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Arvind Kejriwal is a social activist and founder of Parivartan, a citizens’ movement. He campaigned for the Right to Information Act.

What does spirituality mean to you?
It actually means a couple of things to me. It is different from what we understand as religion. First, it is the connection to myself. Then, it is my connection to the rest of the universe, including human beings. It is basically a process through which I try to find myself and establish a true and proper relationship with the rest of the universe.

How do you go about this process?
Vipassana is the main way. I have been practising it since 1996, attending regularly the ten-day silent retreats, and trying to do some every day on my own. This is my way to peep inside.

Why vipassana?
It teaches you to be in the present. Because we all the time live either in the past or in the future. So whenever we are overtaken by anger or any such instinct, two changes take place in the body: our breath goes awry and tension takes place in some part of the body. So if you watch that sensation and your breath at that point of time, you are able to overcome it.

This may be easy in the isolation of a silence retreat, but does it translate into daily life?
The whole idea is to gradually grow the habit of being in vipassana at every single moment. I cannot change the world. There will always be opportunities to get angry for instance. But it is up to me to choose how to react. I can act out and become angry. Or I can try and get used to watching my breath and sensations. Then anger won’t affect me. The outside world won’t affect me.
In a nutshell, instead of reacting to the outside world, I basically try and react to the sensations in the body, to the breath going awry. It cannot happen overnight of course. It takes place with regular practice.
Earlier, my habit pattern was to react to whatever was taking place. I would get angry and boil in anger for eight or nine hours. Now the length and frequency of my being angry has gone down. It has really happened. I can feel the difference.

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