Last year, he took us to the various highs and lows of his life as an activist and crusader. Almost exactly a year later, Nobel laureate Kailash Satyarthi has launched his new book and this time he focuses his pen on compassion, an intangible force that yields tangible results, something that has been an integral part of Satyarthi’s DNA. Karuna The Power of Compassion goes at length and crystallises the emotion, presenting it to us in a known yet novel way.
At the very outset, during our interview, before the book was launched at the Jaipur Literature Festival 2026, Satyarthi makes it clear that for him karuna is not an emotion but rather a force. “I am not a preacher or teacher of compassion,” says Satyarthi, dressed in a crisp white kurta, sitting under a shamiyana as the soft echo of the ongoing sessions fills the air. “This is the core learning of my life. I have learned that all transformative actions and revolutions, all religions, all transformations in society throughout history, were born out of a spark of compassion. So, compassion is not a bhav or a soft emotion. It is not kindness, mercy, pity, benevolence, service, love, or even sympathy or empathy. People put all these things in one basket with compassion, but compassion is altogether different. It is distinct. So, I am trying to challenge and change the entire narrative of compassion, which has existed for 2,000 years or more,” explains Satyarthi, drawing from his experience and the experiences of the people across the globe whom he has worked with, who have changed the world through their actions.
In its liminal chapters — The Highest Form of Intelligence, Spirituality Beyond ‘I’, Building Compassionate Communities, Let Us Globalise Compassion, and others — he establishes that compassion is a force born of the feeling of others’ suffering as one’s own suffering, that ultimately drives one to take mindful action. He quotes the Bhagwad Gita, Rig Veda and even shares anecdotes from his various interactions with world leaders and common man, making a strong case for compassion. By doing this, he reiterates and reminds us of the clarion call to the world to globalise compassion he made in Oslo in 2014 while receiving the Nobel Peace Prize.
All these seem very familiar to this point until the visionary, who is known for mobilising millions for his cause and for launching many movements, including the Satyarthi Movement for Global Compassion, talks about using technology to measure compassion and use it as a tool. “People know about IQ and EQ. These are very individualistic and personalised measuring systems, which sometimes help an individual, but they also discriminate. IQ might be less in some people and more in others, but compassion is in everyone, and it is infinite,” shares Satyarthi, who has won a range of awards, including The Aachener International Peace Award (1994-Germany), Defenders of Democracy Award (2009-USA), Freedom Award (2006-USA), among others.
He takes us through his extensive plan of measuring CQ (compassion quotient) — first, finding the level of awareness about the surroundings; second, finding the intent and intensity of connectedness; third, if the connection leads to an overwhelming feeling; and lastly, if it leads to a concrete action. “Awareness, connectedness, feeling and action are measurable, and we intend to use it as a problem-solving tool,” stressed Satyarthi, who also talked about ways of finding or reigniting compassion in his new book and strongly advocates including compassion in schools’ curriculum.
Satyarthi also talks about using CQ for a more practical purpose — finding compatible partners for marriage. “When it will be properly rolled out, with the help of researchers, then marriages will not be based on birth charts or on the words of the priests. Nor will it be based on the beauty of the boy and the girl... but on how someone responds to a situation or is he/she willing to accept each other’s shortcomings,” said the changemaker, adding that the same system can be applied in choosing the best candidate for a company.
With compassion dwindling across the globe, Karuna, though, doesn’t sound the alarm, but has an urgent undertone that needs to be noticed, paid attention to and like Satyarthi said, uses as a tool to serve/save humanity.