His Fight For Social Justice

By April Anderson

One dark night in 1986 a 10 year-old boy walked through an abandoned bazaar outside of Delhi, India. In the distance, he saw a dog fighting a child for food that had spilled out of a trashcan. "That was a moment I knew that something was fundamentally wrong in the world," said Rohit Tripathi, now 28. "It was then that I became committed to doing whatever I could to fix these kinds of issues."

Politics and social justice must have been in Rohit Tripathi's genes. His grandparents on both sides of the family were actively involved in promoting Indian independence. "Political discussions were daily conversations," said Tripathi. And by the time he was13, Tripathi knew that he wanted to run for political office one day.

Now Tripathi is a software engineer and the founding director of Young India, a two year-old organization that promotes democracy and a culture of decentralized political power. The seeds for its growth were planted in 1999 when the BJP Bharatiya Janta Party (Indian People's Party) came into power. "I saw the nation my grandfathers' generation had sacrificed so much to build, being systematically dismantled, not territorially but culturally," he said. "The foundations of India's democratic nationhood like religious tolerance, aspirations of rural citizens, and gender rights were being systematically eroded." At that point Young India was just a mailing list with loose organization, but in 2002 after the massacre at Gujarat, Tripathi says he felt a strong sense of urgency. "I didn't really know what to do," he said. "I was over-ambitious and wanted to change everything."

Tripathi's vision of India in which religion does not influence politics, social policies are inclusive, and democracy levels a privileged playing field won him the interest of members of the then moribund Congress Party. Last year, Tripathi and the other members of Young India's board of directors met with Dr. Manmohan Singh (current Prime Minster of India) and Mr. Pranab Mukherjee (current Defense Minister) to present their ideas on the role of democracy in India. They discussed domestic issues as poverty and starvation by dismantling the system that sustains human misery. "Through our own modest and humble ways, [we worked to] redeem the value of human life," Tripathi said. And, during this past year, Young India initiated a successful grassroots movement to encourage more active participation in the Lok Sabha (lower house) elections, spreading awareness of what individual citizens could do to impact the future of India's democracy.

Rohit, which means red, clearly reflects Tripathi's passion and ability to make a difference. Not only has this young man been asked to serve as a consultant to the International Center for Religion and Diplomacy where he contributes his ideas to promote resolution to the religious conflict in Kashmir but he has also hosted the new Indian government's Senior Congressional Leader, Shankar Aiyar on Capitol Hill. Unphased by the prestige, Tripathi says, "In the end it all boils down to whether this interaction will lead to the betterment of lives. If it is not going to help people develop their potential, then we need to change course and do something else."