Nobel shines on Malala and Satyarthi

People from all corners of the world have been immensely excited and pouring in their heartiest messages of support and congratulations for Malala Yousafzai and Kailash Satyarthi, two illustrious advocates of children's rights, who have been awarded this year's Nobel Prize for Peace on Friday.
The indomitable courage and iron resolve of these two incredibly humane persons will serve as a source of inspiration for emancipation of humankind, especially for women's and children's right to education and advancement.
Malala Yousafzai and Kailash Satyarthi have chosen a missionary path full of thorns to cry out for redressing the grievances of helpless and hapless children.
The youngest Nobel Prize winner, Malala is a true gift to the world. Very young she may be, but the messages she has been delivering to the world for the last two years speak about her strength to fight for education for the children who are left in the lurch. Malala has already become a role model for many youngsters. She is in fact a peace-maker in the making. She has now been studying abroad. She has attended many prestigious forums. But, she has not yet accomplished any significant feats like many previous Nobel Peace winners have in their lifetimes. One may reasonably ask what she has done to deserve the prestigious award except being hit by a bullet in the head. She could, one might argue, deserve the prize if only she had worked for years at grassroots levels, building consensus in Pakistan to support female education by bringing Islamist stakeholders over to her cause. She has not yet shown her credentials of noticeable achievements.
But such achievements need years of efforts, with many blind alleys. The time for such accomplishments on the part of Malala has not yet arrived as she is only 17 years old. She must first equip herself with the best of education before she finally embarks upon a perilous journey to uphold the children's right to education in Pakistan and elsewhere in the world. The Nobel Prize has simply injected into the young heart of Malala a nuclear energy that will propel her, once she has completed her education, to forge ahead with nerves of steel to fulfil the dream the globe is now dreaming about education for all the poor children all over the world.
But Malala has achieved what many previous Nobel Peace winners could not perhaps achieve in sparking zeal among the neglected. Her bravery has given them courage to turn the tables and reinvent themselves. The subjugated womenfolk in Pakistan have newly discovered their own values. Her messages on gender equality are now relayed very fast around the world and have already instilled doses of fear into those who have now to think at least twice before inflicting injustice to any women. She is now a powerful spokeswoman of the weak and oppressed women.
Kailash Satyarthi is the co-winner of this year's Nobel Peace award. His name Kailash (the name of a mountain in the Himalayas) Satyarthi (the seeker of truth) seems to resonate with mystery and beauty. His avuncular facial expression tells the story of his struggles and dedication. His broad smile says a thousand words of his dreams and aspirations. His career tells a splendid story of a moral trajectory. He is indeed a man meant for preserving humanity, a man with a prophetic soul.
There are very few people in the world who have saintly concern for the future generations. There are few persons among us who would shun a comfortable career to embrace a challenge that would be tricky and spiky. Such is the man Kailash Satyarthi who gave up a lucrative career as an electrical engineer in 1980 to campaign against child labour, by founding the Bachpan Bachao Andolan (Save the Childhood Movement). It is a disgrace, according to Satyarthi, for every human being if a child works as a slave. He has been acting to protect the rights of thousands of children in India and around the world for more than 30 years.
As a worldwide campaigner, he has been the architect of the single largest civil society network for the most exploited children, the Global March Against Child Labour, which is a worldwide coalition of NGOs, Teachers' Unions and Trade Unions. He is on the board and committee of several international organisations.
And Satyarthi has survived numerous attacks on his life during his crusade to end child slavery. He and his colleagues were brutally attacked when they tried to rescue child slaves from sweatshops and circus mafias. Despite those attacks, his commitment to salvage the children from slavery has never wavered. Renowned print and electronic media of the world, including New York Times, BBC, and CNN, narrated his life and works in dozens of their features and programmes.  
Pakistani teenager Yousafzai and India's Satyarthi will now share the Nobel Prize for Peace that includes medals and cash prize of USD 1.1 million. Both Pakistan and India are celebrating the happy news that coincidentally came just after a week of fierce hostilities along their border of the disputed region of Kashmir.
In spite of frustrations and despairs of the peace lovers, many optimists are still hoping that an Indian Hindu man and a Pakistani Muslim child receiving a joint Nobel Prize for Peace may blissfully remove the animosity and revive the friendship between the two neighbouring countries.
The symbolism of an Indian and a Pakistani winning this year's Nobel Peace Prize and a Bangladeshi (Muhammad Yunus) winning the same prize in 2006 is far-reaching from a historical point of view while all these three countries have been hostile or unfriendly with each other at one time or another.
These countries have spent decades debating what divides them rather what unites them. What should unite them, if only they take a bit of inspiration from the three Peace Prize winners from Bangladesh, India and Pakistan, is the desperate need to find solutions to alleviate human sufferings. All these three countries of the subcontinent need to create a peaceful future for their children in terms of education, opportunity, and hope.
The Swedish Nobel Committee has been nudging the Peace prize winners towards global peace, always by a common message. Let us hope that the people of the subcontinent and the rest of the world get the true meaning of the message. Let these three Nobel Peace laureates of three neighbouring countries, along with other living Nobel Peace laureates in the world, take the global leadership of real peace-making.

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