HIGH SPIRITS: The Broken and Crushed
Aitken, Jonathan
HIGH SPIRITS The Broken and Crushed by Jonathan Aitken D URING THE 200TH ANNIVERSARY celebrations of the abolition of the slave trade by William Wilberforce and his fellow campaigners, many...
...They are described by various humiliating terms in the languages of India, 56 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR JUNE 2007 but they call themselves Dalits—a name that derives from a Sanskrit word meaning “broken” or “crushed...
...Devadasi, or temple prostitutes, serve as concubines for priests and are common property for male visitors to the temple...
...It is a most appropriate label, because throughout history Dalits have been compelled to perform the most lowly, menial, dangerous, and degrading forms of labor in Indian society...
...A charge of 21st-century apartheid against the world’s largest democracy is an extremely serious matter...
...Unfortunately, this constitutional ban on untouchability is undermined by the practical realities of the caste system, which continues to direction of Michael Lawson, some of the most harrowing scenes were shot in Pipe Village near Hyderabad, a Dalit community on the outskirts of the city where thousands of families live in discarded wasteflourish, particularly in rural India...
...water pipes...
...Dalits are also the poorest Indians, often living below the International Poverty Line of $1 per day...
...A recent government report, Untouchability As for commercial sexual exploitation, in Rural India, shows that all the worst features Dalit women are among the worst of discrimination against the Dalits are as bad as ever...
...in 64 percent they were denied entry into places of worship...
...In April I attended the world premiere in London of a documentary film designed to arouse international concern for the plight of the Dalits...
...Finally, Brahma created a fourth varna from his feet that became the Sudra caste of manual laborers...
...In what numbers...
...As Martin Luther King said, “Riots are the voice of the unheard...
...There are over 250 million of them spread across India...
...These unfortunate women, whose children often work as prostitutes too, are perhaps the most poignant example of the paradox faced by Dalit Devadasis, for they are treated as untouchables yet exploited in the most intimate way through sexual intercourse...
...in 73 percent of the villages they were not allowed to enter the houses of non-Dalits...
...and in 36 percent they were denied entry into shops...
...In theory they have had some legal protection since passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1976, which was intended to end the untouchables’ obligation to perform JONATHAN AITKEN degrading forms of labor and to allow them access to all public amenities...
...The women work too, some as Devadasi prostitutes and many more as excrement cleaners—the traditional hereditary forced labor of the untouchable Dalits...
...In which specific countries and situations...
...Ruthless creditors impose such penal interest rates and conditions on them that Dalit debtors are unable to repay the loan and their debts pass to succeeding generations...
...This is frequently the only way landless Dalits can obtain loan finance...
...His biographies include Charles W. Colson: A Life Redeemed (Doubleday) and Nixon: A Life, now available in a new paperback edition (Regnery...
...As for commercial sexual exploitation, Dalit women are among the worst treated in the world, thanks to the large number of them trapped in the Devadasi system...
...They were “untouchables” in old speak, now internationally known as the Dalits...
...HIGH SPIRITS The Broken and Crushed by Jonathan Aitken D URING THE 200TH ANNIVERSARY celebrations of the abolition of the slave trade by William Wilberforce and his fellow campaigners, many contemporary commentators have asserted that the abomination of slavery is still defiling our 21st-century world...
...State Department’s 2006 report treated in the world, thanks to the Trafficking in Persons highlights India as one of the worst countries “for men, women, and children trafficked for the purposes of forced or bonded labor and commercial sexual exploitation...
...Most of them work under bonded labor conditions seven days a week on alternate 12-hour day and 12-hour night shifts...
...If so, where...
...They face innumerable forms of discrimination, segregation, and exploitation that are so vile and so institutionalized that the treatment of the Dalits is often described as “India’s apartheid...
...An unexpected side effect of the bicentennial anniversary of the abolition of the slave trade is that from now on the enslaved voices of the Dalits will become much more widely heard both internationally and domestically...
...H ARSH FORMS OF DISCRIMINATION for Dalits are not confined to Devadasis or debtors...
...There is no education for the children of Pipe Village, so many of them work as child laborers...
...Today it is estimated that about 30 million Dalits are forced to work as bonded laborers, often as cleaners and carriers of excrement...
...At least one million of them are child laborers...
...The many millions of Dalits in these categories are mainly those whose bonded labor is a consequence of a loan secured against the labor of a whole family...
...JUNE 2007 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR 57...
...Is this true...
...The government of India is not listening to this campaign yet...
...Requests for such further and better particulars are all too often met with vague generalizations rather than hard facts...
...They are allowed one day off a month...
...However, a fifth group of people falls below this system altogether...
...But it will soon as the charges of “slavery” and “apartheid” begin to ring round the world, and as militant groups of young Dalit men in India continue to protest against their plight with riots...
...On a national scale, Dalits are discriminated against in schooling, resulting in a 60 percent illiteracy rate for them compared to a 30 percent rate for all other Indians...
...Under the skillful large number of them trapped in the Devadasisystem...
...The Dalits are the untouchables of India’s caste system...
...Michael Lawson’s documentary was seen at its premiere in a major Leicester Square cinema by an influential audience invited by Christian Solidarity Worldwide—of which I am now president...
...The origins of the Dalits’ servitude has its roots in Hindu scriptures, which classify people into four Varna groups corresponding to the parts of the body of the Hindu god, Brahma, from whom they were created...
...The Brahmins, who were created from Brahma’s mouth, became the highest and ritually pure, priestly caste...
...Officially they are known as “Scheduled Castes” or “Scheduled Tribes...
...This is the tragic plight of the Dalits in India...
...In the Q&A session after the screening there were tears, anger, and a widespread determination to start a campaign that will move the enslavement of the Dalits to a high profile position on the international human rights agenda...
...Amazingly, there is one such contemporary slavery situation to which a normally respected democratic government turns a blind and uncaring eye...
...Yet, however shameful these individual situations of human bondage may be, they do not usually equate to the systematic African slavery of the 18th century, which was characterized by the horrors of the middle passage and the degradation of slave auctions...
...The U.S...
...Under unpleasant employers in lawless regimes, many male workers have their human rights violated...
...The Kshatriyas—the warrior and administrative caste—were created from his arms, and the Vaishyas—the commercial caste—from his torso...
...It is no exaggeration to say that all of us who watched the emotionally traumatic interviews with the ostracized Devadasis, or the physically disgusting work scenes with the excrement cleaners, or the cruel exploitation of the child laborers, were left shocked...
...So are there any examples of modern slavery that a latter-day Wilberforce might be able to abolish through the processes of parliamentary campaigning and the pressures of public opinion on an accountable democracy...
...Of course, no one denies that across our planet hundreds of thousands of women are trapped in exploitative sexual relationships that range from child prostitution to racial subjugation...
...According to the Untouchability in Rural India report, a census in Maharashtra state showed that in 48 percent of the villages Dalits were not allowed to use the central well or water supply...
...Jonathan Aitken, The American Spectator’s High Spirits columnist, is the author of John Newton: From Disgrace to Amazing Grace, to be published in June by Crossway Books...
Vol. 40 • June 2007 • No. 5
