The Father Figure

The new Nobel laureate for peace began his struggle for children’s freedom when he was a boy

On Friday, 10 October, the day of the announcement of Kailash Satyarthi’s Nobel Peace Prize, two tables and a chair broke in his office. They were discovered later by his staff. “There were so many people! We weren’t prepared. Even that bathroom had media persons inside with cameras,” says Paroma Bhattacharya, who heads communication for Bachpan Bachao Andolan, pointing towards a poky little corner on the first floor, just next to where Satyarthi sits.

By Saturday, the clamour had only grown louder. Ecstatic members of the movement were dancing on the street. Inside, every available surface was covered with bouquets. At the reception, people were pausing to check the blackboard that measures the work done by BBA. The total number of children saved from slavery is updated every day: 83,525 was the number for 11 October. In front of it, a message on a whiteboard read, ‘Congratulations to Bhaisahabji’. The man himself, lovingly called Bhaisahabji by those who know him, was surrounded by television crews all day before he left to meet the Prime Minister in the evening.

On Monday afternoon, he is back in his office after meeting Sonia Gandhi, barefoot and dressed in his favoured white kurta pyjama, as his family and staff fuss around him, forcing him to take a break between meetings. His wife Sumedha Kailash, who is called Bhabhiji by everyone, puts dal and sabzi on a plate and threatens to cancel all interviews unless he has his lunch. Satyarthi accepts the plate, smiles, and says, “In the old days, this would have led to an argument. But now that I’m a figure for peace, I can’t say anything.”

Satyarthi, a master of the art of communication, shows no sign of fatigue from ceaseless media interactions as he accepts my congratulations and warmly congratulates me in return, adding disarmingly that we should all feel proud and participate in the victory. I ask him to sum up what the last three days have meant to him. “It’s quite overwhelming, it’s quite hectic,” he says, “People are happy but I’m telling them this happ- iness brings more responsibility, moral responsibility, especially to my fellow Indian brothers and sisters. If they feel joy and pride today, they must feel the responsibility, for not using child labour, not accepting child labour.”

It remains to be seen if child labour will become the issue du jour, the way sanitation and women’s rights have become in the recent past, but as Satyarthi says, “These two three days have given so much visibility to the cause of children which has not been given in the entire history of humankind.” A sudden reckoning has begun to take place of what some call India’s ‘hidden shame’, though child labour is everywhere and in plain sight. Chottus and Munnis, who weave carpets, make crackers, work on construction sites and in domestic drudgery, have been front page news this last week. According to the 2011 Census, India has nearly 4.3 million working children. The United Nations puts the figure much higher than that. “This cause has been ignored, because the children are ignored. That’s why this big award is dedicated to millions, hundreds of millions of children who are deprived of their childhood, freedom and future. Honours like this are commas, but not full stops. A full stop will come when every single child is freed and enjoying the fullest of childhood,” says Satyarthi.

In an interview last year, Noam Chomsky spoke of the thing he finds most baffling in India, the particular indifference of the privileged to the misery of others. Satyarthi too has been unsparing in his criticism of the middle classes and the dark side of India’s celebrated growth story. The middle classes demand cheap, docile labour, and the cheapest labour in India are children.

The Nobel Laureate has spoken widely about the time when as a child he saw a young boy working as a cobbler outside his school. It was a moment that stayed with him and shaped the course of his future. “I found it difficult to grasp, this whole idea of some people blighted by poverty while others were spared,” he says. He would begin by setting up book banks for children when he was 11 years old. He took a degree in electrical engineering, but was soon drawn to work for the people. In 1980, he founded Bachpan Bachao Andolan that functioned primarily on the ‘raid and rescue’ model. His work ironically has found greater sympathy outside of India.

The social activism in India of the 1950s and 60s has played a part in shaping his approach. “It’s difficult to say, what I have been most shaped by,” he says. “I was a book lover in my childhood. I read all sorts of books, spiritual, religious, social and patriotic. I read of the lives of Swami Dayanand, Vivekanand, Bhagat Singh and Mahatma Gandhi, all the Indian heroes. All of them influenced me. I was also born in a place where Hindi was our natural language. There was no influence of English at all. It has greatly shaped my personality and thought process. There was not any singular religious or political ideology. It was everything together.”

In a way, Satyarthi represents the last of his generation of activists. He takes pride in being a jholawala. “When we started working, it was called the voluntary sector. Those who worked in it did so from a deep-rooted conviction of the betterment of society. We didn’t have terms like ‘civil society’ and NGOs supported by government and foreign donors at that time. Our generation was shaped by the events of the 70s, the turmoil in India after the Emergency. Some of us joined mainstream politics of the Janata Dal and then, disillusioned by that, took up guns and Naxalism. The rest of us had our jholas.” He laughs and says, “Those were our options, guns or jholas.”

Rakesh Senger, who has worked with him since the 90s, first met him when he was a student of law at Allahabad University. He remembers being mesmerised by his message of a people’s movement. Senger, who comes from a zamindar family in Uttar Pradesh, says it was the first time he ever thought of poverty and of children who work under oppressive conditions. “When I started working with him, I didn’t know it would bring us here. But after all these years, I can’t imagine doing anything else.” He says Satyarthi takes pride in leading a simple life. “He will never wear linen, he’s always in khadi. At one time he would only wear sandals made out of old tyres. Every time I would give him a better pair of footwear, he would give those away to someone and come back barefoot. His only indulgence in life is technology, he loves his smartphones.” When Satyarthi is not working, he has an open house, cooks for everyone and recites the poetry he writes.

The early years were filled with struggle. All members of the movement recount stories of being beaten up and threatened at some point. Two BBA activists lost their lives in stone quarries in Faridabad. The office has framed photographs of Kalu Kumar (standing next to Bill Clinton in one), a rescued child who grew up to join BBA but passed away during fieldwork some time ago. Satyarthi himself bears the brunt of the violent nature of his work with multiple injuries over the years. The raid and rescue operations of BBA in recent times have faced criticism as contrived-for- publicity events.

The years were difficult but also eventful. His wife Sumedha and daughter Asmita help fill in the blanks. A confident young woman of 29, Asmita is completing an MBA at the Indian School of Business in Hyderabad. When she was 10 years old, she addressed the US Congress in a speech where she spoke about the issue of child slavery. “We’ve all been part of the work, part of the movement,” says Asmita, “I was very involved as a child, sloganeering and campaigning, interacting with the children. I didn’t know any other way of life.” She says of her father, “He has a child-like innocence and simplicity which helps him connect with children. What has stayed with me all these years, are all of the moments he would interact with the children after they’d been rescued, a lot of them would be crying, in pain and unable to speak, the way he would talk to them, draw them, give them that love and empathy that was missing in their lives.”

Life for the Satyarthi family will never be the same again after the call from Oslo. The laureate’s wife says, “As a family, we don’t how to react. We are still coming to terms with it, and understanding how it will change our lives.” His daughter pipes in, “I think every day will be an adventure.”

Bachpan Bachao AndolanKailash SatyarthiNobel Peace Prize