpur in Uttar Pradesh and retold them to Ahmed Pahalwan. Pahalwan decided to set up akharas preaching these teachings. It was in this environment that Tripathi was born in 1948. He credits his father and Pahalwan’s teachings with shaping his values.
Another equally important force behind Tripathi’s activism is his own mentor, Ahmed Baksh. Baksh was a government schoolteacher who taught Tripathi from 1st to 5th standard but “cared for me for another 40 years,” he told Awazthevoice. He went on to say he owes Baksh not only his academic success, but a lot more. Baksh taught all the children of the village, saying that in the classroom, all were equal. Tripathi recounts an incident with Baksh, a “thorough Namazi”, who offered a garland made of red and green paper to an idol of Ram that he had shown him; “his sheer act of care touched my heart.”
Another incident that shows Baksh’s influence on Tripathi’s life happened a year before he was born in 1947, the year of Partition. Baksh, who was teaching at a nearby village, returned home one night to find his wife and children missing. All the Muslim families in the area had left for Bhopal that day in panic. Baksh went looking for his family, catching them at the train station. He said to them, “"Nehru and Gandhi are still alive, India is our true nation and we must stay back." He returned home with his family that night. After this Tripathi’s father brought even more families back to the village. Baksh had shaken the village. “The whole village was like this man has bestowed us with the faith, he brought back his family from going away (to Pakistan), thus we must guard them now,” Tripathi told Awazthevoice, “there weren’t any riots in our Lalitpur.”
“So If I am secular and I do not have bifurcation or fundamentalism in my mind, it is partly because of my father since he was a freedom fighter and majorly because of Ahmed Baksh.”
Tripathi has said that his activism – his efforts to educate, to stand for justice – are his way of paying off his debt to his mentor. After his retirement in 2014, Tripathi shifted to full time activism. He walks over 10 km daily, distributing up to 1000 pamphlets, with no days off.
He has spoken out about countless topics, social issues and political instances, and against an equal number of communal incidents.
The 2002 Gujrat riots and Gulbarg Massacre; the 2012 killings in Assam; the 2013 Muzaffarnagar riots; the 2014 NDA government; in 2019, the Pulwama attack and Balakot strike, the abrogation of Article 370, and the CAA and NRC; the 2020-21 farmers protest; from 2023 to 2025, the Palestinian genocide; and many more over the years.
He undertook efforts to inform and educate people on all these issues, in Delhi and across the country – often visiting riot-affected areas to assess the situation first-hand and try to spread peace. During his efforts, he has met resistance from all sides – from the people he is trying to reach, from the police, from ill-intentioned actors.
In 1992, while passing out flyers in a residential area of Delhi, he was surrounded by around 200 people. Soon the police arrived, enquiring into his activities. When people started to agree with his points, the police officer ordered him to leave.
Another time, while handing out pamphlets on the revocation of Article 370 near IIT Delhi, a man abruptly stopped his car and snatched the pamphlets from him, he told The Patriot. “Desh ke khilaf parche baant raha hai, kisne diye hain, bataa,” (Distributing fliers against the nation. Tell me, who has given you these?) the man said, “Pakistani, gaddari karta hai, boodha na hota to teri aisi pitaayee karta.” (Pakistani, doing treachery! Had you not been old, I would have given you a good thrashing.) Tripathi simply replied that the man can beat him, but first tell him what has he written that is ‘anti-national’? Soon enough some police officers come by telling him to stop distributing pamphlets. The man told them to register an FIR against him.
In the same interview, when asked if he could see a difference in the way people treated him before and after 2014, Tripathi replied, “Earlier nobody used to abuse me or threaten me: countering happened on the basis of facts and debates. But these days, there is some sense of aggression among most of the individuals and there also seems to be a competition to send everyone to Pakistan and label them as ‘anti-national’.”
But having protested alone for over 35 years now, he is used to the opposition. He tells the Times of India, “If there are people who don’t want to listen to me, there are also many who want to.”
Even during the recent incident at Rajghat, after the policemen accosted him, he replied, “You are a human being first, inspector later.” Over the past two years he has been heckled many times over for his support of the Palestinian cause, with police disrupting his protests, thugs threatening him, people questioning his patriotism. But he has stood strong against all attacks. In fact, he has expanded his activities, taking the issue up on college campuses, talking about it on YouTube, and continuously creating dialogue in the streets.
Earlier this year, he built a ‘Satya Stambh’, or Pillar of Truth, in Taura, Haryana – a place for people of all castes, creeds, and religions to gather, in a symbol of unity. He said, “In a time when religion and caste fuel so much division, this pillar will remind us of the secularism enshrined in our constitution.” [Rh/DS]
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