Slavery In India

[hg45]

"Under Shah Jahan, peasants were compelled to sell their women and children" to meet their revenue requirements"

(Source)

Export of Indian slaves to international markets

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slavery _in_India

Edited October 14, 2014 by hg45

[mamta mohan]

Hindus also sold thier girls to mughals too.

[mamta mohan]

They still sell thier girls to the manders.

[ASJ]

For Indian child slavery - in pictures please visit

http://www.theguardian.com/world/gallery/2013/jul/20/child-slavery-india-assam-trafficking

It is really sad but it is true. Children are still suffering and what is anyone doing about all this? No point talking big and letting these little ones end up as slaves in the 21st century. :(

Edited October 14, 2014 by ASJ

[rajputdamoonda]

OMG

[OnPathToSikhi]

who are the manders?

devadasi

devadasi, ( Sanskrit: “female servant of a god”) member of a community of women who dedicate themselves to the service of the patron god of the great temples in eastern and southern India.

This order, sometimes called a caste, appears to date from the 9th and 10th centuries. Members of the order attended the god—fanned the icon, honoured it with lights, and sang and danced for the god’s amusement—and thereby offered their auspicious presence to the deity. They played an important part in preserving elements of Hindu culture—for example, by performing the great Sanskrit poem Gitagovinda for its hero, the god Krishna, in the temple dedicated to him in Puri, in the northeastern state of Orissa. The sons and daughters of devadasis had equal rights of inheritance, an unusual practice among Hindu castes. Before the 20th century the devadasis were quite visible; about 1800 the main temple in Kanchipuram (Conjeeveram), a city in the southeastern state of Tamil Nadu with a strong tradition of temple servants, had 100 devadasis. Increasingly, the devadasis came to be held in low social regard because their occupation involved temple prostitution, and the system was outlawed in 1988. Although the number of devadasis subsequently began to decline, the institution remained strong—although less open—in the 21st century, particularly in parts of the south.

http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/159928/devadasi

[jaikaara]

http://www.frontline.in/static/html/fl1626/16260650.htm

THE STATES

Down and out in Punjab

Punjab's Dalits get a raw deal; and this is deepening caste fissures in the State.

PRAVEEN SWAMI
in Ludhiana

SAMEY SINGH desperately needed time off from his job at a brick kiln near Faridkot, southern Punjab. Back home, in Megha Kheri, the family's home village near Muzaffarnagar in Uttar Pradesh, his son Rahul had fallen seriously ill. But Samey Singh had tak en a Rs.5,000 advance from the kiln owners at the start of the season, and they were only willing to let him go if he left behind his wife and daughter. Pali Singh and her daughter Pooja were forced to work without pay and on some days, without food. Bot h were often beaten, and six-year-old Pooja was threatened with sexual abuse. At sunset, mother and daughter were locked into a six foot by ten foot hovel.

There are supposed to be no slaves in Punjab, one of India's richest States. In a State known for its affluence and egalitarian traditions, its Dalits have for long been believed to be better off than oppressed castes elsewhere. In some senses, they stil l are. But Samey Singh's story is just one in a chain of brutalities directed at Punjab's Dalits in recent months. At a time of shrinking economic opportunities, caste fissures are deepening in the State.

POOJA would have spent her life as a slave if it had not been for chance. In September, Tarsem Jodhan, general secretary of the Centre of Indian Trade Unions (CITU)-affiliated Lal Jhanda Punjab Bhatta Mazdoor Union (Red Flag Punjab Brick-kiln Workers' Un ion) visited western Uttar Pradesh on an election tour. During a meeting in Megha Kheri, held to canvass Chamar caste migrant workers there, Samey Singh came up to Jodhan. His wife had been thrown out of the kiln that month because injuries caused by bea tings had left her unable to work. The couple had tried unsuccessfully to get their daughter back. "The kiln owner did not give me my job back," Samey Singh said, "so I didn't have any money. He just wouldn't give Pooja back to us."

Jodhan moved the Punjab and Haryana High Court, which sent an officer to rescue Pooja Singh. On October 14, six months after she was made a slave, Jodhan found Pooja locked in a cell, terrified, near-starving, and bruised from repeated beatings. "They us ed to tell me they would get me married," Pooja Singh told Frontline, "so that they could put my children to work as slaves too." Amazingly, police officials at Dharamkot, the Faridkot area where Pooja and Pali Singh were held captive, have taken no action. "When I was thrown out of the kiln, I went to the Dharamkot police station, but they threw me out. No one would even let me into the building, let alone register a complaint," Pali Singh said.

HARDIP PURI
A woman labourer at a brick kiln. The economic problems of Dalits in a State known for its prosperity are sharpening, thanks to the failure of successive State governments to shape rural development policies.

Ghawaddi village, an hour's drive from Ludhiana, is the Samey Singh family's new home. Although most workers here say the kiln owner has a good reputation in the area, conditions are sub-human. Workers are paid about Rs.140 for every 1,000 bricks they tu rn out. If women and children work 16 hours a day along with the men, a family can make some 800 bricks. Each family puts in 12 days at a stretch, and then takes three days off to recover. During the monsoons, most of the estimated 2.5 lakh migrant brick -kiln workers return to their homes in Uttar Pradesh. What they save through the nine months in Punjab has to see them through the monsoon, for there is little work to be had in Muzaffarnagar or elsewhere.

If the wages seem relatively attractive, they do not guarantee basic human rights. Hours spent in the slush, exposed to the evening cold and searing kiln heat, mean that sickness is common. Workers in Ghawaddi told Frontline that each family spent upwards of Rs.1,200 a month to treat fevers and diarrhoea. Workers have to use the services of the plethora of quacks operating in rural Punjab, for there are no government-run health facilities nearby. Access to clean drinking water is minimal, and the re are no sanitation facilities at all. Most children appear severely malnourished. No families carry ration cards, and they must buy food in the market. Sugar sells at Rs.17 a kg, and flour at Rs.8. No family can afford vegetables or milk.

Perhaps worst of all, the migrant workers are denied even the few opportunities for progress that Dalits have elsewhere. Not a single child in Ghawaddi goes to school. Although a few families have tried to keep at least one son at school in Uttar Pradesh , girls do not get that chance. Work starts at an improbably young age, with three-year-olds scooping out slush for their parents to shape into bricks. Although service terms and working conditions at Punjab's brick kilns violate the Factories Act, Lal J handa Bhatta Mazdoor Union officials say that not one single unit has been prosecuted so far. Kiln accidents are common, but families never get the compensation they are legally entitled to.

MIGRANT workers do not have a vote, so the Punjab Government succeeds in pretending that they do not exist. But conditions are not enormously better for Punjab-based Dalits either. Most Dalits at Dhaliyan village belong to the Ramdasiya caste, and have f or generations worked on the fields of local landlords. During the Green Revolution, when demand for workers went up and wages rose, most Dalit families managed to procure some basic assets. Every family now has a few buffaloes and decent shelter. But wi th combine harvesters displacing agricultural labourers, and machines taking over jobs such as planting potatoes, making a living is becoming more difficult than it has been in decades.

HARDIP PURI
Samey Singh and his wife Pali in their new home in Gawwadi village.

Raj Singh has seen the change. "Ten years ago," he said, "it was easy to find work 25 days a month, and I would be busy right through the harvest and sowing seasons. Now, there is barely work in the fields for three days a month." Wages, too, have dipped . "The landlords offer us Rs.60 a day. If we ask for more, they tell us there are thousands of migrants willing to work for half that amount." As a result, more and more Dalits have been pushed to do casual jobs, such as selling vegetables or scavenging plastic bags to be recycled. Others have ended up in the brick kilns. A decade ago, Ram Dayal, a resident of Burji Hakima, worked as a farmer. "I could buy 10 kg of gur (raw sugar) with a day's wage then," he said. "Now, it takes me two days of work at t he kiln to buy the same quantity."

The problem does not lie in combine harvesters, but in the failure of successive governments in the State to shape rural development policies that benefit the poor. The village infrastructure that could have improved the lives of the Dalits has fallen ap art. In Dhaliyan, as in many other neighbouring villages, only Dalits send their children to government schools. This strange apartheid has come about because most people who can afford it, send their children to private schools which have better facilit ies and also teachers who actually show up for work, unlike state-run schools. Dhaliyan does have a ration shop, but despite recent price hikes, only poor-quality sugar and rice are available here, and kerosene never is. By way of contrast, the Punjab Go vernment has the budget to waive electricity charges for big landlords who own tubewells.

IF the economic problems of Dalits have been sharpening in Punjab, the Shiromani Akali Dal-Bharatiya Janata Party alliance has added to their woes by unleashing the state apparatus against them. On September 17, police and administration officials in Jee van Nagar, Faridkot, demolished 40 houses built by Dalits on government land. About 175 people, including 50 children, were thrown out with due notice and lost an estimated Rs.15 lakh in the demolition. The Dalits had been allowed to move on to the land in the build-up to the recent Lok Sabha elections, and some had even secured electricity connections. Their failure to return the favour by voting for the SAD-BJP combine, residents say, led to the retaliation.

A similar demolition took place in Sangrur after the Lok Sabha elections. Hansa Singh's family, which lives in Buttar village near Moga, chose to vote for the Communist Party of India(Marxist) candidate, Principal Ajit Singh. Despite the fact that their home on shamlat (village) land had been up for six years, Hansa Singh's son Baldev Singh said, a local SAD worker and panchayat member ensured its demolition. Dalit houses were brought down also in another Sangrur village, Lasoolpur. The Faridkot Unit of the Association for Democratic Rights did intervene in the demolition there, but no official action has been taken. Minor village-level demolition generally passes unreported and unnoticed.

HARDIP PURI
Pooja, Samey Singh's six-year-old daughter, who was enslaved and maltreated for six months by her employer, after her release.

When the state does step in, it is generally to crush Dalit protests. Gurketan Singh and Beera Singh were infuriated when the upper caste sarpanch of Burji Kalan village in Bhatinda district decided to lease out a pond, which the entire village used, to a contractor. A fight broke out, and Sarpanch Sukhjit Singh was stabbed. The next day, June 7, mobs burned down the houses of Gurketan Singh and Beera Singh, and threw into a nearby canal whatever belongings they could find. The local unit of the Communi st Party of India (CPI) intervened to secure peace, and arranged for both the young men to surrender. Nonetheless, both were alleged to have been tortured in custody. No action was taken against the mob which destroyed the Dalit families' houses.

In January, four members of the village panchayat of Bhungar Khera village in Abohar paraded a handicapped Dalit woman naked through the village. No action was taken by the police, despite local Dalit protests. It was only on July 20 that the four pancha yat members were arrested, after the State Home Department was compelled to order an inquiry into the incident. But the State police is prompt in redressing complaints against Dalits. When 65-year old Nand Lal failed to pay back an advance of Rs.6,000 to the owner of the brick kiln where he works, personnel from the Jalaldiwal police post of Raikot police station stepped in. "The police made him put his thumb impression on papers written in English," said his son Balbir Singh, "and said they would beat him if he did not return the money soon."

CHIEF MINISTER Prakash Singh Badal has been putting out a series of curious ideas on how these problems ought to be solved. At a function in Jalandhar on October 24, he promised to set up "Dalit specific schools" in the State so that Scheduled Caste chil dren could "get quality education to compete for the IAS (Indian Administrative Service), IPS (Indian Police Service) and other services." This proclamation that a de facto caste segregation of education would receive official sanction sadly went unchallenged. Interestingly, the Ambedkar Academy, set up in Mohali to train Dalit students for the civil services, has not had much success. The number of Dalit students who have made it to the allied services can be counted on one's fingertips; and fin gers are not needed to count the number of central services entrants the academy has produced.

Programmes such as the State Government's pet Shagun Scheme pass for Dalit welfare commitments. Some Rs.45 crore has been given out since the scheme was put in place after the SAD-BJP came to power, in the form of Rs.5,100-grants to Dalit girls at the ti me of their marriage. Misappropriation of funds has been one common complaint. Just three Dalit families in Dhaliyan received the handouts, for example, although 20 girls here had got married over the last two years. But, more disturbingly, the scheme pr ovides incentives to poor Dalit families to marry their daughters off early rather than keep them in school. Worst of all, the Shagun Scheme provides state subsidies for dowry, and promotes wasteful expenditure.

HARDIP PURI
Tarsem Jodhan, general secretary of the Red Flag Punjab Brick-kiln Workers Union, with Scheduled Caste labourers in Dhaliyan village.

PUNJAB'S society has had little place for the kinds of violent caste confrontation seen elsewhere in the country. But signs of trouble simmer under the surface. Ten years ago, the State Government provided grants of Rs.60,000 to Mahila Mandals to purchas e marquees and cooking utensils. The idea was to allow the Mahila Mandals to generate revenue by renting out these assets for weddings and religious ceremonies. In practice, Dalits found themselves pushed out of the Mahila Mandals in order to ensure that they did not gain access to the utensils. A survey carried out by Chandigarh's Institute for Development and Communication (IDC) found, for example, that Dalits made up just 10 per cent of Mahila Mandal members in Jalandhar, and that there was not a sin gle member in Patiala.

The figures do not make pretty reading on other counts either. A study carried out for the IDC by Bhupendra Yadav and A.M. Sharma points to just a few of the stark indexes of deprivation of Dalits in Punjab. Although Punjab has the highest proportion of Scheduled Castes to its population as a whole - at 28.3 per cent - Dalits own just 2.54 per cent of the agricultural land. While the percentage of literates in the State is higher than the national average, its Dalits are less likely to be educated than their counterparts nationwide. School enrolment rates are dismal, and drop-out rates appalling. Amazingly, about 40 per cent of Dalit children in Punjab are likely to be malnourished. Between 1981 and 1991, the percentage of Dalits in Punjab living below the poverty line barely declined, while the numbers of both Dalit and non-Dalit poor actually grew.

Despite their numerical strength, Punjab's traditionally pro-Congress(I) Dalits have had little political power in effect. The rise of the Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) in the early 1990s appears to have ended. But the SAD-BJP's marked upper-caste biases, an d the growing deprivation among Dalits, could soon force a new search for political representation. Recent proposals to remove reservations for Scheduled Castes in the Shiromani Gurudwara Praban-dhak Committee (SGPC) provoked bitter debates. A recent Sup reme Court order limiting reservations in promotions among government employees sparked vigorous Dalit mobilisation, as well as threats from some employee organisations of upper caste counter-mobilisations.

The four gurdwaras and two temples in Pakhowal village map Punjab's caste terrain. Two gurdwaras are run by upper-caste Sikhs, and two by Dalit communities; both temples, too, are divided on caste lines. It is not as if either temples or gurdwaras would deny entry to members of other castes, but the fact remains they are segregated spaces. If caste tensions have never exploded in Punjab, it was perhaps because prosperity subsumed social tensions. With opportunity narrowing, this peace could soon be ques tioned.

[jaikaara]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=t9pDLj4qeHw

[jaikaara]

http://www.thehindu.com/todays-paper/punjabs-gandav-village-where-the-vicious-cycle-of-bonded-labour-prevails/article4011387.ece
Punjab’s Gandav village -- where the vicious cycle of bonded labour prevails

Bindu Shajan Perappadan

It is an illegal but accepted practice here to employ farm labourers and their family against a loan

PERNICIOUS PRACTICE:Jasbir Kaur with her son Gurpreet.— Photo: Bindu Shajan Perappadan

PERNICIOUS PRACTICE:Jasbir Kaur with her son Gurpreet.— Photo: Bindu Shajan Perappadan

The blaring gurdwara loudspeakers at Punjab’s Gandav village confirmed the worst fears of Jasbir Kaur. They were announcing that the recently-widowed young woman would lose the one-room shed she calls home if she was unable to pay back the Rs. 80,000 her husband had borrowed from the village landowner. With the home would go the hope for a life of dignity for her nine-year-old son Gurpreet.

Jasbir’s husband, Avtar Singh, had “sold” himself and his wife as bonded labourers against a loan of Rs. 45,000 four years ago, to the village landlord. He died this August leaving behind the unpaid debt.

“The fact that they [Jasbir Kaur and her husband] had worked for virtually no money and stale food at the landlord’s farms day and night did not help; the debt only accumulated interest,” says social activist Jai Singh who has been working in the area for the rescue and rehabilitation of bonded labour in Punjab for several decades now.

Sitting alongside Mr. Jai Singh, her son huddled against her, Ms. Kaur tells her story.

“Avtar Singh was often beaten up so brutally at work that he wouldn’t be able to stand up the next day. Then one day the landlord came and told me that my husband had committed suicide while at work. I got so frightened that they would now come after my son — as is a common practice in Punjab to replace an injured, dead worker with another male member from his family — that I decided to run away from the farm with my son. But last week my landlord found me and asked me to return his money with interest.”

Ms. Kaur says that she has now been ex-communicated from the village until she pays the landlord who has also “threatened to take away her utensils and broken cot — the only assets we owns”.

Mr. Jasbir Singh says Ms. Kaur is in fact lucky that her son hasn’t already been taken away. “It is an illegal but accepted practice in Punjab to employ labourers against a loan. These bonded labourers are paid almost no, or very little, salary and kept poor enough to be never able to pay back the landowner,” says Mr. Singh. “Despite laws and strict punishment, bonded labour continues to be widely followed across Punjab’s agricultural sector.”

He estimates that the State currently has five lakh bonded workers — men, women and children — struggling in abject poverty with no access to basic health care, education or social security.

In India, Haryana, Punjab and Uttar Pradesh continues to have the largest population of bonded labour according to report released by the National Human Rights Commission last year.

Says Manoj Verghese of International Justice Mission which along with Adivasi Solidarity Council and others will be soon launching a national advocacy campaign against bonded labour: “Lack of awareness and education among the bonded labours ensures that the schemes aimed specifically at their rescue and rehabilitation is not yielding results. Most still prefer to stay on in the farmlands with the assurance of at least one meal a day. Sadly even death isn’t able to rescue the families out of the vicious cycle with their children often being pushed into this vicious cycle to repay their father’s debt.”

[tonyhp32]

The problem is the end of the Jajmani or Laagi system which although not perfect worked well in the old days. The Landowners would get services such as labour in the fields, carpentry services etc in exchange for grain and other agricultural production. Later this transformed into a system where payment was made in cash. When the laagis started to turn their noses at work in the field and started to get financial benefits from the governments solely because they were low caste then the system broke down. Now it is a supply and demand system. When labour is short the labour can demand upwards to 400 rupees a day and food. With mechanisation there is less demand for labour and hence they get offered no work or low wages.

I would not take everything that is reported in the India media especially when so-called social activists are involved, In the villages I have visited the rate of labour even in the low season is not less than 300 rupees a day. If these things happen in some areas of Punjab then something needs to be done about it either by the government, political parties and the religious and social organisations.

[mamta mohan]

Hindu slaves:

http://www.salagram.net/Hindu-slaves.html

[karma]

Edited October 19, 2014 by karma

[dalsingh101]

The problem with too many Sikhs (especially jats) is that they proper ignore or play down caste abuse and try and project it as some Hindu problem that doesn't afflict Sikhs.

I guess that is what Hindus and Sikhs have in common; they both like to straight ignore unpleasant stuff going on in their societies. The situation gets sadly comical when one side tries to admonish the other for their failings as there is enough dirt on both sides to keep the mud slinging going on for eternity.

None of idiots actually think it is worth using their energy to confront the shameful things close to home and try and eradicate (or at least minimise them). Shame.

[ashok kalia]

How Indians went to Fiji. http://girmitunited.org/girmit/?page_id=2330

[ashok kalia]

http://www.dw.de/modern-day-slavery-widespread-in-india/a-17180433

[starchpagg47]

at 28.3 per cent - Dalits own just 2.54 per cent of the agricultural land.

Why they should own land when they are not warriors who defend it?

I know some Jatt and they are happy that this happens.

I too am against free welfare, we are supposed to work not get handout.

ਵਾਹਿਗੁਰੂ ਜੀ ਕਾ ਖਾਲਸਾ | ਵਾਹਿਗੁਰੂ ਜੀ ਕੀ ਫਤਹਿ | |

[Amandeep Hindustani]

The problem with too many Sikhs (especially jats) is that they proper ignore or play down caste abuse and try and project it as some Hindu problem that doesn't afflict Sikhs.

I guess that is what Hindus and Sikhs have in common; they both like to straight ignore unpleasant stuff going on in their societies. The situation gets sadly comical when one side tries to admonish the other for their failings as there is enough dirt on both sides to keep the mud slinging going on for eternity.

None of idiots actually think it is worth using their energy to confront the shameful things close to home and try and eradicate (or at least minimise them). Shame.

This is true of all communities not just Hindus and Sikhs.

[starchpagg47]

What I got from this was our ramdasya brothers were fine 10 year ago.

As poverty started to ruin our Punjab the owners became cruel.

The true blame lies with whoever messed up rural development.

Raja Dal Singh you should be more wise and not always look to the wealth of others (Jatts).

ਵਾਹਿਗੁਰੂਜੀਕਾਖਾਲਸਾ।ਵਾਹਿਗੁਰੂਜੀਕੀਫਤਹਿ।।

[dalsingh101]

This is true of all communities not just Hindus and Sikhs.

That's just a typical response to excuse it away and avoid dealing with the issue.

"Everyone else does it, so why should we be different!"

[Amandeep Hindustani]

That's just a typical response to excuse it away and avoid dealing with the issue.

"Everyone else does it, so why should we be different!"

My point was that all human beings usually like to ignore unpleasant issues. Usually because of fear, lack of solutions, general laziness or willful blindness. So in that sense Hindus and Sikhs are no different than Christians, Jews or Muslims.

[starchpagg47]

That's just a typical response to excuse it away and avoid dealing with the issue.

"Everyone else does it, so why should we be different!"

I am tarkhan I will beat u like Jatt beats u.

[ASJ]

Slavery in India when the country shows off its Mission to Mars?

http://thediplomat.com/2013/10/modern-day-slavery-indias-other-shame/

Edited October 25, 2014 by ASJ