Rajagopal on training marchers to handle violence: transcript

Key points

• Marchers carried a notebook with 25 questions and answers, including what to do if the leader is shot dead.
• When a truck killed three people in a march of 25,000, trained marchers did not attack the driver or block the road.
• Slogans such as treating police as brothers keep struggles from turning into fights with police.
• Farmers opposed land redistribution until it was argued that landless laborers would help defend village land against companies.
• Rajagopal worked among more than a thousand bandits, and 760 guns were laid down before a photograph of Gandhi.

Chapters

1. 0:00Preparing marchers for violent situations
2. 2:37Slogans and treating police as brothers
3. 4:45Persuading farmers to support land redistribution
4. 6:21Bandits surrender their guns

Full transcript

0:00What we did, let me take some examples, then it's easy for you to understand. One thing is to have a notebook in the pocket of everyone, which is 25 questions and 25 answers. And the question number one is that if the person in front, the leader is shot dead, what should others do? They have an answer to that.

0:31The police will start beating. to face a violent situation right so it is part of a understanding that what are the possibilities that you imagine the state can be violent you are absolutely right let me give you an example of when we were marching 25,000 people we met with a truck accident the truck came three people were killed What is a natural tendency? When three of your colleagues are crushed by a truck, the natural tendency should be to beat up the driver, block the road.

1:22And create violence, isn't it? So it was surprising for everyone because of these long years of training. Train people for that, eventually they can misbehave, things can go out of hand. Then the state will get an opportunity to question.

2:05I want to give you another example. Value, value, value. Only when an instruction, nest instruction will come, you should move, till then you have nothing to do, right? Then the dead people, after the whatever rituals are there, after doing that, the dead bodies were sent back to their families, and on that day there is no...

2:37There is no celebration but silent march towards the next point. And then there are other many things. How do we deal with the families? How do we help the family? How do we rehabilitate the family? There is a lot of responsibility on people who are organizing such things because you cannot expect what is going on right? So the preparation to deal with violent situation is very very important in the training itself. otherwise people can get out of control and behave the way they want to behave and what what is the slogan slogan number one is what does it mean what does it mean it means police is our brother we have no fight with them very often what What is happening? All the struggles are ending up with a struggle with police.

3:40You have come with a big idea to change a policy, but you are ending up fighting a police. Because we see police as a representative of the state. And get carried, because they have the gun, they have the stick, you get angry, and you try to deal with this guy, in that process, your issue is gone, but you end up in prison, and the time is wasted in dealing with police cases. So there are many slogans, only an example, there are many slogans.

4:14That means, let the other guy be violent, but I will not lift my hand. This is where you start reacting violently. So there are slogans and songs and methods to train people in violent situations, how you need to behave. And if there is tension, how others can intervene to mediate between these two, etc. Smart villages were very angry.

4:45They said these people are going to divide land, so they are enemies of farmers. Redistribution of land is against the farmers, so we should not receive them. I remember the argument was when we said look, if you have land and a company will come and take the land and if the landless laborers will not support with you, can you protect your land? So very often people believe that I will not distribute my land because then I will have less land.

5:18So people who are working on the land will never have land. But then when a company will come from outside and take all your land for setting up a factory, who will fight against the company if they don't have land? They will not be in the village, they will vote. So redistribution of land is in your interest. Because then they will also cultivate the land and you will be together. so rather than exploiting them because you are being exploited in the market you don't get good price for your product that is why you're exploiting them so rather than exploiting them why don't you take their support and fight the market system together and after this argument they were all together all the farmers came together they said oh these people are going to protect our land by sharing our land with them we can we can a better life in this village. So it's a question of rather than treating people as enemies and always projecting them as enemies, how do you see that in the common interest we need to

6:21we need to share resources and live together etc. So whether it's indirect violence or direct violence, you need to train people to deal with it in a in a way. That it doesn't create more conflict and more violence, but trying to deal with the existing violence. There will be many, many examples of it in our life. I began by dealing with many people who are with guns. I started working in an area where there were more than a thousand Dekites, bandits.

6:54And nobody believed that all these bandits are going to put down their arms after 2-3 years. But it was like in the radical. After many years of dialogue, much of work with young people, all these people came with their gun and put it down in front of Mahatma Gandhi's photograph. Mahatma Gandhi was not there. His photograph, piling up 760 guns in one place. So, there are ways to deal with very violent situation, medium violent situation, or even not to allow violence to escalate, etc.

7:29You come for a training and we will deal with it.

Source and licence

Recording: File:Rajagopal's speech, part 4, Lidköping, Sweden.webm by Yann Forget (2017-04-26), via Wikimedia Commons. Licence: CC BY 3.0.

The transcript is machine speech-to-text by the TidyTools Audio & video transcriber; the summary, key points and chapters were written by Claude from that transcript. Both may contain errors: check the recording before quoting it.