Let’s March! - Part 1

3.4 Let’s March!

Part 1

My dear children of the world ... Your Majesties, Your Royal Highnesses, Excellencies, distinguished members of the Norwegian Nobel Committee, dear brother Tom Harkin, brothers and sisters, and my dear daughter Malala. From this podium of peace and humanity, I am deeply honoured to recite a mantra from the ancient texts of wisdom, Vedas. This mantra carries a prayer, an aspiration and a resolve that has the potential to liberate humanity from all man-made crises. Let’s walk together. In the pursuit of global progress, not a single person should be left out or left behind in any corner of the world, from East to West, from South to North. Let’s speak together, let our minds come together! Learning from the experiences of our ancestors, let us together create knowledge for all that benefits all. I bow to my late parents, to my motherland India, and to the mother earth. With a warm heart I recall how thousands of times, I have been liberated, each time I have freed a child from slavery. In the first smile of freedom on their beautiful faces, I see the Gods smiling. I give the biggest credit of this honour to my movement’s Kaalu Kumar, Dhoom Das and Adarsh Kishore from India and Iqbal Masih from Pakistan who made the supreme sacrifice for protecting the freedom and dignity of children. I humbly accept this award on behalf of all such martyrs, my fellow activists across the world and my countrymen. My journey from the great land of Lord Buddha, Guru Nanak and Mahatma Gandhi; India to Norway is a connect between the two centres of global peace and brotherhood, ancient and modern. Friends, the Nobel Committee has generously invited me to present a “lecture.” Respectfully, I am unable to do that. Because, I am representing here - the sound of silence. The cry of innocence. And, the face of invisibility. I represent millions of those children who are left behind and that’s why I have kept an empty chair here as a reminder. I have come here only to share the voices and dreams of our children - because they are all our children - [gesture to everyone in the audience]. I have looked into their frightened and exhausted eyes. I have held their injured bodies and felt their broken spirits. Twenty years ago, in the foothills of the Himalayas, I met a small, skinny child labourer. He asked me: “Is the world so poor that it cannot give me a toy and a book, instead of forcing me to take a gun or a tool?” I met with a Sudanese child-soldier. He was kidnapped by an extremist militia. As his first training lesson, he was forced to kill his friends and family. He asked me: “What is my fault?” Friends, all the great religions teach us to care for our children. Jesus said: “Let the children come to me; do not hinder them, for the kingdom of God belongs to them.” The Holy Quran says: “Kill not your children because of poverty.” Friends! There is no greater violence than to deny the dreams of our children. Therefore ... I refuse to accept that all the temples and mosques and churches and prayer houses have no place for the dreams of our children. I refuse to accept that the world is so poor, when just one week of global military expenditure can bring all the children to classrooms. I refuse to accept that all the laws and constitutions, police and judges are unable to protect our children. I refuse to accept that the shackles of slavery can ever be stronger than the quest for freedom. I REFUSE TO ACCEPT here. My only aim in life is that every child is free to be a child, - free to grow and develop, - free to eat, sleep, and see daylight, - free to laugh and cry, - free to play and learn, - free to go to school, and above all, - free to dream. I have the privilege of working with many courageous people who have the same aim. We have never given up against any threat or attack and we never will. We have made progress in the last couple of decades. We have reduced the number of out-ofschool children by half. We have reduced the number of child labourers by a third. We have reduced child mortality and malnutrition, and we have prevented millions of child deaths. But, let us make no mistake, great challenges still remain. Friends! The biggest challenge or biggest crisis knocking on the doors of humankind is fear and intolerance. We have utterly failed our children in imparting an education. An education that gives the meaning and objective of life. An education that gives a sense of global citizenship among the youth. I am afraid that the day is not very far away when the cumulative result of this failure, will culminate in an unprecedented violence, and that will be suicidal for humankind. Rights, security, hope can only be restored through education. Young people like Malala ... I’ve started calling her my daughter Malala not just Malala ... So my daughter Malala and other daughters including Kayanat.. in fact.. two Kayanats, and Shazia, and the daughters from Africa, and from all over the world. They are rising up and choosing peace over violence, tolerance over extremism, and courage over fear. The solutions are emerging. But these solutions cannot be found in the deliberations in conferences alone, and cannot be found in prescriptions from a distance. They lie in small groups and local organisations and individuals, who are confronting with the problem every day. Even if they remain unacknowledged, unrecognised and unknown to the world the solution are with them.

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