Will Brehm 1:58
Kailash Satyarthi, welcome to FreshEd.

Kailash Satyarthi 2:01
Thank you.

Will Brehm 2:02
So, in 1998, you organized and led a global march against child labor. How did you even come up with this idea?

Kailash Satyarthi 2:11
We all knew that child labor is not a localized problem of one or another country. It is a global problem. And there are factors, international factors, which are causes and consequence of this problem. Poverty of children, that engagement of child labor in supply chain of the products, which are produced in one country and used in many, many countries. Similarly, the policies related to development assistance, or business policies, they affect these situations, which push a larger number of poor children to become child laborers or even child slaves. So, it was important to build a worldwide movement against child labor. And you cannot think of building a movement by sitting at home and just, you know, talking on such issues. You can have good conference, but not the social movement without mobilizing people on the ground. So, I decided to march across the globe. And that was a crazy idea. Everybody said, “What are you talking about?”

Will Brehm 3:31
Yeah. How did you even say marching was the way for action to take place?

Kailash Satyarthi 3:37
Because I have learned from ages that all the faith leaders who were the founders of Christianity, or Islam, or a number of Hindu leaders, instead of sitting at one place or one cave, they decided to go to different places and meet the people and talk to them and talk about righteousness and truth and love. So that was helpful. In India, Mahatma Gandhi had long marches for freedom, for independence, and that was very successful. We did organize some marches in India against child labor and for education before conceiving the idea of the worldwide march, the global march.

Will Brehm 4:24
Ah, you had a history of marches.

Kailash Satyarthi 4:26
So, I have a history and some lessons from the history of the world.

Will Brehm 4:31
Right, right. And was there a moment when you realized, “child labor is the issue that I need to focus on”? Was there one moment that you just thought, “Oh my gosh, this is too big that I need to quit my job and do this”?

Kailash Satyarthi 4:48
Well, it was a gradual progress, but there are two incidents. The first day of my schooling was the first spark in my life when I saw a child my age – five, six-year-old – at the school gate. When I was entering into this school, I found this child sitting along with his father. They were cobblers and looking at our feet for some job. And I could not understand. I might have seen children working before, but I never noticed. So that was the sharp contrast that all of us were going with books and enthusiasm and dreams, and this child was looking at us for a job. So, I asked to my teacher, “Sir, why a child is sitting outside?” And he said, “Calm down, this is your first day. Make new friend. And this is not uncommon that the poor children have to help the families.” And, I said, “Okay, sir.” And I came back, I found the child is still working. And every day, in the morning and afternoon, I saw that child working polishing shoes for children like us. And that made me very upset, very angry. Everybody, my family members, and everybody said that this is not uncommon.

Will Brehm 6:06
It’s normal. It’s the way of life.

Kailash Satyarthi 6:07
It’s normal for everyone; it is the way of life. But I was not convinced. I thought that if we, I and my family members, and my friends, are going to school, why not this child? So, one day I asked this question to the child and his father. The boy was shy, but father replied. He was shocked, in fact, and he said, “Oh sir, we never thought about it, because my grandfather, my father, and I started working since our childhoods, and so is my son,” he said. And then he stood up with folded hands. In Indian caste-ridden society, those who belong to the low caste, for them, the people or even the children in better clothed or in better off conditions are like higher in the hierarchy. So, he stood up, and he, with folded hands, told me that, “So you guys are born to go to school, but we are born to work.” And I tell you, I was so upset. I could not understand, and I started crying out of anger, out of pain, out of my own lack of understanding about these complex issues of caste and the exploitation. So, I started looking the world with different eyes, since that day, that whatever my teachers say, whatever my parents say, may not be right. So, the right is different than what is taught to us in the name of right because this is the age-old complacency and mindset which I could not accept. So, I refused to accept that any child is born to work at the cost of education and freedom. And then I have found many more children working on the streets; I started seeing it as a 6-year-old. And then, I found that many of my friends left the schooling because their parents could not afford syllabus, books, and some of them joined as child laborers. So, I started collecting used books or some pocket money so that we can pay the fees.
Will Brehm 8:34
For your friends?

Kailash Satyarthi 8:35
For the friends and families and relatives. So that we can help those needy children. But as I grew up, and my parents wanted to make me engineer, I did my engineering. And I started teaching at the university, but my passion was so deep, I could not leave it. I left engineering one day, but that time nobody was working on this issue. India did not have any specific law on child labor.

Will Brehm 9:08
No laws at all.

Kailash Satyarthi 9:09
No laws. There were old British laws, but they were never used. Nobody knows about those laws. Similarly, even the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child was adopted by the international community only in 1989. And I am talking about 60s, 70s, or early 80s. So much before the world woke up for the rights of children, I started thinking in my own way. Not so articulated; I was not a lawyer or a social scientist.

Will Brehm 9:42
You just knew something was wrong. Something didn’t look right.

Kailash Satyarthi 9:44
Something is completely wrong. And we proposed it and we have to find some way out. So, I started a magazine that was devoted for the cause of children who are most deprived and oppressed and exploited and the women and other sections of society.

Will Brehm 9:59
But the magazine for them, or about them?

Kailash Satyarthi 10:02
To educate about them, to educate the people. Because they were all illiterate; they have never been to school, so they cannot read and write. But to other people, so the other people should be sensitized about such issues. And then one day, a desperate father knocked my door with one single aim that I should publish his story and his daughter’s story. He was a Muslim guy named Washal Khan. So Washal told me that he and his newly married wife were lured away, when they were just married, to work at a brick kiln as slave labor, and that was trafficking. So, in slavery, all children were born and grew up, including 15-year-old daughter of this man. And one day, they saw that this daughter was about to be sold to a brothel. Some brothel agent came to buy her for prostitution. Somehow this deal was not materialized, and this father ran away somehow, in the middle of the night, in search of some help. And somehow, he reached to me. So, when I was writing this story for my journal, my magazine, I realized that if she was my daughter or my sister, what would I do? I was 26-year-old or so. I decided that I am going to go and rescue that girl instead of writing the story so that the government can take action, or something can happen.

Will Brehm 11:32
How did you rescue her?

Kailash Satyarthi 11:34
So, I went along with my friends, and I collected some money from my wife, and so on. In fact, my wife had to give her wedding ornaments to organize the logistics we have to…

Will Brehm 11:50
So, you had to sell your wedding ornaments?

Kailash Satyarthi 11:52
Yeah, exactly for that, because I had already given up my career as engineer, and I put all my money, which was my savings, for my magazine. So, we don’t have enough money to hire a truck, a lorry, to go all the way. Because he said that it was not my family, but there were many more families enslaved there. So, when we reached there, this man Washal Khan, was caught up by the slave master, and we were all stressed badly. We were beaten out. And I had to come empty hands. My friends also came empty hands. All were sad. But I started thinking that there should be some other way. So, I met a friend of mine who was a lawyer, and we approached the court, High Court of Delhi. And with the help of judiciary, using the old British legal regime of habeas corpus, we were able to rescue not only this beautiful daughter, like my younger sister, Sabu was her name, 15-year-old. But all together 36 children, women and men.

Will Brehm 13:04
You freed?

Kailash Satyarthi 13:05
We freed them with the help of court. And that was the first documented rescue operation, or liberation operation, of slave people anywhere in the world, in the contemporary world, by some civil civilian effort.

Will Brehm 13:23
Right. Oh, my Gosh.

Kailash Satyarthi 13:24
That was in 1981.

Will Brehm 13:26
So, and how prevalent in that time was child labor and child slavery, in India, for instance?

Kailash Satyarthi 13:32
We didn’t know the magnitude of the problem. Later on, we came to know that it was huge problem. Child labor was quite common, and since no study has ever been done, or no. Because it was a non-issue, nobody was talking about it.

Will Brehm 13:51
Yeah, how do you even go and collect data?

Kailash Satyarthi 13:54
So, yes, people thought that this is normal. So, when I started challenging it, and we have to fight for law, it took us almost five years or six years for such a law to be enacted in India. And then we started fighting for the global law, and so on. It was like that. But rescue of this girl and other children and women and men gave me a very clear purpose of life. It brought me the clarity that this is my life.

Will Brehm 14:26
You know what you had to do.

Kailash Satyarthi 14:26
I am born for that.

Will Brehm 14:28
And so, this march that you ended up organizing in 1998, what effect do you think it ultimately had?

Kailash Satyarthi 14:36
Huge! It was the first-ever mass mobilization against child labor or for the most vulnerable children of the world, which went across 103 countries, and we had covered 80,000 kilometers surface distance. And that has built a strong moment in the countries where the people were not aware that this evil exist in their countries. People thought that, okay, poor children are working. So, it has helped in awareness building, first of all. Secondly, mobilizing political support. Thirdly, it has helped directly in the adoption of a new ILO Convention on the worst forms of child labor, which was our demand: that there should be an international law to stop child slavery, child labor, child prostitution, or the use of children in hazardous occupations. So that was the concrete result. But most importantly, it has built a strong movement in the name of global march against child labor, which is still very active across the world.

Will Brehm 15:44
Right, right. It is quite interesting to think about how change happens. And, you know, civil disobedience and mass mobilization of civilians, basically, everyday people, marching against something that many people probably thought was just common and normal, as you said. So, I want to talk a little bit more about how do you see some of the biggest challenges we face today in the world? So, I’m thinking of things like climate change or the climate crisis, and every Friday, you see these students protesting around the world. And I want to, you know, from someone who has had such an experience in mobilizing humans for social change, how do you see processes of change today?

Kailash Satyarthi 16:31
Well, of course, the climate change is a huge problem. It is situation which you can call the suicidal situation where the humanity has reached to. But it is also a mindset issue, a behavioral issue, of course, a political issue, economic issue. That what kind of development paradigm we have in our minds and in our lives. If the majority of humanity is striving for comfort, conveniences, consumerism, you know, use of products at mass scale. That pushes the market economy and industrialization, and then the water crisis and pollution, air pollution and water pollution, and so on. So, are we really serious about our consumption habits? That has to completely change our view. How many pairs of clothes we are using, how many pairs of shoes we are using?

Will Brehm 17:45
How many iPhones do we buy?

Kailash Satyarthi 17:46
How many iPhones we are buying, or how much expenses we are wearing in transportation, and why this transportation is needed, and why we are just enjoying our life in traveling and tourism and all kinds of things. All these things bring these issues of climate change, so we have to think about it. But I am not talking more on it because I am not an expert.

Will Brehm 18:12
But do you think that is there a way to mobilize humanity? In a sense, can we have a global march against climate change? Like is there something that would actually mobilize for the changed behavior?

Kailash Satyarthi 18:25
That is putting onus on others. And we march against this trend of climate change or global warming, how much responsibility we are taking? And we have to look at the mirror that how we are adding to global warming and this climate disaster. If we are heading through our behavior, through our consumer habits, then we have to think about it. So, we can demand the government because the governments are not serious; international community is not serious. So, we have to put pressure on them. But simultaneously, we have to work for it. When I started march against child labor, I called upon all the marches and the people on the way to pledge that they will not use child labor as domestic help. They are not going to use any services and products made by children. If they continue to do it and demand a law or international convention, that is not going to help. So, we have to think in a deeper way.

Will Brehm 19:31
A very personal sort of “How do I live in this world?”

Kailash Satyarthi 19:32
Very personal. How I am contributing to making this world a better world or a worse world. So that is the issue. But for me, the bigger issues are deeper. First is shrinking truth. The personal, social, political truth is shrinking. That is resulting in shrinking morality, and the distance between what we think, what we speak, and what we act is growing. It is widening like a gulf. What we speak, we don’t it. This is the moral crisis, or moral deficit, which is growing in all spheres of life: in personal life, social life, economic life, political life, and so on. So, that is a serious issue.

Will Brehm 20:22
So, how do you see morality sort of, you know, thriving again? How do we cultivate that sense of morality in the individual?

Kailash Satyarthi 20:29
The sense of morality can be cultivated by way of recognizing two divine gifts which each one of us has had. One is consciousness. Our consciousness should lead to understanding the problems and solving the problems. We should not be the problem. We have to be the solution in our lives. Secondly, compassion. So, consciousness and compassion are two driving forces inside each one of us. The consciousness is again deteriorated, or, you know, I would say polluted. And this very deep compassion is also shrinking. The compassion is narrowing to ourselves, to our children, our close ones, and it does not go. So, we have to enlarge the circles of that compassion and try to bring everyone in. That means we should have that feeling to connect the suffering of others, to feel the suffering of others, as it is our own suffering. And see that how we can solve that suffering of other person as it is your own suffering. So that is compassion. Compassion is not just helping someone with kindness. Compassion is not empathy. Compassion is not sympathy. Compassion is the feeling of suffering of others, as it is your own suffering. So, we have to be compassionate to everyone, but we have to be compassionate to the planet. We have to be compassionate to the universe.

Will Brehm 22:12
Right. We have to think beyond being human.

Kailash Satyarthi 22:14
Yes, beyond being human. We have to be compassionate to everyone living or material things. So, we have to see that if something is going wrong, if the climate of the planet is suffering, then we have to feel that this is my suffering. And then we have to have that desire and drive to change that situation of suffering, of climate or the earth as it is your own suffering, and the suffering of other people. So, we have to be compassionate, and we have to build our sense of consciousness and combine them together so that we can learn the morality. So, morality is, of course, quite a relative term, but it is more righteousness I would say that you can freely live without harming, curtailing, or jeopardizing, or you know, affecting the freedom of other people. So, everybody can live that this sense of freedom.

Will Brehm 23:20
So, when you look into the future today, as we are sitting here in 2019, would you classify yourself as more optimistic, pessimistic, somewhere in the middle?

Kailash Satyarthi 23:31
I am very optimistic; I am very optimistic. Because, as I said before, that 40 years ago, just 40 years ago, child labor, child slavery, child trafficking were nonissues, and today they are serious issues. Only 20, 30 years ago, education was not considered as a fundamental human right. Today, education is not only the fundamental human right, but it is considered as the key of liberation. It is the key to liberation, it is key to justice, it is key to equality, it is key to peace. So, the perception about education has completely changed in the last three decades or so. It is not a long history. And we are witness to it, but we also played some role in changing that situation. So, I am optimistic that this is a cycle of history which sometimes goes up and down. Sometimes it goes up to self-esteem, and esteem of society goes up and sometimes goes down. There are challenges like the democracy is in danger. There are challenges the morality in danger, there are challenges that this populism, the neo-nationalism, the ultra-rightist forces are emerging and becoming stronger, but these things are not or never long-lasting. These things are just come and then go. Because eventually, truth will prevail. Eventually, the justice will prevail. Righteousness will prevail. Humanity will prevail. Peace will prevail. Whatever fight or violence you will have, but eventually, you will have to sit on the table and find the solution to those problems of violence and wars. You have to sit on the table as human being. So, the humanity prevails, and these things will disappear sooner or later. We have to be a change agent so that phase is evaporated or is gone as soon as possible.

Will Brehm 25:45
Well, Kailash Satyarthi, thank you so much for joining FreshEd. It really was a pleasure of talking today.

Kailash Satyarthi 25:50
My pleasure.

Coming soon!

Coming soon!