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During the
International Year of Peace, he designed and led an
inter-state education campaign entitled “Shanti
Yatra” for a month mass contact and mass-education
campaign covering an estimated number of ten million
people, traveling a distance of over 1600 kilometers
along the hinterlands of Kerala, Pondichery,
Karnataka and Tamilnadu, through 400 villages over
90 towns and 16 district headquarters carrying the
message of Peace, Love and Goodwill. The objectives
of the Campaign were to form units of Shanti Sena in
schools and colleges to prepare children, students
and non-student youths and adults men and women to
promote peace and communal harmony…, to promote the
study of peace science and Gandhian thought and to
take the message of peace, love and goodwill to all
sections of the people.
The Shanti
Yatra at its core consisted of
(i) a band of artists
who would sing songs on peace, national integration
and communal harmony
(ii) a mobile exhibition on
arms race, evil of violence etc. There were thirty
persons (25 men and 5 women) selected from
professors, students, constructive workers, youth
leaders and artists from various universities and
service organizations in the south.
As part of
a national initiative to contain violence and
massacre in Jahanabad in the Gaya District in Bihar,
a week-long harmony campaign was organized under his
leadership besides an on-the-spot assessment and
visit to places of murder and violence.
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