From a Small Hand to a Global March: Lenin Raghuvanshi’s Early Journey in the Struggle Against Child Labour
An archival and journalistic reconstruction of a journey from local mobilisation to international child-rights advocacy
Some histories of social movements are preserved in institutional reports, policy documents and newspaper archives. Others survive in photographs: a hunger strike, a classroom filled with children, a handwritten poem, a banner demanding rehabilitation, or an image from a movement that would later acquire international significance.
The photographs and documents from the early years of my work against child labour belong to this second kind of archive. Taken together, they document a period when child labour was not simply a subject of policy discussion but a lived human-rights crisis involving exploitation, poverty, education, rehabilitation and dignity.
I became a founding member of Bachpan Bachao Andolan (Save the Childhood Movement) in 1993, working with Kailash Satyarthi and others. It also records my participation as a Core Marcher in the Global March Against Child Labour in 1998, including organising and coordinating activities in several countries.
The photographs provide the human dimension behind those dates.
A Beginning in the Struggle Against Child Labour
My engagement with the issue of child labour began in the early 1990s. I worked with SACCS in 1991, during a period when campaigns for the liberation and rehabilitation of working children were becoming increasingly organised.
The surviving photographs from this period capture the character of that struggle: public mobilisation, direct action and demands that children removed from labour should not simply be released from workplaces but should receive rehabilitation and education.
One of the photographs records a 72-hour hunger strike demanding the liberation and rehabilitation of child labourers.
The language of the banner is significant. It connects liberation with rehabilitation.
This distinction remains important. Removing a child from exploitative labour is only the beginning. A child also needs education, family and community support, social acceptance and an opportunity to build a dignified future.
“A Small Hand”: When Poetry Became Testimony
Among the archival materials is a Hindi poem titled “नन्हा सा हाथ” — “A Small Hand.”
The poem reflects an encounter with children living in conditions of deprivation and labour. Its literary form is personal, but its historical value is also documentary. It reveals how the experience of child labour entered the consciousness of activists not only through campaigns and public meetings but also through poetry and reflection.
The image of the small hand becomes a powerful metaphor.
A child's hand can hold a pencil, turn the pages of a book, play, create and reach towards another person. Under exploitation, that same hand can become an instrument of labour.
The poem therefore belongs to the emotional and intellectual history of the child-rights movement.
It asks us to consider what society expects from the hands of a child—and what society has the responsibility to protect those hands from.
1993: From Protest to Organised Child-Rights Work
The early 1990s also saw the development of more organised national campaigns against child labour.
In 1993 I became a founding member of Bachpan Bachao Andolan, together with Kailash Satyarthi and others.
This period was important because the campaign increasingly connected several dimensions of child rights:
- liberation from exploitative labour;
- rehabilitation of rescued children;
- access to education;
- community mobilisation;
- accountability for exploitation; and
- recognition of child labour as a human-rights issue.
The photographs from this period should therefore not be understood merely as personal photographs. They are fragments of a broader social movement.
The Children of Jewari’s School
One of the archival photographs is captioned:
“Children of Jewari’s School”
This photograph represents another side of the struggle.
A school is more than a physical building. In the context of child-labour rehabilitation, it represents an alternative to exploitation and a pathway towards participation, learning and dignity.
The movement against child labour therefore had to answer a question beyond:
How do we remove children from labour?
It also had to ask:
What kind of future do we create for them afterwards?
Education was central to that answer.
The photograph of the children of Jewari’s School consequently forms an important counterpart to the photograph of the hunger strike. One records resistance against exploitation; the other represents the possibility of rebuilding childhood through education.
Working with Kailash Satyarthi
My archival record documents my association with Kailash Satyarthi during this formative period. My CV records that I was a founding member of Bachpan Bachao Andolan in 1993 and later participated in the Global March Against Child Labour in 1998.
The later international history of the movement gives these early photographs an additional significance.
The Nobel Prize biography records that Satyarthi became a prominent figure in the global movement against child slavery and exploitation and was the architect of the Global March Against Child Labour. The 1998 mobilisation extended across 103 countries and contributed to the international campaign that preceded the adoption of ILO Convention No. 182 on the Worst Forms of Child Labour in 1999.
My own CV records my role in organising, coordinating and participating as a Core Marcher, with the Global March taking me through the Philippines, Cambodia, Thailand, Malaysia, Spain, France and Geneva.
1998: The Global March Against Child Labour
The Global March represented an important transformation in the international child-rights movement.
The issue of child labour was no longer confined to individual workplaces, villages or national campaigns. It became part of an international mobilisation involving civil-society organisations, activists, workers, educators and communities across countries.
The Nobel Prize records the scale of the 1998 Global March, while the Global March organisation describes it as an 80,000-kilometre mobilisation across 103 countries.
My participation in that movement represented a continuation of the work that had begun at the local level.
The geography expanded, but the fundamental question remained the same:
What kind of society allows a child to become a worker before becoming a student?
From Local Struggle to International Advocacy
The significance of 1998 was not simply the physical distance travelled.
It was the connection between local experience and international policy.
A child working in a local industry could become part of an international discussion about labour standards, education and human rights.
My CV records that during this period I also organised and participated in campaigns concerning child labour in the sporting-goods industry. It records advocacy that engaged international sporting and commercial institutions and sought commitments against child labour.
This was an important development in the way child labour was understood.
Child labour was not only a problem of poor families or individual employers. It could also be connected to national and international supply chains, consumer markets, sporting events and corporate responsibility.
From Child Labour to Human Rights
In 1996, I founded the People's Vigilance Committee on Human Rights (PVCHR) with Shruti Nagvanshi. My CV records this development alongside my continuing work concerning marginalised communities and human-rights violations.
The transition from child-rights activism to broader human-rights work was not a departure from the earlier struggle.
There was a common underlying question:
How can people who experience structural exploitation move from vulnerability towards dignity, participation and justice?
For children trapped in labour, this meant liberation, rehabilitation and education.
For survivors of violence, it meant testimony, justice and healing.
For marginalised communities, it meant recognition, dignity and rights.
The context changed, but the human-rights principle remained connected.
The Nobel Prize Came Later — The Photographs Came First
In 2014, sixteen years after the Global March, Kailash Satyarthi received the Nobel Peace Prize jointly with Malala Yousafzai.
The Nobel Committee stated that the prize recognised their struggle against the suppression of children and young people and for the right of all children to education.
For an archival history, chronology matters.
The Nobel Prize came in 2014.
The Global March came in 1998.
The photographs of local mobilisation, the hunger strike, the poem and the children of Jewari’s School belong to an even earlier period.
The later recognition should therefore not be allowed to overshadow the grassroots history. The photographs remind us that international recognition is preceded by years of local organising, risk, persistence and collective work.
Reading the Archive Today
Looking at these photographs decades later, I do not see only memories of my youth or early activism.
I see evidence of how social movements are built.
They begin with encounters—with children, families and communities experiencing injustice.
They develop through organisation.
They are sustained through solidarity.
They acquire historical value through documentation.
And sometimes, many years later, the significance of those early struggles becomes visible on an international stage.
The archive therefore tells a story of continuity rather than a single event.
The Importance of an Activist Archive
Photographs are often treated as illustrations accompanying written history.
But photographs can themselves become historical sources.
They preserve the physical setting of movements, the language of protest, the presence of children and communities, the relationships between activists and participants, and the emotional atmosphere of a particular period.
The poem “नन्हा सा हाथ” provides another form of evidence: the emotional and reflective language through which child labour was experienced.
The CV establishes institutional milestones and dates.
The photographs preserve visual memory.
Together, these materials constitute an activist archive.
Such archives are particularly important in human-rights work because many people whose lives are affected by exploitation and violence remain absent from conventional historical records.
A Personal Timeline
| Year | Milestone |
|---|---|
| 1991 | My work with SACCS, as recorded in my personal history, formed part of my early engagement with the struggle against child labour. |
| 1993 | Founding member of Bachpan Bachao Andolan with Kailash Satyarthi and others. |
| 1996 | Founded PVCHR with Shruti Nagvanshi; my CV also records my work protesting for the liberation and rehabilitation of bonded child labourers. |
| 1998 | Organised, coordinated and participated as a Core Marcher in the Global March Against Child Labour. |
| 1999 | ILO Convention No. 182 on the Worst Forms of Child Labour was adopted. |
| 2014 | Kailash Satyarthi received the Nobel Peace Prize jointly with Malala Yousafzai. |
A Small Hand, A Long Journey
The photographs of the 72-hour hunger strike, the children of Jewari’s School, the handwritten poem “नन्हा सा हाथ”, and the photographs associated with the Global March may initially appear to be separate fragments of an old personal archive.
They are, however, connected by a common historical thread.
They document a transition:
from witnessing suffering to organised resistance;
from resistance to rehabilitation and education;
from local mobilisation to international advocacy.
For me, these photographs are therefore more than personal memorabilia.
They are part of the historical record of a period in which child labour increasingly came to be understood through the language of human rights, education, dignity and social justice.
The history of a movement is not made only in international conferences or through awards.
It is also made in hunger strikes, classrooms, villages, poems, marches and encounters with children.
And sometimes an old photograph allows us to see the beginning of a journey whose significance becomes visible only many years later.
