Behind the Prize, an agenda

Question marks may be raised on the dramatics indulged in by the Nobel committee in its citation for this year’s Nobel Peace Prize, bagged jointly by India’s Kailash Satyarthi and Pakistan’s Malala Yusafzai, already an international celebrity.

Before coming to Malala and Satyarthi’s work, a look at this part of the citation, which said the Peace Prize committee “regards it as an important point for a Hindu and a Muslim, an Indian and a Pakistani, to join in a common struggle for education and against extremism.”

At a time when hostilities on the Indo-Pak border have intensified, and India has started responding to Pakistan’s firings, this can be interpreted depending on your point of view and levels of scepticism regarding the good ol' West’s lectures to the poor, undeveloped East!

But leaving aside the clear shades of geo-global politics that have crept into the Nobel — last year too Malala, then a bare 16, was nominated for this prize, but was beaten by the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons. This was seen by many quarters as a salute to the European Union.

And this year's choice is bound to be seen by some as a “rebuke” to the Islamist ultras who trample on the human rights of the girl child.

Anyway leaving the politics aside, as also the not-so-subtle nudge at India and Pakistan to co-exist more peacefully, both the Laureates deserve this honour. So let us give both Malala and Satyarthi their due… one the youngest person in the world to bag a Nobel, and the second, who has waged a relentless battle not only against smaller entities but also corporates who shamelessly use child labour in their production facilities.

More than anything else, by recognising these two activists, Nobel has raised the visibility level of children’s rights; the Indian has fought against child labourers/slaves and campaigned and slogged for their right to education. The Pakistani girl’s story is only too well known. Defying the Taliban, endorsing girls’ right to education on a BBC blog, and getting bullets pumped right into her brain.

Her courage, and fight to even come out of that murderous attempt as she battled for life in a Pakistani military hospital before being shifted to a a hospital in Birmingham, where she is schooling now, is the stuff of legend.

Last year, at 16, when she was nominated, several eyebrows went up wondering how she could be in the reckoning as there were numerous worthies around the world who have slaved for long decades to safeguard human rights of all hues.

But then Malala went to the UN and addressed the UN Assembly on her 16th birthday which was named ‘Malala Day”, met the US President Barack Obama and expressed her “concern that drone attacks are fuelling terrorism”, killing the innocent and causing resent against the US in Pakistan.

Her UN and other speeches and interactions, however well rehearsed, built up her celebrity status and now she becomes the first Pakistani Nobel Laureate. She got the news while in a chemistry class in her school.

Before she was attacked on her school bus in the Swat Valley in Pakistan, she wanted to become a doctor. Now her dream -- undoubtedly shaped by her rubbing shoulders with State leaders, who listen to her respectfully and in rapt attention, as Obama did — is to become a politician, but of the good variety.

This teenager, not even old enough to get an ‘id’, touches your heart when she speaks. After getting the news, Malala thanked her parents, specially her father… “for not clipping my wings, for letting me fly and achieve my goals. For showing to the world that a girl is not supposed to be a slave, she should have an identity, she has equal rights and she should be recognised as a voice.”

Satyarthi, whose innocuous status is evident from his having a twitter following of barely 200 before the news broke, and which swelled to a few thousand within minutes of the announcement and has now jumped to 29,000, is at the other end of the spectrum. He too has been beaten up mercilessly several times, by the police and security guard in factories where he has led raids to free children held as bonded labour.

His NGO Bachpan Bachao Andolan, has set up schools for children and its website (www.bba.org.in) says he has rescued 83,525 children from child labour and slavery since 1980. A good part of his work has been focused in the last three decades on stopping child trafficking, rescuing trafficked children, including teenage girls forced into prostitution.

Satyarthi has also been urging western consumers not to buy rugs and other articles made with child labour. He is also responsible for the labelling system GoodWeave which educates western buyers that the handwoven carpet industry exploits 250,000 children. This label certifies carpets and rugs that are free of child labour.

A trained electrical engineer, Satyarthi left his vocation to fight for children’s rights. Today, of course, there is a scramble to meet him and celebrate his work. He has been feted by VIPs from Prime Minister Narendra Modi to the Home Minister Rajnath Singh, and chased by the electronic and print media. While everybody is now vowing to protect children’s rights to education, housing, water and sanitation and a safe environment, India’s latest Noble Laureate stays focused and optimistic.

He does us proud when he says in an interview, “India is the country of hundreds of problems, but it is also the country of millions of solutions.”

For millions of Indian still seething that Mahatma Gandhi never won the Nobel, despite being nominated several times, Satyarthi’s triumph is a celebration. However great the halo around the Nobel prize — is there another more coveted prize? — we’d do well to remember it is still the West and Western ethos, prism or mindset which decides who’ll get the crown. The committee set about to correct a wrong when the citation for the Dalai Lama, who bagged the Peace Prize in 1989, said that the award was “in part a tribute to the memory of Mahatma Gandhi”!

As for Malala, it’d be worth recalling the tweet of George Galloway, British politician, writer and broadcaster, posted exactly a year ago, on October 12, 2013. “If Malala had been murdered in a drone-strike the UK media would never even have told you her name.”!

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