Did you know that Kailash Satyarthi is the first Hindu ever to get the Nobel Peace Prize? Mother Teresa was an Albanian-born Christian; as for the Indian by birth, Rabindranath Tagore got the Nobel for Literature, C.V. Raman received it for Physics; and Amartya Sen won the Nobel Prize for Economics.

Undoubtedly, the 2014 Nobel Peace laureate is a sincere man. In India, unforgivable abuses are done in the name of caste and social status. But it isn’t only the exploitation of children, but also the mistreatment of domestics—I will never forget the servants’ toilets in Sujan Singh Park’s luxury apartments; the exploitation of junior lawyers by wealthy senior counsel; the ruthless exploitation by politicians of their powers, etc.

Many Indians, most of them upper middle-class, were so shocked in the ’60s and ’70s by these inequalities that they left everything—comfort, riches, jobs—and whole-heartedly devoted their whole lives to redeem injustices, living in spartan simplicity. My wife’s uncle, Narender Bedi,...