Indira standing in left next to a police personnel at Udaipur Central Jail with female inmates

Dara Singh, who at one time was a perilous criminal, is now an active member of Art of Living foundation and works with prisoners towards changing their lives. It is a similar story with another criminal detainee, Dinesh Gurjar, who has now authored a book called “Jail- Ek Paanchwa Dhaam” (Jail a fifth pilgrimage), describing his experiences in jail.

These are a few examples of the many prisoners who changed their life through Indira’s training.

Indira Talreja, a teacher in Art of Living, Udaipur is closely working to give a significant life to jail inmates at the Udaipur Central Jail. Besides educating the inmates, she is also conducting stress management programmes with them since many years.

Indira started her work with female inmates in the year 2005. According to her, when she started working with women inmates, the major problem she faced was that every female prisoner was very violent and aggressive.

An avid follower of Sri Sri Ravishankar, Indira took the sayings of her Guru and said, love actually has a power to dissolve all fear and violence. Violence is something that is momentary, it is not done with a reason, it happens.

There are very few who go into the depths of criminal psychology and tries to bring out the real reasons for crime and violence. After several attempts, Indira found that the main cause for aggression in female prisoners was ignorance as every female was ignored by her family.

Indira says, “I never saw criminals in jail; it is true that they are aggressive but the reason is they do not have anyone to care for them, as my Guruji says, Violence ends where love begins”

Narrating the story of a female prisoner in jail, who was mentally disturbed and accused of killing her own mother, Indira told UT, “that woman used to be alone, quite and scared every time but when I started conducting workshops in jail, she started watching me but never used to talk; I started understanding her behaviour and with the passage of time, she came closer to me, started attending all workshops, and started mingling with everyone and even started talking care of small children of other female prisoners.”

Indira says “After some time, whenever she saw me in the premises, she ran towards me, hugged me tight and cried. By the time of her leaving from jail, she uses to dance, sing and play with every female prisoner.”

The only aim behind every workshop is spreading love, affection and care among prisoners. One of the several modes of training is Meditation and Yoga, where the group organises meditation programmes every Sunday in jail premises. They have selected leaders among themselves and they coordinate yoga, prayers and meditation classes every day in jail.

To save the environment, Indira and her team have encouraged prisoners to make paper bags. Prisoners are also trained to use computers and now almost half of the jail inmates know how to operate a computer.

Indira and her team have established a library in every barrack of jail which has books of all genre including motivational, spiritual, comics, etc. They also organise English, French and German classes for prisoners in jail. For prisoners having interest in Astrology, they have Astrology classes also.

Indira offered her gratitude to Surinder Singh Shekhwat, Superintendent of Police (Prison) for the support.