Nobel Peace Prize – Borderless

The Power of Compassion by Kailash Satyarthi

Title: Karuna: The Power of Compassion

Author: Kailash Satyarthi

Publisher: HarperCollins India

What Is Compassion?

Who are we? What are we doing here? What is the purpose of life? These complex existential questions are best left to thinkers and philosophers. We could instead begin with a more straightforward query: What do we want from life? Though our aspirations are countless and various, the desire for happiness, contentment and peace is familiar to all of us. None of us seek sadness, pain or trouble. But life invariably acquaints us with these negative feelings and experiences.

Our ability to feel the suffering of others as our own and our consequent efforts to alleviate it are integral to the human experience. This has led to the creation of families, communities and organisations. If we were all to look away from the pain of others, none of us would have a shot at happiness. The stories of Chirag and a group of teenagers from Sweden help illustrate the true meaning of compassion.

The word ‘chirag’ means ‘lamp’ and, true to his name, Chirag brought light to corners that were once shrouded in darkness. After being rescued from slavery, Chirag had been brought years ago to Bal Ashram in Rajasthan, our long-term rehabilitation centre for children rescued from child labour, trafficking and slavery.

In 2015, an eleven-year-old boy called Mithun was rescued by my organisation, Bachpan Bachao Andolan[1], and also brought to Bal Ashram. He had been trafficked from his village and taken to the city, where he was forced into begging. When we asked him where he was from, he could only say ‘Bengal’. A case was registered with the West Bengal police, but without adequate details they failed to find his home. So, Mithun continued living and pursuing his education at Bal Ashram.

In 2020, the children at Bal Ashram were celebrating Chhath, a Hindu festival native to the state of Bihar. Mithun remembered that people in his village would also celebrate this festival with great pomp and show. He also said there was a bus stand and market near his home that his elder brother would visit often. Since Chirag was from Bihar, he guessed that Mithun’s village might also be in his state. Chirag then began showing a keen interest in Mithun’s story and could often be seen jogging his friend’s memory for more information. Borrowing a teacher’s phone, Chirag scoured the internet and—after many months of Google searches—found Mithun’s village, a place called Borna in Bihar’s Khagaria district.

When Chirag learnt that Google Earth renders three-dimensional representations of places with satellite imagery, he began using the software to find the bus stand and market Mithun had described. Looking at one of the images Chirag showed him, Mithun’s face lit up. He was convinced this was the bus stand near his village. Mithun also identified a shop he’d often visited with his elder brother. Chirag zoomed in and found a phone number on a board above the shop. When he called that number, the shop owner confirmed that years ago he had heard of a child being kidnapped from a village some 20 km away. He promised to look for Mithun’s brother and bring him to his shop.

The next day, Mithun finally spoke to his elder brother after five years of separation. Bal Ashram burst into celebration. The children lifted Chirag onto their shoulders and showered him with praise. A few days later, Mithun went back to Borna with his brother, who had come to get him. When I asked Chirag why he had tried so hard to find Mithun’s family, he said, ‘If my younger brother or I were lost like this, would I not have done the same thing?’ Today, Chirag is pursuing a management degree in Chennai, while Mithun is studying at a school near his village.

The following story is of a group of students from Sweden. They, accompanied by their teacher Ula Asberg, had come to visit Mukti Ashram several years ago. Mukti Ashram in Delhi is our short stay rehabilitation home for boys who have been rescued from child slavery and child labour. After the students returned home, they discussed among themselves how it was unfair that there was no such home for girls. At the time, the number of boys being rescued was more than girls and we did not have the funds for homes for both. The Swedish students felt it was necessary that girls who faced exploitation should have access to the same kind of help and support the boys did. They shared their intentions with their teachers, and not only did they collect a large amount by pooling their own pocket money and savings, but they also mobilised the teachers to contribute.

A few months later, when I was on a trip to Sweden, the students invited me to their school. They shared with me their wonderful initiative, telling me that they wished the money they had collected could be used to set up a rehabilitation home for girls. When I asked them what had made them do such a thing, they said, ‘Of what value are these krona to us? A few extra treats? But for the girls who are stuck in exploitation, this sum of money means life and freedom.’

I was spellbound by their compassion. After I returned to India, their contribution was used to set up a large rehabilitation home—including dormitories, classrooms, medical care and other rehabilitative facilities—for girls.

The actions of Chirag and the students from Sweden show that compassion exists all around us and that it is not a mythical force to be found only in legends and folktales. The spark of compassion lies within us all.

Think of what connects you and others in a manner that is both pure and profound. Oftentimes, you find the connection is so deep that it not only makes you responsible for another person but also creates an irrepressible desire to alleviate their suffering. This connection can also transcend human boundaries and extend to nature—to the climate, mountains, rivers, oceans, trees and animals. That intuitive expression is compassion.

Compassion is the force borne from feeling the suffering of others as one’s own that drives mindful action to end that suffering.

(Excerpted from Chapter 1 of Karuna: The Power of Compassion by Kailash Satyarthi, Published by HarperCollins India)

About the Book:

I see a world where compassion is the only solution. Do you see what I see?

Never before has our world been so wealthy, well-informed and technologically advanced. Yet we are facing an unprecedented crisis: humanity is plagued by conflict, inequality and indifference. It is imperative, therefore, that we rethink our approach to life and society, and that we do so now. The answer lies in karuna, compassion.

Compassion is not a soft emotion but a powerful force for transformation. It transcends borders, ideologies, religions and politics. And it asks only this: Act mindfully, as if the world is all one family—because it is.

Nobel Peace Prize awardee Kailash Satyarthi has fought for the rights and dignity of millions of marginalized people across the globe for the past five decades. For him, compassion is a way of life. In this new book, he shows us how karuna is the answer to our individual, social and global problems, and the key to a better future.

The Author

Kailash Satyarthi, awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 2014, has dedicated more than five decades to defending the rights and dignity of marginalized children and communities around the world. He believes Karuna—compassion—is the most powerful force for building a just, equitable, peaceful and sustainable world, and one that must guide how individuals, institutions and societies think and act.

[1] Save Childhood Campaign

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Stories of Children Rescued From Slavery by Nobel Laureate Kailash Satyarthi

Title: Why Didn’t You Come Sooner? Compassion In Action— Stories of Children Rescued From Slavery

Author: Kailash Satyarthi

Publisher: Speaking Tiger Books

I seated a few of the children in my car, and drove away as fast as I could. The truck with the men and women followed me. The clothes of the children who sat with me in the car were tattered and torn. The wounds on their flesh could be seen through the holes in their clothes. Every such wound is a blot on human civilization. The frightened little girls were trying to hide their bellies and chests by hugging their knees. They simply could not make sense of all that had happened since morning. I made tentative attempts to talk to them. I tried explaining to them that they were now free from bonded labour and were being taken to a secure place. But they had never known freedom, or safety. How could they understand what I was trying to tell them? Maybe they assumed I was their new owner.

Just then, I remembered that there were some bananas lying in the back of the car. I asked the children on the back seat to distribute them among themselves. I thought they must be hungry, and might feel better after eating something. But no one picked up the bananas.

‘Go on, child. Pick up that bunch of bananas and pass it on,’ I gently repeated myself.

One of the children gave it to the child sitting in front. An emaciated girl and a little boy were seated next to me. I told them to pass on the fruit to everyone in the back and keep one each for themselves. The girl looked curiously at the bunch as she turned it around in her hands. Then she looked at the other children.

‘I’ve never seen an onion like this one,’ she said.

Her little companion also touched the fruit gingerly and innocently added, ‘Yes, this is not even a potato.’

I was speechless to say the least. These children had never seen anything apart from onions and potatoes. They had definitely never chanced upon bananas before. Upon further cajoling, some of them started chewing on the bananas. But they were trying to eat the fruit without peeling it. Some tried to swallow it while others were trying to hide it in their palms after having spat it out. My imprudence had for a moment pushed me back a few thousand years. The difference between an unpeeled banana and a peeled one was the distance between slavery and freedom. I quickly tried to rectify my error and taught them how to peel a banana and consume it. Most of them tasted the sweetness of the fruit and probably relished it too.

They began sharing this new experience among themselves in their dialect. I was feeling their joy too. Just then, the little girl sitting next to me tapped me on the shoulder and almost screamed.

‘Why didn’t you come sooner?’

I instantly turned to face her. Her innocent, tear-filled eyes and pained voice laced with anger pierced my heart. I could tell that these words had risen from the depths of her heart, where they lay suffocating for years.

Her younger brother had passed away for lack of availability of medicine. Once, the quarry owners had beaten up her father and uncle and branded them with burning cigarettes. They had raised their voice against the sexual exploitation of the women and tried to escape. Even the tiny hands of the children, when wounded, were never tended. They couldn’t even manage to get bits of cloth to tie around their wounds. This little girl had survived the entirety of hell in the eight years of her life. This was probably the first time that she could bring herself to trust someone enough to mouth the words, ‘Why didn’t you come sooner?’

That challenging question deepened the restlessness and anger that the issue of child slavery aroused in me. The child who posed this question was none other than Devli. She had put it to me, but it is one that needs to be answered by every person who speaks of faith, law, the Constitution, human rights, freedom, childhood, humanity, equality and justice. That question is as pertinent today as it was on that day all those years ago.

According to an estimate, there are around five million labourers employed in stone quarries in India. Hundreds of thousands among them are child labourers. Contractors and their agents pay tiny advances to impoverished families in backward areas and get them to come to the quarries on some false pretext or another. This is the organized crime of human trafficking that is often dressed up as migration or displacement. Usually, there is no record of workers in the quarries. In other words, children like Devli and her parents do not exist anywhere in legal terms.

To break up the stone, deep holes are drilled in it with powerful machines by skilled or semi-skilled workers which are then detonated with the use of gunpowder. The large rocks that are exposed after the explosion are broken down into smaller stones by adult men and women as well as children. The smaller children are engaged in removing the soil before the detonation takes place as well as removing the small stone chips after. Death is far from uncommon among these unskilled labourers who often get buried under the rocks thrown up by the explosions or when a quarry, unsteady from the shock, caves in.

(Excerpted from Why Didn’t You Come Sooner?: Compassion In Action—Stories of Children Rescued From Slavery by Kailash Satyarthi. Published by Speaking Tiger Books, 2023)

About the Book:

The work of rescuing children from slavery is not for the faint of heart, as the twelve gut-wrenching accounts in this book will show. Harder still is to give them their life back, after they’ve been kidnapped, trafficked, sold, abused and made to work in horrific conditions, often for as long as they can remember. Pradeep was offered up for human sacrifice by his family, thought to be a bad omen; Devli was a third-generation slave in a stone quarry in Haryana, who had never seen a banana before her rescue; Ashraf, a domestic child labourer at a senior civil servant’s house, was starved and scalded as punishment; Sahiba was trafficked from Assam to be someone’s wife against her will; Kalu was abducted and made to weave carpets all day long, his injuries cauterized with phosphorus scraped off matchsticks; Bhavna was trapped in a circus, sexually abused for years by her owners; Rakesh was worked in the fields all year round like cattle, and spent the nights locked up with them in the stable; Sabo was born to labourers at a brick kiln, and never knew life outside it; and Manan lived his childhood mining mica in the forests of Jharkhand, barely given time to even mourn his friend who got buried when the mine caved in. Kailash Satyarthi’s own life and mission were entwined with the journeys of these children. Having lived through unspeakable trauma, they had lost faith in humanity. But behind their reticence, behind their scraggy limbs and calloused hands and feet, hope still endured. This book tells the story of their shared struggle for justice and dignity—from the raid and rescue operations of Satyarthi’s Bachpan Bachao Andolan, to international campaigns for child rights. It is a testament both to the courage of the human spirit and to the power of compassion.

About the Author:

Kailash Satyarthi (b. 11 January 1954) is one of the most well-known child rights activists in the world. He has led many national and international campaigns to protect child rights and promote their education over four decades and rescued countless children from slavery. He is a recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize, among many other human rights awards.

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