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I was involved in some peaceful protests.

Not a lot of people would think that I spent most of my early years totally rebelling against anything I could, getting suspended from school, going on demonstrations.

I think the Civil Rights Movement changed that trajectory for me. The first thing I did was leave school. I was suspended for my participation in Movement demonstrations in my hometown, December, 1961.

I just came from South Africa, a place that had been in a perpetual uprising since 1653, so the uprising had become a way of life in our culture and we grew up with rallies and strikes and marches and boycotts.

During the 1942 Quit India Movement, I was a student at Gwalior High School. I was arrested by the British for participating in the movement. My parents then sent me off to my village where, again, I jumped into the movement.

I grew up with protests, marches, demonstrations, struggle. But I come from a clan of community workers.

I was involved in the anti-war movement.

I was raised in a very activist household so that I grew up surrounded by people who were activists.

I was only a working-class boy from a Nationalist ghetto. But it is repression that creates the revolutionary spirit of freedom.

I've been in revolt for years against ignominy, against injustice, against inequality, against immorality, against the exploitation of human beings.