At 60, Kailash Satyarthi looks as exuberant as the young-guy-next-door. The secret for this, he tells you, lies in doing good work for the society and getting acknowledged. Although the Nobel Peace Prize comes as a surprise to him, Satyarthi says nothing much has changed after that. ‘I will continue to be a pain for the trafficking mafia as I will keep exposing them and helping children out of that hell,’ the Nobel laureate tells Deebashree Mohanty from his ashram in Virat Nagar
It was 3 pm when I received a call from a journalist friend in India. He was very excited and hardly able to speak. ‘Kailashji, Nobel Peace Prize...’ is all he said. I was caught unawares. I thought he had called to ask about my reaction on whoever had won the Nobel Peace Prize. ‘Sorry, I have no idea who has won it. You tell meIJ’ I asked. Taken aback, he said, ‘But, you have’. I was speechless,” Kailash Satyarthi recalls that sunny afternoon of October 2014 when the news of his having won the most coveted Prize for Peace reached him.
He was woken up from his afternoon nap at his home in Aravali Apartments, Kalkaji, but Satyarthi was as surprised at the announcement as were people around him. “I thought it was a mistake,” the modest 60-year-old activist who founded Bachpan Bachao Andolan in 1980, tells you. He immediately switched on the news channels to get a confirmation.
Congratulatory messages have been flowing in ever since but Satyarthi and his family are yet to come to terms with this latest achievement. As is customary, he and his wife are calling in the celebrations with hundreds of rehabilitated children in their Bal Ashram near Virat Nagar, Jaipur. “That is my peace abode. I find happiness in the smiles of children whom we have rescued from suffering. It also reminds me that the work is only half done. My family celebrates all occasions with these children at the ashram,” he says, as he sits down for a glass of water.
This is his fifth interview this morning but Satyarthi does not show any signs of fatigue. “I start my day early so that gives me a lot of time to think and plan my activities. That is the secret of my organised life,” he says, laughingly.
He has only just wrapped up a lengthy interview for a daily from Brazil and there are other media contingents from other parts of the world waiting for his time and attention. This, he tells you, is the only difference in his routine post the Nobel Peace Prize. “Bas media ka dhyan mere taraf ho gaya hai. Kabhi kabhi manage karna mushkil hota hai par duniyawalon ko batana to hai ki mein kya kaam karta hoon. (Media attention has shifted towards me. At times, it becomes difficult to manage but I want the world to know about the work I do for deprived children),” he says. Satyarthi, meanwhile, has a PR company that arranges all his meetings and media interactions. He has also learnt some tricks of the trade. “I have learnt to keep my answers short and crisp. Because if I have to give 10 interviews in a day, I may get breathless,” he tells you.
In every way he is an unlikely Nobel laureate. He has a gmail address but he rarely has the time to answer his mail. He freely gives out his mobile number and answers each and every call whenever he has a little window. And he has maintained the same office for years, in a dusty, paved street in Kalkaji, in south Delhi.
He may have freed over 80,000 children from the clutches of slavery till date but for Satyarthi the work is only half done. It all started way back in the 1960s when the seeds of rebellion against child labour were planted in him. Satyarthi (originally Kailash Sharma) who was a student at the Government Boys Higher Secondary School in Vidisha, Madhya Pradesh, was on his way to his classroom when he spotted a boy polishing the shoes of his classmates. “That tugged at my heart. I started questioning this disparity. Why do some people have the resources to go to school while others have to be slaves. His only fault was that he was born to a poor familyIJ My parents took my questions very seriously and encouraged me to do something about it. I decided I wanted to do something to ensure that everyone in the society is given equal rights and opportunities,” he tells you.
An intelligent student with a special liking towards Physics and Mathematics, Satyarthi passed his 12th standard in flying colours and got admission in the Samrat Ashoka Technological Institute in Vidisha. He got a degree in electrical engineering and a post graduate degree in high voltage engineering. Everyone in his family had assumed that Satyarthi would continue on this path and look for a high-paying career with an MNC. But he had different plans.
“I never forgot about that boy. I wanted to do something to help such people out but had no idea how to go about it. I used to be very vocal about this concern and used to participate in every seminar to speak against this practise. I joined a college in Bhopal and started teaching but after a couple of years I got a call from the Bonded labour liberation Front and I immediately joined them as Secretary General. There has been no looking back,” he recalls. That very year in July, Satyarthi founded the Bachpan Bachao Andolan which has fought child labour by creating domestic and international consumer resistance to products made by bonded children, as well as with direct legal and advocacy work.
Building on his initial activism, Satyarthi organised the Global March Against Child labour in the 1990s — dedicated to freeing the millions of children abused worldwide in a form of modern slavery. The activist is also founder of RugMark, a widely known international scheme that tags all carpets made in factories that are child-labour free.
He has seen the bitter and ugly side of society but that has not led him astray from his campaigns. “I have seen how children suffer. If they cry for their parents they are beaten up mercilessly till they collapse in pain. They are sodomised and raped. There’s no respite for them. To deal with all this and fight the child trafficking mafia was disturbing but I was prepared for anything and everything. My wife was initially very hassled about death threats and beatings that I had to go through. But she reconciled, realising that to bring about a change, one has to weather the storm. Today, she is my biggest strength,” Satyarthi says.
His two colleagues were killed while dealing with dangerous and biggest child trafficking mafia in India. Satyarthi himself sustained injuries and stab wounds but never once thought of withdrawing.
He tells you about some of the interventions that had gone terribly wrong. like the time a group of men from the Great Roman Circus — who were employing trafficked teenagers from Nepal as dancing girls — attacked him with iron rods and cricket bats.
“Oh these incidents have become very common. There was a time when I would come home all bloody. When my daughter was very small, we got a call from a goon saying that he would teach me and my family a lesson we will never forget. He had researched about our schedules and knew who went out and at what time. That day, we became even more determined to root out the evils in society,” he tells you, adding that “agar kadam badhaya hi hai then why not complete the walkIJ”
For a spiritual man like him, life and death has no meaning. Satyarthi says he has always been driven by spiritual values that go beyond all religions. He believes that while the body perishes, the soul lives forever. “I am not a religious fanatic but I believe in the soul theory. That helps me brace death without fear,” he states.
Satyarthi’s journey with BBA has been the foundation of his ceaseless good work. The Bachpan Bachao Andolan was initiated as a grassroots level and direct-action-oriented people’s movement in 1980 to eliminate exploitation of children, especially child labour and child trafficking.
The campaign, today, has over 80,000 individuals and 750 organisations as members who advocate and act for child rights protection. “I am no longer associated with this organisation but the leadership committee has been good enough to consider me as the mentor and founder of this initiative. I will do everything in my capacity to help BBA in its modest effort to provide a better livelihood to children,” he says.
A brilliant cook and an understanding husband, Satyarthi is also quite the humourous sorts. He is always smiling and cracking jokes to lighten the mood at his ashram. When those children laugh out aloud with him, he is the happiest. “Everyone can do his or her bit to ensure that a child gets a decent living. Start with making a child at the street smile. Then go about in your society trying to spread cheer. If everyone does it together, there will be lots of happiness around,” he says.
Apart from this ‘smile factor’, Satyarthi uses an array of techniques, including lobbying with politicians and knocking on the doors of the Supreme Court, National Human Rights Commission and other judicial institutions, for enforcement of child rights laws.
He says that although the laws are in place in India, awareness is still not up to the mark. And it is not knowledge alone that will make this world a better place to live in. According to him, there is an urgent need for socialisation of morality and compassion. “Inter-state trafficking is increasing rapidly not just in India but also in South-Asian countries and something needs to be done fast to curb this social atrocity. One person cannot do it. It has to be the effort of the entire society,” he states.
One of Satyarthi’s big achievements is the promotion of a consumer awareness campaign in Europe and the US aimed at dissuading consumers from buying carpets made by child labourers and simultaneously endorsing goods produced without exploiting children.
This, Satyarthi says was imbibed in him by his daughter, who is currently pursuing her MBA from an institute in Hyderabad.
“My daughter has always inspired me to give my 100 per cent. There have been times when I feel lost in a cause but she shows me the way. She was 10 when she started an agitation against child labour at the Shiv Kasi crackers factory. I have learnt from her and she continues to teach me newer ways to get my point across,” he says. His son is an established lawyer who takes up child trafficking cases. “The BBA and my son have been responsible for making the CRPA (Child Rights Protection Act) a reality. He is working with the Government to make more laws on child rights,” he says.
As for Malala Yousafzai, co-recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize this year, Satyarthi feels she will be the ambassador of peace of the next generation.
There is a lot of contrast between the two — one is a young girl, the other is a senior citizen, one is a Muslim while the other a Hindu; while Malala is world renowned, Satyarthi is barely-known but in reality they are both struggling for the same thing.
“I have spent a lot of time with Malala and her family in The Netherlands. They are very down-to-earth people willing to sacrifice everything. Malala’s courage should be applauded. I plan to work with her in the future,” Satyarthi tells you from the ashram.