As once our great social reformers, like Kabir, Raidas, Jyotiba Phule and others had dedicated their lives to spread the message of love, peace, fraternity and harmony against hatred; as thousands of our countrymen came together, setting aside their differences, to fight against the colonial rule of British empire and realize the dream of an independent and sovereign country, filled with the spirit of love and humanity we along with our fellow artistes, writers, and artisans are setting out on a nationwide march: Dhai Aakhar Prem. This march will touch different villages, and nooks and corners of the country with songs, music, poetry, dance, and theatre honouring all kinds of human labour with the sole purpose of spreading the message of love for the country and affinity with freedom, erasing all sorts of discrimination, hatred, and conflicts. 

Love, which instils hope, which advocates fraternity, equality, and justice, which Kabir uses to demolish hypocrisy, love that does not discriminate, based on language, religion, or caste, Love, free from all identities, is the ideal of humanity. 

The march of ‘Dhai Akhar Prem’, will appeal to the ethos of Bapu, Bhagat Singh, Ashfaq, Bismil and hundreds of martyrs which echos in the hearts of the masses. We will summon the India which still pursues the dream of Ambedkar and Nehru, which believes in the universal fraternity of Vivekananda and the magnificent humanistic ideals of Rabindranath Tagore. We will recall the reason and wisdom of people like Ishwar Chand Vidyasagar, Ram Mohan Roy, Periyar, E V Ramasamy, and Govind Pansare to awaken the scientific consciousness against superstition and orthodoxy. The march of ‘Dhai Aakhar Prem’ shall celebrate the values of fraternity, love, and humanity through our songs and performances during this cultural march. 

Last year, on 09 April 2022, we embarked on the ‘Dhai Akhar Prem Yatra’ from Raipur, Chhattisgarh. This cultural march passed through villages and cities of Jharkhand, Bihar, Uttar Pradesh, and Madhya Pradesh and finally culminated on May 22, 2022, in the city of Indore. Marking the 75th year of our independence, in this Yatra, IPTA together with other democratic peace-loving cultural organizations remembered our heroes of freedom struggles, and legendary cultural and literary figures, and visited their birthplaces and places of their work. We collected soil from these places. For non-stop 44 days, we covered almost 89 districts and acquainted ourselves with the happiness, sorrows, hopes, aspirations, and dreams of the common people as expressed through peoples’ songs, music, poetry, dance and theatre. 

Dhai Akhar Prem: National Cultural Jatha is a journey of dialogue with our countryfolks, their folk-art, traditional art and people’s art forms of the entire country. Pursuing the slogan, peoples’ theatre stars the people, the ‘Jatha’ (march) over 120 days will walk on foot in 22 states and union territories in a phased manner. The Jatha will meet thousands of children, youth, women, elders, peasants, toiling people, workers, artists and artisans, and micro-entrepreneurs and share the values of love, equality, justice, humanity and fraternity.