Watch: ‘Bharat Dojo Yatra soon,’ says Rahul Gandhi sharing video of martial arts session on National Sports Day

Congress leader Rahul Gandhi on August 29 shared glimpses of jiu-jitsu—a form of martial arts—held at campsites during his last leg of the Bharat Jodo Nyay Yatra earlier this year and said a “Bharat Dojo Yatra” is coming soon.

Dojo broadly refers to a training hall or school for martial arts.

“During the Bharat Jodo Nyay Yatra, as we journeyed across thousands of kilometers, we had a daily routine of practicing jiu-jitsu every evening at our campsite. What began as a simple way to stay fit quickly evolved into a community activity, bringing together fellow yatris and young martial arts students from the towns where we stayed,” Rahul Gandhi said on X along with the video of the sessions.

The video, titled ‘seekhoge thoda martial, thoda gentle art’, shos Rahul Gandhi, a Aikido black belt, and his trainer, Arun Sharma, a jiu-jitsu black belt, practicing martial arts throughout the 6,700+ km journey, teaching children along the way.

“Our goal was to introduce these young minds to the beauty of the ‘Gentle Art’ a harmonious blend of meditation, Jiu-Jitsu, Aikido, and non-violent conflict resolution techniques,” the leader of opposition in the Lok Sabha said.

“We aimed to instill in them the value of transforming violence into gentleness, giving them the tools to build a more compassionate and safer society,” Gandhi said.

On this National Sports Day, he said he wanted to share his experience with the people, hoping to inspire some of them to take up the practice of the “gentle art”,” Gandhi added.

National Sports Day is celebrated annually on August 29, marking the birth anniversary of Major Dhyan Chand, one of the iconic figures in Indian sports history. 

Gandhi undertook a more than two-month-long Bharat Jodo Nyay Yatra that began on January 14 from Manipur and ended in Mumbai. It was a hybrid journey that was the second phase of his earlier Kanyakumari-to-Kashmir padayatra, which he had undertaken from September 2022 to January 2023.

“P.S.: Bharat Dojo Yatra is coming soon,” Rahul wrote at the end of the post.