Kailash Satyarthi – “It’s a journey we traversed from slavery to freedom”

Right from my childhood, I was passionate about humanitarian causes. When I was a student — some 60 years ago, my parents wanted me to become an engineer. I belong to a modest family where nobody had studied engineering or medicine. I was good at mathematics and science, so I secured admission. But back in the early 1970s, there were few colleges and seats; it was very difficult to pursue engineering. After completing the course, for over a year-and-a-half, I taught in a university before giving up my career. Because I was reminded of that very first day in school when I was about five years old. Just outside my school gate, I saw a cobbler boy, my age, maybe younger. I was stunned or rather disappointed. I asked my teachers and family members, why this boy was not with the rest of us in the classroom. Everybody offered a similar response. They said it wasn’t uncommon for poor children to work and support their families. One day, I gathered all my courage and went up to this boy. Beneath an open sky, this boy, who was rather shy, was sitting alongside his father, who immediately got up with folded hands. In Hindi, he said that he never imagined working any other job. They have been cobblers for generations. With utter misery and helplessness in his eyes, he further added that only people like me are destined to go to school.

This made me cry. At that age, I wasn’t aware of caste hierarchies. Later, of course, I understood everything. Because of my upbringing, I had a different perspective on life, so I started thinking along the lines of what could and should be done. I started with smaller things: Collecting used books from friends and distributing them among the needy, helping them with the access of my teachers and so on. Nothing beyond that. It was unclear to me: the path that lay ahead because these issues weren’t in the limelight. No one was talking about it.

Do you think there was a lack of discourse on children’s rights back then?

Completely. Imagine, we have this book now – Why Didn’t You Come Sooner – because there’s so much information available. Earlier, there wasn’t even a single article on such issues because people thought it was a part of life. They readily accepted the idea that poor children have to work. It was nothing new for them as they had witnessed it for centuries. In fact, even women were considered second-grade citizens. Gender equality debates were beginning to emerge back then. Most countries didn’t even uphold equal voting rights. Such was the situation. In such a scenario, I felt the most neglected and vulnerable were the children, who were left out because they couldn’t even protest or register their dissent, unlike adults.

But then, how to help this situation? Because there’s no path available for you to traverse. There were no NGOs in this regard back then, so I had to create the path that I had imagined. I learnt from my experiences a great deal, and this book, Why Didn’t You Come Sooner, is a result of that. It’s much more than a special book for me because it’s neither an academic effort nor a work of fiction. Each sentence in this book is real and full of feeling. It has what I shared with the children and what they shared with me in return — it’s a journey we traversed from darkness to light, from despair to hope, from untruth to truth, and from slavery to freedom.

I do not believe in conventional charity; it’s a spiritual thing for me. I believe in the oneness of humanity. Believe is not the right word; I feel I’m more inclined towards it because I couldn’t differentiate between these children and me, which is why there’s an undercurrent of compassion and spiritualism in the tonality of this book. And when this happens, there’s no duality, you emerge as one from this journey. This book is not a product of random interviews with children, it has been a lived and shared experience with these children.

I’ve been writing since I was a kid. From being the editor of magazines in my school and college to starting my own Sangharsh Jaari Rahega (The Struggle Will Live On, as mentioned in the book) — a Hindi fortnightly, I’ve comfortably switched my career from an electrical engineer to a journalist. There were no funds though, so whatever I had or whatever I could borrow from my friends, I employed to work on this magazine in which we highlighted the stories of the most marginalised of women and children. I used to write for multiple newspapers both in English and Hindi, too. Also, I was editing a magazine based in Thailand. But it wasn’t a commercial thing.

Was it just to put out the message?

 

Yes. And to educate the people. I remember it was called the Asian Cultural Forum on Development. Not exactly a magazine but a kind of journal. However, to run this Hindi fortnightly I needed money, so I would present the content in a manner that would attract advertisement opportunities without compromising with what the magazine was intended for, of course. Because that was its uniqueness: it was solely dedicated to the most exploited section of society.

Please share an example of how you were able to make a difference in people’s lives

 

In the magazine, we had this section at the bottom to encourage people to act after having read the story — a call to action. Sometime in the 1980s, a gentleman named Wasal Khan knocked on my door. His daughter Sabo, who was about 15 years old, was about to be sold to a brothel. The story is there in the book titled Please Save Me, Bhaiya Ji. While I was listening to Khan, I wondered what I would have done had Sabo been my sister or my daughter. I thought we must be involved. I collected my friends and began a rescue operation. The attempt failed. So the next time, with a few of my lawyer friends, we moved court and sought Sabo’s liberation. Let me tell you, it was the first documented or recorded incident of enslaved children in India or elsewhere in the world being rescued with the help of civilian efforts. One can think of these things as the job of the government and do nothing about it, but I thought it was my path; my goal in life.

Saurabh Sharma is a Delhi-based writer and freelance journalist. They can be found on Instagram/X: @writerly_life.

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You were trained as an engineer but you chose to become a social activist, who worked with children. What motivated you to take this step?

PREMIUM

Right from my childhood, I was passionate about humanitarian causes. When I was a student — some 60 years ago, my parents wanted me to become an engineer. I belong to a modest family where nobody had studied engineering or medicine. I was good at mathematics and science, so I secured admission. But back in the early 1970s, there were few colleges and seats; it was very difficult to pursue engineering. After completing the course, for over a year-and-a-half, I taught in a university before giving up my career. Because I was reminded of that very first day in school when I was about five years old. Just outside my school gate, I saw a cobbler boy, my age, maybe younger. I was stunned or rather disappointed. I asked my teachers and family members, why this boy was not with the rest of us in the classroom. Everybody offered a similar response. They said it wasn’t uncommon for poor children to work and support their families. One day, I gathered all my courage and went up to this boy. Beneath an open sky, this boy, who was rather shy, was sitting alongside his father, who immediately got up with folded hands. In Hindi, he said that he never imagined working any other job. They have been cobblers for generations. With utter misery and helplessness in his eyes, he further added that only people like me are destined to go to school.

This made me cry. At that age, I wasn’t aware of caste hierarchies. Later, of course, I understood everything. Because of my upbringing, I had a different perspective on life, so I started thinking along the lines of what could and should be done. I started with smaller things: Collecting used books from friends and distributing them among the needy, helping them with the access of my teachers and so on. Nothing beyond that. It was unclear to me: the path that lay ahead because these issues weren’t in the limelight. No one was talking about it.

Do you think there was a lack of discourse on children’s rights back then?

Completely. Imagine, we have this book now – Why Didn’t You Come Sooner – because there’s so much information available. Earlier, there wasn’t even a single article on such issues because people thought it was a part of life. They readily accepted the idea that poor children have to work. It was nothing new for them as they had witnessed it for centuries. In fact, even women were considered second-grade citizens. Gender equality debates were beginning to emerge back then. Most countries didn’t even uphold equal voting rights. Such was the situation. In such a scenario, I felt the most neglected and vulnerable were the children, who were left out because they couldn’t even protest or register their dissent, unlike adults.

But then, how to help this situation? Because there’s no path available for you to traverse. There were no NGOs in this regard back then, so I had to create the path that I had imagined. I learnt from my experiences a great deal, and this book, Why Didn’t You Come Sooner, is a result of that. It’s much more than a special book for me because it’s neither an academic effort nor a work of fiction. Each sentence in this book is real and full of feeling. It has what I shared with the children and what they shared with me in return — it’s a journey we traversed from darkness to light, from despair to hope, from untruth to truth, and from slavery to freedom.

I do not believe in conventional charity; it’s a spiritual thing for me. I believe in the oneness of humanity. Believe is not the right word; I feel I’m more inclined towards it because I couldn’t differentiate between these children and me, which is why there’s an undercurrent of compassion and spiritualism in the tonality of this book. And when this happens, there’s no duality, you emerge as one from this journey. This book is not a product of random interviews with children, it has been a lived and shared experience with these children.

I’ve been writing since I was a kid. From being the editor of magazines in my school and college to starting my own Sangharsh Jaari Rahega (The Struggle Will Live On, as mentioned in the book) — a Hindi fortnightly, I’ve comfortably switched my career from an electrical engineer to a journalist. There were no funds though, so whatever I had or whatever I could borrow from my friends, I employed to work on this magazine in which we highlighted the stories of the most marginalised of women and children. I used to write for multiple newspapers both in English and Hindi, too. Also, I was editing a magazine based in Thailand. But it wasn’t a commercial thing.

Was it just to put out the message?

 

Yes. And to educate the people. I remember it was called the Asian Cultural Forum on Development. Not exactly a magazine but a kind of journal. However, to run this Hindi fortnightly I needed money, so I would present the content in a manner that would attract advertisement opportunities without compromising with what the magazine was intended for, of course. Because that was its uniqueness: it was solely dedicated to the most exploited section of society.

Please share an example of how you were able to make a difference in people’s lives

 

In the magazine, we had this section at the bottom to encourage people to act after having read the story — a call to action. Sometime in the 1980s, a gentleman named Wasal Khan knocked on my door. His daughter Sabo, who was about 15 years old, was about to be sold to a brothel. The story is there in the book titled Please Save Me, Bhaiya Ji. While I was listening to Khan, I wondered what I would have done had Sabo been my sister or my daughter. I thought we must be involved. I collected my friends and began a rescue operation. The attempt failed. So the next time, with a few of my lawyer friends, we moved court and sought Sabo’s liberation. Let me tell you, it was the first documented or recorded incident of enslaved children in India or elsewhere in the world being rescued with the help of civilian efforts. One can think of these things as the job of the government and do nothing about it, but I thought it was my path; my goal in life.

Saurabh Sharma is a Delhi-based writer and freelance journalist. They can be found on Instagram/X: @writerly_life.

Continue reading with HT Premium Subscription

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