"India is a vast land." "Intense and full of extremes." "Spectacular landscapes lie next to overflowing multitudes of humanity." "Richedness and decay blend with astonishing wealth. dark ignorance and the highest wisdom." "India is a land of paradox where else can one witness the sight of a prisoner weeping like a child in the arms of his jailer." "But this is not just another indian paradox this is an entirely different story." "I came to tihar in 1988." "I get caught in the airport." "Indira Gandhi international airport." "with four kilo of heroin." "What am I doing in indian jail?" "Time is what I'm doing in indian jail" "I'm actually doing vipassana now." "We are all prisoners undergoing a lifesentence." "Imprisoned by our own minds we are all seeking .." "being hostages of our desire." "Is there anyone who doesn't crave at one point or another to take something that is not his." "at least once to hurt the one who hurts him." "It's a thin line that is seperate us from these people." "Who stare at us from inside this cage." "The same things that do not go beyond the threshold of our thoughts the threshold of action." "but still we are alike inside our heads we are all potential criminals." "This is Tihar jail one of the largest prisons in the world." "Ten thousand people are imprisoned here nine thousand of them are still awaiting their trials." "The wheel of justice whirl slowly and heavily in India like an overloaded truck." "A pickpocket may find himself waiting for six years in all to receive a one year sentence." "It could take another two weeks four years.." "They take their time." "Located in suburban New Delhi" "Tihar is India's best known high security prison due to it's large population It is divided into four seperate jails." "For decades Tihar was notorious for it's inhuman conditions." "It was branded a vertible hell." "corruption and drug use are common problems in almost any prison but in Tihar they were magnified due to congestion and harsh conditions." "It was a horrible place." "There was a lot of extorsion a lot of a beating." "a lot of a gunfights.. within inside the jail." "There was a lot of a problems many problems." "The combination of one thousand convicts and an explosive atmosphere." "There were a massive mass of undertrials under our convicts." "The few could control the many." "Take from the undertrials." "The convicts used extorsion and.." "The many would come accros the "a few rupias here or a few rupias there".. you know." "they are not being themselves agressive. and you know that's a lot of agression.." "and that's lot of controlling." "that's a lot of controlling to do so I've understood when i was first came here myself there are sometimes that sticks had to be used.." "where you don't go beyond." "isolation and punishment." "They believed that if the prisoners were made to suffer they will not commit crimes after their release for fear of being sacked back to this hell but they were wrong in Tihar prisoners were specialising further in crime." "I'm here now about thirteen months." "I was taking some heroin from Catmandu to Toronto by had airport in New Delhi" "I was searched in New Delhi and I was brought here." "David is one of the foreign inmates kept in Tihar." "Everybody is a legal expert in Tihar jail everybody knows all the ins and outs of the indian system but.. they will tell you how to get out here." "With this record" "Tihar was hardly the place to expect a breakthrough in prison reform and yet this is exactly what happened." "In May 1993 a new inspector general of prisons was posted." "The new IG was Kiran Bedi a little woman with big reputation and an even bigger vision." "as India's first woman police officer" "Bedi has always attrected controversy using unconventional methods to achieve high goals." "Thank you you can dispose." "To me she is a magnificient woman" "and she certainly has ambition" "She has been everything from a tennis star to a notorious police woman who used to tow away dignitaries cars from poorway areas that's why they called the "Crane Bedi"." "Right from the start Bedi has told her staff that she is intended to turn Tihar prison into a place for personal development an Ashram." "I started to share my vision of a prison." "I held my meetings first of all told them: work as a family." "Asking them are they aware of what their whole job priority is what are they are meant for are they here as watchman or are they here for larger job." "Ever since she took office she did a lot of a transformation." "She's a person who solves problem." "If you cannot solve a problem than you are a part of the problem yourself." "We kept using a lot of love and care actually giving them love and care. regular outside visitors." "Before Bedi got it here as a .." "so what." "She showed us that we are human beings therefore we deserve to be threated as human beings." "I've talked to them" "I've shared with them" "I've read with them" "I've loved to them" "I've sung with them" "I've even dance with them" "Is to make feel them as noble as they should be feeling them.." "Why?" "Because after all they are going out they have to go into normal society. and expect them to be normal when they are going out?" "I must lease them as normal human beings or if possible even better human beings." "The atmosphere in Tihar had improved but Bedi knew that all material solutions are always partial solutions." "She was seeking a deeper change." "Human mind needs it's own food" "Human mind needs positivity." "Human mind needs some higher thinking." "So this was all I knew because that was what my mind needs." "They have no skills to handle the problems." "How do I give them skills to handle themselves." "What do I do?" "I was absolutely like a fish out of water." "We'd were go for a magic." "Who will come to this prison to consult." "Who will provide the psychological food?" "I was just looking for an answer and I got an answer." "from inside the prison." "One morning Bedi was doing her daily rounds and told her of an age old teaching called vipassana." "I was walking the prison and one officer Rajinder Kumar came to me said:" "Madam you are looking for an answer?" "I have the answer." "And what is the answer?" "He's:" "I was a very angry man." "I would be horrible as a person but I've in for vipassana and I'm a different person." "Madam if you don't beleive me ask my family ask my colleges." "So he gave me the address of Mr. Ram Singh" "I wrote a letter to Mr. Ram Singh saying:" "Could I have you visit my prison?" "exactly still not knowing what vipassana stands for." "What Kiran Bedi also did not know was that this technique had previously been tried in indian prisons." "taken with closed eyes. but to get transformed by the journey and start living a better life." "Vipassana means insight and their true nature. by man named Siddhartha Gautama known as the Buddha." "The records from the Buddha's time tell remarkable stories of serial killers who changed into saints and of cruel tyrants who became moral rulers by practicing this technique. but vipassana carefully preserved and passed on from generations to generations in South Asia." "Today it is taught by S.N. Goenka an indian who has born and grown up in Burma." "Mr. Goenka learned vipassana from his burmese teacher Siachi Ubakin." "In 1969 Mr. Goenka arrived in India and started teaching vippasana." "A few years later he was given a challenge by the renovned indian leader ... the noble Bhave *Vinoba Bhave" " Spritual successor of Gandhi to teach vipassana to youngsters and to hardened criminals." "How should am I here to serve?" "If you could arrange" "I will teach the students." "in the school it was very succesful manual of prison is such... that a .." "or stay outside and that was not acceptable to me." "When a course is given I must be there with my students." "but later on in the Jairpur jail." "In 1975 in Jairpur prisoners learn vipassana for the first time." "Mr. Goenke insisted again in some conditions and the prison authorities were trying hard to meet his demands." "Fortunately no shot had to be fired." "The jairpur jail course concluded peacefully." "Success led to more courses in other prisons." "One of them was Baroda jail." "The superintendent Mr. Wora was impressed by the effect of vipassana on his prisoners and decided to take a course himself." "After that he arranged 5 more courses in Baroda jail." "Babu Bhaya was notorious for killing three people in five minutes during a gang fight. seeking for fogiveness." "A vipassana course is 10 day long." "Students live in complete silence meditating from early morning till night." "For ten days they follow a basic code of moral conduct. and the use of the toxicans. the mind will remain too agitated to investigate the reality within. which is immoral a negative mind." "you can't kill somebody without generating demand of some amount of anger or hatred in you." "You steal something you can't steal something without generating deamand of some amount of grieving or greed." "And every dying one generates negativity in their mind won because miserable." "When you do something wrong you instantly punished." "Why?" "Because you are now guilty." "and you now telling hundred lies to justify one lie." "You've stolen?" "Now you are suspicious that you might be caught." "The very fact that you are under the agony of getting caught is the pay you getting out of the loaf nature." "Back in Tihar Kiran Behdi is preparing the ground for a vipassana course." "Your search should be more effective." "Kiran Behdi was not afraid to experiment with new ideas." "agrressive members of her staff to a vipassana course held outside of the jail. found them to be much more calm and positive." "one way or another." "In my life it's instant if I do something wrong and in it's their power." "My family still don't know umm.. exactly where I am." "My mother thinks I'm in India but I didn't want to worry her to say where I was and I am!" "The first vipassana course in Tihar jail was held in November 1993." "Over one hundred prisoners and jail staff participated." "She was not forcing people." "Just go and see yourself." "If you don't like it well and good just go please and see yourself." "They were asking people interested in vipassana and meditating." "The school came around in one of the wards." "so I went" "at first." "All one is asked to do is to focus on one's own natural breath and to maintain this awareness for as long as it possible." "Sounds simple but it's not." "When one sits down to be still an endless stream of thoughts dwells up in the mind start flooding in." "the mind quiets down." "faded like passing clouds." "By focusing for so long on the small patch of skin below the nostrils the mind becomes so sensitive." "that you can feel the softest flow of breath." "A new realm of sensations unfolds on this area pressure." "Natural physical sensations never before experienced so vividly." "Only then one is prepared to learn vipassana." "The whole idea of vipassana is to go inside you can come inside yourself and you can feel your sensations." "Continous awareness of physical sensations without reacting is the core of the vipassana practice." "everything that contacts the body instantly produces some sensations." "The technique focuses on natural physical sensations as the crucial link between mind and body the key to understanding human behaviour. are not caused by the outside world." "It is the reactions to pleasent or unpleasent sensations." "The world that walks within the body that dictates one's actions and conditions the mind." "On the fourth day of the course vipassana is taught. without overreacting them." "They watch emotions come and go they watch pain come and go" "they watch pleasure come and go not intellectualy but through their own experience that nothing is permanent. are not abstract anymore." "By watching the physical sensations accompanying these emotions and by understandign their impermanent nature one can actually start changing the habit of blind reaction." "Between the two poles of expression and suppression lies a third option mere observation." "I see things as the way it is." "The reality. and It's you who can leap to a misery." "Is there a happiness in there." "You know?" "After the course it was no looking back." "we found a remedy!" "We found an alternative." "We found a way to dictam to." "Then there was no looking back." "The first vipassana course in Tihar jail was followed by five more was thinking ahead." "We became greedier." "We were impationt." "Why only fifty-sixty when I have ten thousand people with me." "So why can't we reach at least a large percentage of a massive course other than going into small trickles to have a massive impact!" "Would you be able to arrange a course over thousand?" "I said yes!" " immediately." "Are you sure?" " I said yes." "It was one of the most ambitous projects in the history of indian prisons." "It was also the largest vipassana course conducted in modern times." "In just a few weeks a special area was prepared inside the prison." "Accomodating in one place a thousand inmates was a tremendous undertaking." "He pretends to be no saint." "humble teacher he is not expecteing anything in return." "The way he's done for the prisoners for ten days.." "He's lived in the prison for eleven days he and his wife together and it was no comfortable stay." "One thousand prisoners gathered in the huge tent on the evening of April 4th." "They reflected the wide range of human experience:" "sikhs from different nations and social backgrounds. extremely unusual for that dry seasion suddenly descended." "The tent collapsed." "All the rugs and meditation cushions were completely soaked." "An emergency meeting was called in 3 AM to consider a cancelling of the course." "measures were quickly put into action allowing it to continue." "When the weather was cleared a massive salvage operation was launched." "Meanwhile the course continued as prisoners medatated in there barracks. and the course went on as it planned." "Nine days later it was apparent that something unique had been acomplished." "It actually changed people." "It made my prisoners weep." "It made them cry." "They had realised what life actually could be." "They had looked within and within themselves they had seen the feeling of revenge." "They had seen anger." "They saw the disrespecting hurt they caused to parents and society and they wept and they wanted to be different." "I felt guilty." "Whatever I did a wrong thing." "I have done a wrong thing." "What I have done is something which I can't come out of it and correct it." "That realisation was the greatest magic." "That's exactly what we were looking for." "How do I realise them?" "Make them realise that they've actually hurt society." "we are innocent." "society hurt us." "How do I convice them that you did hurt society in some stage of your life." "They thought loaf nature has had it's causes you getting it today." "I didn't have to say anything." "This went up on that may could said:" "we hurt society but we seek forgiveness." "That was the greatest magic." "When the course ended twelve hundred participants and international guests guests witnessed the ... of the first vipassana center to be established in a prison." "Within three weeks it begin to offer vipassana courses twice a month." "Vipassana courses are alike everywhere in the world." "same instructions." "The workers who serve the students join the course are volunteers who have already taken a course themselves." "A teacher appointed by Mr. Goenka stays within the course site for 10 days and conducts the course voluntarily." "Nothing is by accident you know." "I'm here all for a reason." "I could have gone to Canada and my life this this this..." "This was all for a reason." "David asked to be transferred to a vipassana ward and work there as a volunteer." "When I first came I thought why is vipassana here?" "Of course when I said that it answers itself because this is where it's needed most." "This is history in a making you know this is the first chance where vipassana where it's been used in a prison-system to possible reform people and if this does show results then this could reform the whole prison-system in the entire planet." "And it happens here." "By scratch his belly should be the technique." "There you go!" "See all I can really do is to try to set an example for other people in doing this than maybe they will try a little bit harder for themselves." "David!" "Yeah you are 26 morning jail 4 and 27 morning I'm bringing jail 1 2 and 3 together." "So Tell him we will need him at a quarter nine o' clocks please tell the teacher." "for anybody." "They have to do it themselves." "The bottomline is you can't help somebody unless they want to be helped and the vipassana if you can get through to them is for themselves." "To get inside themselves to help." "Twice a month prisoners from different sections of Tihar arrive at a vipassana ward to take the course." "Some of them have done this for a number of times." "Each time they follow the same program what differs is the personal experience." "I call them "bikuzh" when they come here which is the monk because this is.. in fact what they are." "For ten days they become a monk." "A lot of people are around of the impression this ten days they come over here is.. is so easy." "It's not! prison life flows along." "In Tihar jail prisoners can have and other educational programs" "but the vipassana course is quite different from theese activities." "and prisoners are not always aware of this fact." "We are in jail." "A jail have jail rules." "vipassana has vipassana rules and it happens to be that vipassana rules are more strict.." "than what the jail is." "some of them don't understand." "See in jail they have the rules but the game is to bend the rules as much as they can or change the rules as much as they can to take control themselves." "And they bring that same attitude in here." "boy?" "this is not jail. but this is vipassana." "We do have a little bit of people who became jealous maybe envious because here people seem to get a little bit more than what other people do." "They don't realise that the guys who come here are put in more into than themselves." "If somebody have had some sort of experience or selfdisciplined then they seem to be falling into it much easier." "Let's understand the 10 days is basic.. you know" "I mean this is the least amount of time necessary to get some sort of a spark to the candle and sometimes that spark doesn't ignite another spark but after a couple delights it grows and then the candle is lit." "Change does not come easy way." "Change takes a time." "And as I told you earlier this revenge" "which I had an anger.." "is still subsiding." "completly one time" "I sit down and it just went out like that." "It's still subsiding.." "subsiding .." "Know I did it happen that I'm here." "What happened to me it's what I've done to myself and that's why I'm here." "I don't trust people as I used to do sometimes I meet them and and they treat me not good and.." "I think if I'll have a vote and start all over again." "Vipassana keeps try to bring me back away from this.." "distrustful people." "I'm here now doing vipassana and.." "Is your way of life you.." "you.. the way you talk to people the way you think the way you act?" "The way you do things for people or don't do things for people?" "they call this." "On the morning of the 10th day silence ends." "On this special day it becomes clear how long a journey it has been." "Students make the transition back to a more extroverted way of life." "For the first time in 10 days they can actually talk and share experiences." "being here." "I used to regret." "Now I don't regret any." "There is no any regret within me." "That yes it happened and I did this mistake." "So here now I look in future ahead." "Actually I came from a very orthodox muslim family and my parents were used to pray." "I used to always.." "I was very curious child that.." "You are praying and this person whom we are begging always." "Where is he?" "Is he upstairs where nobody see him?" "And why can't he listen to our prays?" "Why is he prejudist?" "I was looking for something which have an universal appear something which doesn't condemn." "this ours is good." "Actually I've found what I was looking for for all this years the thing whis has been bugging me" "I found the answer here." "It's sure it has came a long way earlier prisons were not being open for this course some were not." "but now government of India sent out a circulum to all the prisons in India to encourage vipassana courses." "Because the prisons were capable of receiving this." "Staff was expecting this." "The community outside was expecting this to happen." "You know there was a positivity of a belief that this can happen in the prisoners." "People who will be released from the prisons will not comming back anymore." "people had started to see the change in their thinking and behaviour." "So there is been no looking back." "When a vipassana course is ends in Baroda jail a special event takes place." "In the presence of social workers and guests supporting the vipassana program the superintendent - a vipassana student himself - greets the inmates coming out the meditation hall." "In this country physical contact between people from such different backgrounds is unthinkable but on this day barriers are broken. ask about.." "I said:" "Madam!" "How many people?" "In this world." "You think." "That they are doing.." "they are just here in this world.." "they believe there-here in this world just to do good?" ".." "What's the percentage?" "She looked at me and there was a maybe 20-30 people sitting there she say you are the percentage.." "It's you people.." "and It's you who can make it.." "this world a better place..."