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Today, I am going to talk about anger.
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When I was 11,
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seeing some of my friends
leaving the school
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because their parents
could not afford textbooks
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made me angry.
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When I was 27,
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hearing the plight
of a desperate slave father
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whose daughter was about
to be sold to a brothel
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made me angry.
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At the age of 50,
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lying on a street,
in the pool of blood,
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along with my own son,
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made me anrgy.
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Dear friends, for centuries
we were taught anger is bad.
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Our parents, teachers, priests--
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everyone taught us how to control
and supress our anger.
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But I ask why?
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Why can't we convert our anger
for the larger good of the society?
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Why can't we use our anger
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to challenge and change
the evils of the world?
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That I tried to do.
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Friends,
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most of the brightest ideas
came to my mind out of anger.
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Like when I was 35 and sat
in a locked up, tiny prison.
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The whole night, I was angry.
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But it has given the birth
of a new idea.
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But I will come to that later on.
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Let me begin with the story
of how I got a name for myself.
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I had been a big admirer of
Mahatma Gandhi since my childhood.
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Gandhi has fought and lead
India's freedom movement.
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But more importantly,
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he has taught us how to treat
the most vulnerable sections,
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the most deprived people,
with dignity and respect.
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And so, when India was celebrating
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Mahatma Gandhi 's birth centenary
in 1969, at that time I was 15,
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an idea came to my mind.
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Why can't we celebrate it differently?
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I knew, perhaps many of you
might be knowing,
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that in India, a large number of people
are born in the lowest segment of caste.
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And they are treated as untouchables.
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These are the people --
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forget about allowing them
to go to the temples,
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they cannot even go into the houses
and shops of high-caste people.
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So I was very impressed with
the leaders of my town
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who were speaking very highly against
the caste system and untouchability
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and talking of Gandhian ideals.
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So inspired by that, I thought that
let us set an example
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by inviting these people to eat food
cooked and served
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by the untouchable community.
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I went to some low-caste,
so-called untouchable people,
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tried to convince them.
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But it was unthinkable for them.
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They told me, "No, no. It's impossible.
It never happens."
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I said, "Look at these leaders.
They're so great.
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They're against untouchability.
They will come.
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If nobody comes, we can set an example."
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These people thought that I am too naive.
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Finally, they were convinced.
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My friends and I took our bicycles
and invited political leaders.
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And I was so thrilled, rather, empowered
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to see that each one of them
agreed to come.
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I thought, "This is a great idea.
We can set an example.
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We can bring about change in the society."
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The day had come.
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All these untouchables,
three women and two men,
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they agreed to come.
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I could recall that they had used
the best of their clothes,
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they bought new utensils,
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rather, they had taken bathes
hundreds of times
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because it was unthinkable
for them to do.
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It was the moment of change.
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They gathered, food was cooked.
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It was 7 o'clock.
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By 8 o'clock, we kept on waiting,
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because it's not very uncommon
that the leaders become late,
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for an hour or so.
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So after 8 o'clock, we took our bicycles
and went to these leaders' homes,
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just to remind them.
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One of the leader's wives told me,
"Sorry, he is having some headache,
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perhaps he cannot come."
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I went to another leader and his wife
told me, "Okay, you go,
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he will definitely join."
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So I thought that the dinner
will take place,
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though not at that large scale.
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I went back to the venue, which was
a newly-built Mahatma Gandhi park.
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It was 10 o'clock.
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None of the leaders showed up.
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That made me angry.
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I was standing, leaning against
Mahatma Gandhi's statue.
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I was emotionally drained,
rather, exhausted.
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Then, I sat down where
the food was lying.
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I kept my emotions hold (?).
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But then, when I took the first bite,
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I broke down in tears.
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And suddenly I felt a hand on my shoulder.
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And it was the healing, motherly touch
of an untouchable woman.
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And she told me,
"Kailash, why are you crying?
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You have done your bit.
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You have eaten the food
cooked by untouchables,
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which has never happened in our memory."
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She said, "You won today."
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And my friends, she was right.
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I came back home, a little after midnight,
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shocked to see that several
high-caste elderly people
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were sitting in my courtyard.
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I saw my mother and
elderly women were crying
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and they were pleading
to these elderly people
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because they had threatened
to out-caste my whole family.
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And you know, out-casting the family
is the biggest social punishment
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one can think of.
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Somehow they agreed to punish only me,
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and punishment was the purification.
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That means I had to go 600 miles
away from my hometown
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to River Ganges to take a holy dip.
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And after that, I should organize a feast
for priests, 101 priests,
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wash their feet and drink that water.
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It was total nonsense,
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and I refused to accept that punishment.
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How did they punish me?
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I was barred from entering
into my own kitchen
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and my own dining room,
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my utensils were separated.
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But the night when I was angry,
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they wanted to out-caste me.
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But I decided to out-caste
the entire caste system.
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(Applause)
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And that was possible because
the beginning would have been
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to change the family name, or surname,
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because in India, most of the
family names are caste names.
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So I decided to drop my name.
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And then, later on, I gave
a new name to myself: Satyarthi,
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that means, "seeker of truth."
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(Applause)
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And that was the beginning of my
transformative anger.
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Friends, maybe one of you can tell me,
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what was I doing before becoming
a child's rights activist?
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Does anybody know?
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No.
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I was an engineer, an electrical engineer.
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And then I learned how the energy
of burning fire, coal,
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the nuclear blast inside the chambers,
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raging river currents,
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fire vents (?)
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could be converted into the light
and lives of millions.
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I also learned how the most
uncontrollable form of energy
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could be harnessed for good
and making society better.
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So, I'll come back to the story
when I was caught into the prison:
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I was very happy freeing
a dozen children from slavery,
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handing them over to their parents.
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I cannot explain my joy
when I free a child
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and I was so happy.
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But when I was waiting for my train
to come back to my hometown, Delhi,
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I saw that dozens of children
were arriving,
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they were being trafficked by someone.
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I stopped them, those people,
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I complained to the police.
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So the policeman, instead of helping me,
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they threw me in this small,
tiny shell, like an animal.
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And that was the night of anger
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when one of the brightest ideas was born.
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I thought that if I keep on
freeing 10 children,
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then 50 more will join.
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That's not (?)
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And I believed in the power of consumers,
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and let me tell you that this
was the first time
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when a campaign was launched by me
or anywhere in the world,
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to educate and sensitize the consumers
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to create a demand a demand for
child-labor free rugs.
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In Europe and America,
we have been successful.
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And it has resulted in the fall
in child-labor
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in South Asian countries by 80 percent.
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(Applause)
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Not only that, but this first-ever
consumer's power, or consumer's campaign
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has grown in other countries
and other industries,
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maybe chocolate, maybe apples,
maybe shoes -- it has gone beyond.
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My anger at the age of 11,
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when I realized that how important
education is for every child,
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I got an idea to collect used books
and help the poorest children.
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I created a book bank at the age of 11.
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But I did not stop.
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Later on, I co-founded the world's
single largest civil society campaign
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for education that is the
Global Campaign for Education.
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That has helped in changing
the whole thinking towards education
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from the charity-mode
to the human rights-mode.
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And that is concretely helped
the reduction of out-of-school children
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by half in the last 15 years.
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(Applause)
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My anger at the age of 27,
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to free that girl who was about
to be sold to a brothel,
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has given me an idea to go
for a new strategy
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of raid and reduce,
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freeing children from slavery.
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And I am so lucky and proud to say
that it is not one or 10 or 20,
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but my collegues and me
have been able
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to physically liberate 83,000 child slaves
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and hand them back to their
families and mothers.
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(Applause)
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I knew that we need global policies,
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we organized the worldwide marches
against child labor
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and that has also resulted in
a new international convention
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to protect the children
who are in worst forms.
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And the concrete result was that
the number of child labors globally
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has gone down by one third
in the last 15 years.
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(Applause)
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So, in each case,
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it was anger -- it began from anger,
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turned into an idea,
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and action.
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So anger, what next?
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Idea, and..
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Audience: action
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Kailash: Anger, Idea, Action,
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which I tried to do.
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Anger is a power, anger is an energy,
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and the law of nature is that energy
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can never be created a
nd can never be vanished,
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can never be destroyed.
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So why can't the energy of anger
be translated and harnessed
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to create and better
and more beautiful world,
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a more just and equitable world?
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Anger is within each one of you,
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and I will share a secret
for a few seconds:
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that if we are confined in
the narrow shells of egos,
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and the circles of selfishness,
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than the anger will turn out to be
hatred, violence, revenge, destruction.
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But if we are able to break the circles,
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than the same anger could turn
into a great power.
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We can break the circles by using
out inherent compassion
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and connect with the world
through this compasison
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to make the world better.
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That same anger could be
transformed into it.
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So dear friends, sisters and brothers,
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again, as a Nobel Laureate,
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I am urging you to become angry.
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I am urging you to become angry.
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And the angriest among us is the one
who can transform his anger
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into idea and action.
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Thank you so much.
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(Applause)
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Chris Anderson: For many years,
you've been an inspiration to others.
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Who or what inspires you and why?
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Kailash Satyarthi: Good question,
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Chris let me tell you,
and that is the truth,
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each time when I free a child,
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the child that has lost all his hope
that he will ever come back to his mother,
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the first smile of freedom,
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and the mother who has lost all the hope
that the son or daughter
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can ever come back and sit in her lap,
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they become so emotional
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and the first tear of joy
rolls down on her cheek,
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I see the glimpse of God in it,
this is my biggest inspiration.
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And I am so lucky that not once,
as I said before,
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but thousands of times,
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I have been able to witness my God
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in the faces of those children
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and they are my biggest inspirations.
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(Applause)
Krystian Aparta
The English transcript was updated on 4/17/2015. At 12:43, "maybe chocolate, maybe apples, maybe shoes -- it has gone beyond." was changed to "maybe chocolate, maybe apparel, maybe shoes -- it has gone beyond."