New Delhi: Nobel laureate Kailash Satyarthi speaks extensively about his Bharat Yatra from Kashmir to Kanyakumari against child sexual abuse. AD: Bharat Yatra is scheduled to be launched on September 11. Please brief us about this initiative of yours. KS: Bharat Yatra is not just a campaign; I call it war on rape, sexual abuse and trafficking. The growing menace of child sexual abuse and rape is not an ordinary crime. It has grown as a moral epidemic so fast that it has to be addressed on war footing. It cannot be stopped by running campaigns. So, we decided to bring together all sections of society, government, intelligence agencies, businessmen, faith leaders and primarily students and teachers and common man across the country.
AD: What is the message that you want to give through this Padayatra? KS: The message is to break your (people’s) silence. India should not be driven by fear but by fearlessness and freedom. A new India cannot be built on the foundations of fear, which exist everywhere — across the nation and across sections of society. Victims of sexual abuse, their parents, neighbours, friends, relatives and ordinary people are living in fear, whereas the rapist and abusers feel free to roam around. So this pendulum of the clock has to be changed. Fear should be in the minds of those who are committing crime and not those being victimised. The menace goes on because of social taboo and in most cases people do not report the crime. AD: Although the number of FIRs has increased by manifold, it is yet a fraction of the crime taking place. KS: Yes, it is quite less. In cases of sexual abuse, 70 per cent of the abusers are known to the child.
