A recent video from Rajghat made headlines when the police tried to remove an elderly man fasting in solidarity with Gaza. That man was former IIT professor VK Tripathi. When an officer asked why Gaza mattered to him, he replied: “You are a human being first, inspector later.”
It was just a glimpse into a fight he has carried on for three decades. The 1990 Bhagalpur riots, he recalled, shook him so deeply that he left a teaching career in the US and returned to India to create a public response to the politics of hate based on Gandhian non-violence. Since then, he has travelled neighbourhoods and campuses, challenging communal politics with dialogue, leaflets, and sheer persistence.
Newslaundry walked with Tripathi through Delhi’s streets as he handed out pamphlets, stopped strangers for a conversation, and tried – patiently, sometimes in vain – to convince them why they must not turn a blind eye to the human suffering in Gaza. Many brushed him off, others argued back, a few listened. But he finds hope even when just “5 percent” of the people he has reached out to understand.
He warns that India’s most vulnerable are now easy prey for political exploitation, that caste bias still corrodes even elite institutions like the IITs, and that sectarian control over temples is not just a theft of religion but of humanity itself. Yet his faith endures.
Despite rejection and ridicule, Tripathi believes young people still carry the capacity to choose empathy over hate. And so, he walks on, repeating his message with quiet conviction: “India is still alive.”
Watch.
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