A Guru for RPS?

Ram Bhagat was supposed to be retired.

In 2014, Bhagat — science teacher, activist, drummer, healer and prostate cancer survivor — taught what he thought would be his last class, at Open High School in Oregon Hill.

Not that he intended to decamp to a remote island and live out his days in idyllic seclusion — Bhagat is far too engaged with “saving the world,” as his wife, Traci, wryly remarks, for anything so removed.

Still, he took a yearlong sabbatical and traveled to India to reflect.

And then in fall 2016, he received an offer he couldn’t refuse.

Bhagat has long been what you might call a mender, stitching up himself and parts of a broken world. You could also call him a truth seeker and truth teller, forever trying to set the record straight. In a four-decade career marked by innovation and a desire for synthesis, he endeared himself to his students by folding his passion for percussion into his pedagogy and seasoning his classroom exercises with Eastern philosophy.

It was an approach that took him far beyond Richmond, to Harvard and Yale, to Brazil and Burundi, as he shared his unorthodox and integrative vision with the world.

When another opportunity came to develop his own program for intra-racial healing at intensely segregated schools and to join Richmond Public Schools’ new Restorative Justice Task Force, Bhagat jumped at the chance to train a cadre of high school students and teachers in what he calls “restorative” education.

It is a job that, in many ways, the 62-year-old Bhagat has been preparing for all his life.

And in returning to the school where he began teaching, he is starting an exciting and important new chapter in the long and sweeping epic that has been his life.

A KID NAMED CRAIG

Ram Bhagat came into this world as Craig Gooding.

Even before he took a new name, he was more culturally aware than most kids, and certainly more well-read. By the time he was a teenager, growing up in New Haven, Connecticut, he was already reading books about yoga and Hinduism in his bedroom. “That room was his castle, and you had to knock on the door and know the password,” his younger sister, Crystal Gooding, recalls.

As an African-American boy attending a private Catholic school in a neighborhood that was, he says, “99 percent black and 1 percent Hispanic,” he came to understand the hypocrisies of his world. They began to grate against him. A 10th-grade teacher described him as an “existentialist.” In the second semester of 10th grade, he quips, “I arranged to get myself expelled.”

He didn’t, but he did leave, enrolling in a local public school.

All his friends and many relatives lived nearby, and he not only felt at home in his neighborhood, but also supported and loved. It was a dynamic time — the late 1960s, when dashikis became political statements, as did slogans such as, “Say it loud, I’m black and I’m proud” and “Black is beautiful.”

This was also the time of the Black Panthers and their Oakland-based leader Bobby Seale. The Panthers were not viewed, in Gooding's neighborhood and at home, as revolutionaries, but as conscientious objectors, standing up to police brutality and systemic racism. “We agreed with their platform,” Bhagat says, adding that his mother and her sisters were involved in a Panther-led breakfast program.

New Haven, however, became a crucible of its time, with tensions between the Panthers and the federal authorities who wanted to finish them creating an atmosphere of violence, paranoia and fear that culminated in a 1970 murder trial of Black Panther members in New Haven.

The teenage Gooding was then reading Carlos Castaneda’s books about the author’s immersion in the mystical teachings of Don Juan Matus, a Yaqui Indian from northern Mexico.

“I knew I wanted that type of apprentice-teacher relationship,” Bhagat says now. “And so I planted that seed, I guess you could say, in the universe.”

It was at Virginia State University that it bore fruit.

A YOGA CONVERT

At college in 1975, Gooding, then 19, read a flyer announcing a yoga course taught by microbiology professor Janeshwar Upadhyay.

Though skeptical — he had been initially dubious, too, of giving himself to higher education — he enrolled in the course, and it changed his life.

Gooding saw a path for himself, one so clear that he knew the next step he wanted to take. He wanted to convert to the Hindu faith.

What Upadhyay told him was surprising. Everyone, he told him, is Hindu: “It doesn’t have a particular belief other than you believe in God and that God is in all things.”

But there was a ritual, involving the giving of a mantra, along with the taking of a name.

Gooding told Upadhyay that he was more than ready for this.

And so it was that Craig Gooding became Ram Bhagat, which translates to “Servant of God.”

GRIEF FOR A BROTHER LOST

The conversion was more than a new personal direction. It was the transformation he came to VSU to find.

And so, after graduating in 1978 and flirting with graduate school at Tulane, Bhagat returned home in the fall of 1980. “Something inside my spirit was telling me to go back home to New Haven,” he says.

His brother, Lester, was returning home as well, after three years abroad with the Air Force. The week before he returned to his post in Michigan, the two brothers jammed together, Lester on bass and Ram on percussion. It was a spiritual experience — two young men with their lives spread out before them.

His brother made it back to the base, but not long after, the Air Force called home, asking his whereabouts; Lester was reported as absent without leave.

Days later, a chaplain accompanied by an Air Force officer arrived at the family’s home in New Haven.

Bhagat’s mother was away in California, visiting family, and so it fell to him to deliver the terrible news to her — that her son had been found dead in his car with a gunshot to the head.

“I’ll never forget that primal scream,” Bhagat says of breaking the news to his mother on their way home from the airport.

The family doesn’t accept the official ruling that Lester’s death was a suicide. After hiring a private detective, the family contends he was murdered.

Bhagat worked through his grief. He formed a percussion group, Children of the Sun, which created a blueprint for his later Drums No Guns program. He wrote poetry, self-publishing a collection. He became a renunciate of the material world. He wore white all the time. He let his dreadlocks grow past his neck.

Most important of all, he turned to the person who earlier had provided him with a direction when he needed it — his former VSU teacher, Upadhyay.

From that day forward, Bhagat took a vow that was as consequential as his commitment to Hinduism, and after returning to VCU for a second bachelor’s and then undertaking his teaching practicum at Armstrong High, he dedicated his life to exploring the cyclic causes of violence.

A DIFFERENT APPROACH

It was at Richmond Community High that Bhagat began to experiment with the cross-pollination of ideas that shaped his unorthodox teaching career.

Among these was his creation of an “edu-concert” integrating dance, spoken word and music into student presentations. “Here you had the youth addressing their peers in a way that elevated their minds,” he says. A local performance led to a national one, in Detroit, with an audience that included representatives of the Kellogg Foundation. “They asked me: ‘Did those kids actually write that themselves?’ ” Bhagat remembers, and smiles. “Yes, they most certainly did.”

Later, having transferred to John Marshall High, he conceived of a percussion ensemble, Drums No Guns, in response to the death of two students by gun violence. The group organized food drives, and the school’s drumline traveled to the mall in Washington, D.C., to participate in the Million Mom March for sensible drug laws.

“The drum lifts us,” Bhagat says. “The drum connects us; the drum is a powerful force. … I use the drum to unite people of all ages, of all races.”

The story behind Drums No Guns fascinated educator and theater director Tawnya Pettiford-Wates, who met Bhagat while he was pursuing his doctorate in leadership at VCU. He eventually joined the board of Pettiford-Wates’ Conciliation Project, which uses theater to confront history and racism, later becoming its president.

“He’s excellent at putting people at ease,” she says, noting that when conversations get heated, “he doesn’t retaliate. He reorganizes that energy for people.” She likens him to an intellectual “ninja,” in that he is able to “turn the aggravation or anger into a conversation rather than an attack. When they start questioning their preconceived notions, that’s when they have revelations.”

It is Bhagat’s deep connection to his African heritage, Pettiford-Wates believes, that buoys him — his recognition “that there is a continuum, that our ancestors are here within us, and we live through our children, we have that responsibility to carry forward. His optimism is rooted in [the notion] that you’ve been given something in order to give something.”

BEYOND THE CLASSROOM

Bhagat had not been teaching for long when he realized that what he was doing was not just teaching but connecting, and so he began reaching out beyond the walls of the classroom to expand the reach of his message.

One of his most important collaborations over the years has been training students in conflict resolution through the Richmond Peace Education Center. Bhagat began working with the organization in 2000, and RPEC recognized him, two years ago, with its 16th Annual Peacemaker of the Year Award.

Adria Scharf, the director of the center, admires how Bhagat is able to synthesize complicated issues. “His mind is holistic. He connects the dots through the synthesis of complexities and value commitments. He’s a genuine creative. Ram is truly a gift to the community.”

Says Duron Chavis, Lewis Ginter Botanical Garden’s community engagement coordinator and an advocate for urban agriculture, “I’ve not met many people who can articulate these nonacademic, experiential realities — the way he takes music and drumming into the classroom or workshop, his use of rhythm. He’s always in a good mood even if he’s in a bad mood.”

They met in 2003, when Chavis held a Happily Natural Day at the Black History Museum & Cultural Center of Virginia. “We had a natural rapport, and, more than a friend, he became a mentor for me,” Chavis says. “He brought me into this world where dialogue builds relationships.”

Later, he became, like Bhagat, a conflict resolution trainer. “I’d done prison work before, but with Ram, this was different,” Chavis recalls. “We were facilitating these groups, mostly African-American women, in the form of group therapy. They channeled their frustration through words.”

That work in conflict resolution led, in 2015, to a series of intensive workshops about race, overseen by Initiatives of Change, that Bhagat and Chavis conducted with executives of large companies and organizations. Says Chavis, “They were in a room together going through some extremely tough questions, which didn’t leave space for any kumbaya.”

Bhagat worked to make sure that no one felt put-upon, he says, but also that no one was left unchallenged.

This is not to say that Bhagat relies solely on delicacy and diplomacy in achieving his ends. With his students, in particular, he is more often interested in stoking their sense of injustice.

Jorrell Watkins, who graduated from Open High School in 2011, credits Bhagat with encouraging him to attend Hoodstock, a poetry and music gathering at the Powhatan Community Center in Fulton, in 2013. A year after the killing of Trayvon Martin and a year before the shooting of Michael Brown, Watkins delivered his poems to an auditorium of like-minded souls: angered, anxious and frayed by fear.

Watkins says Bhagat wanted to initiate these conversations, because, as he recalled, “Ram said that in the next five years, there’ll be a huge upheaval, and here we are. That’s exactly what happened.”

In some ways, Bhagat is fueled by the cultural turmoil that he predicted years ago, and that has both the city and the nation on edge.

He is grateful that it is bringing ugliness to light, and injustice and corruption into the open.

“I’m working to find racial reconciliation in the era of MAGA,” he says.

DISUNITY AT HOME

It is among the many fascinations of a man who describes himself as a seeker and healer that he should be so comfortable with conflict — and that he should be actively urging a direct and painful confrontation with the not-settled past.

In his own life, Bhagat has not always been blessed with the unity he has endeavored to find, and some of his relationships as a husband and father of a blended family of seven have been, at times, complicated.

Kiran, his eldest daughter, remembers a house full of music and energy, but the fact that her father and mother were not like other kids’ parents was an awkward constant of her childhood.

“Oh, yes, there were times when I didn’t want to drum, or go and perform,” she recalls, “and I had friends wonder what was this ‘weird’ thing my parents were doing.” It took getting older, she says — and the benefit of some perspective — to understand what her father’s mindfulness meant.

Bhagat’s son Shyam, who grew up in Drums No Guns and now thumps on buckets as Shyam the Drum Addict in Denver; Washington, D.C.; and other cities (“I’m not a trained drummer; I’m a junkyard percussionist”), says that having peers who looked askance at the holistic, self- and world-healing life he lived at home was hard.

That was not all that was hard for a boy who felt caught between two worlds. In 2003, when Shyam was 13, Bhagat and his first wife, Shyam’s mother, went through a separation and divorce.

The confusion he was feeling over his identity did not lead him, however, to start studying along the lines of his father’s conversion: He committed armed robbery and ended up serving three years at the then Bon Air Juvenile Correctional Center and a Roanoke facility.

Today, Shyam describes the experience as if it were an unfortunate stumble along life’s path, and he portrays his father as a benevolent figure on the sidelines. “My father knew I was transitioning into finding myself … trying to fit in with my peers. It was more of a life lesson for me and for him, too.”

Says Bhagat: “I think he was angry and feeling like he was out there alone, and that influenced his decisions then.” The entire family rallied to support him.

Shyam was released only to commit another crime, which led to a second three-year incarceration. 

“That second time was on him,” Bhagat says. “Recidivism has a high rate for numerous reasons,” he adds, then quickly reframes what happened. “But he’s resurrected his life, with stories of survival to tell.” 

Shyam now goes into schools with a program called I Am the Work, in which he talks about how our experiences mold us, and the way students can use difficulties as motivation. “You just have to experience it yourself, like those edu-concerts of Dad’s,” Shyam says. “It’s therapeutic, but it also brings a universal connection.”

Kiran is teaching, too — via yoga and as a certified conflict resolution counselor. She often assists her father in workshops. She wants to move into teaching history — but not the incomplete history she was taught in school and read about in her textbooks. An alternate history, as her father has encouraged her.

WORKING FROM WITHIN AND WITHOUT

And now, like daughter and son, Bhagat finds himself back teaching again, too.

Teaching and studying.

In a life of relentless seeking, the two would seem to go hand in hand.

After retiring from RPS, Bhagat took a yearlong sabbatical. He returned with newfound energy — and a desire to get back into a high-needs classroom. He took a job as chair of the science department at Ballou High School in Washington, D.C.’s Anacostia neighborhood and, he says, was as much a student as he was a teacher.

It was at Ballou that he became interested in what is called restorative justice, a movement that arose in the criminal justice system during the 1970s. The goal was to provide alternatives to prosecution and incarceration by having the person harmed and the person who caused harm meet and come up with a plan for restitution. The movement has found its way to schools as an alternative to the traditional disciplinary process.

Not all educators see restorative practices as a panacea. Andrew Rotherham, of Bellwether Education Partners in Washington, D.C., and a former policy advisor to the Clinton White House, told The Atlantic: “Restorative justice programs are not without risk, particularly in school settings, and poor implementation can actually make problems worse, according to some experts. … [It] has become a hot issue, and everyone wants to do it — but it may not be what every school needs.”

Bhagat has a detailed plan. So determined is he to locate the intersection of restorative justice, education and racial trauma healing, in fact, that he recently enrolled in the postgraduate restorative justice in education program at Eastern Mennonite University.

Kathy Evans, an associate professor in the education department there, emphasizes that she doesn’t see restorative justice as an alternative to discipline, but something more encompassing in scope.

“We have to see bigger than what we do to kids who misbehave,” Evans says. “What we need is a cultural shift in schools that re-centers relationships.”

Bhagat, she says, is ideally suited to help in this regard.

 “I’m working to find racial reconciliation in the era of MAGA.” —Ram Bhagat

The new superintendent of schools in Richmond, Jason Kamras, thinks so, too. Kamras has tapped Bhagat to serve on the new Restorative Justice Task Force for Richmond Public Schools. “I’ve been to every single one of our schools, and when I’ve raised this, in every one of our schools, folks are thirsty for this training and support,” Kamras says. “And they are the first to tell you what we are doing now [with discipline and suspensions] isn’t really working, and it’s leading to teacher burnout and exhaustion, and it is not ultimately what is good for kids.”

And that task force is only the first of multiple platforms that Bhagat will be teaching from.

Last year, after the Richmond-based Initiatives of Change/Hope in the Cities became one of 14 recipients of a three-year, $1.6 million Truth, Racial Healing and Transformation grant from the W.K. Kellogg Foundation, Bhagat applied and received funding for his new, two-year Massive Resilience Initiative, or MRI, at Armstrong High School. The program will start in earnest this fall.

“Massive Resilience is designed to provide students with powerful tools for self-awareness, stress resilience and self-healing,” says Bhagat, who worked with Armstrong’s Freshman Academy students this past school year. They learned yoga and mindfulness and participated in drumming and peacemaking circles.

His ultimate mission? To assemble a team of young folks throughout the region to study the city’s history and racial trauma, and to lead discussions.  “We want them to serve as role models for self-healing, social-emotional well-being and social justice for this city.”

MORE THAN TALK

Bhagat underscores that “the trauma created by racial and economic segregation in American public schools is generational, historic and massive.” He has embarked on his own form of reframing: “How can we disrupt this? And how do we do it in a way where the communities affected the most are more deeply involved in addressing the problem versus having a saturation of good intentions by people from outside who want to provide the solution?”

But Bhagat has never been content to work solely within the system, and that hasn’t changed. He will attend workshops with communities and college students in Chicago and Denver this summer and fall, and continue his insightful Facebook posts.

This from May 15 at 3:04 a.m., the morning after Marcus-David Peters, a naked, unarmed African-American, was shot and killed by a policeman on Interstate 95:  

“We need to do more than talk about race in America. We need to change our narrative to reflect the truth. Apologies, courageous conversations, racial dialogues, and workshops for white allies are insufficient to repay the debt owed for slavery, genocide, and cultural misorientation. ‘We Can’t Wait Any Longer!’ ”

At the Peace Love RVA yoga festival June 2, Bhagat had a “Justice for Marcus” sign propped up against his drum. Earlier that day, Peters’ family and supporters marched past the Richmond Police Department’s headquarters. On June 11, family and supporters addressed City Council, asking for a review of the department’s crisis-intervention training.

“We need to do more than talk about police shootings,” Bhagat says. “There are a disproportional number of black and brown people shot and killed, stopped and frisked, and incarcerated in our society.”

Bhagat would like for the RPD and City Council to try some innovative approaches to address the collective trauma caused by the killing of Peters, which would involve a healing circle to include his family, the police chief, City Council president, the mayor, and the commonwealth’s attorney and designated community members. “It’s disheartening when nothing is done, or the perception is nothing is done, to administer justice fairly.”