From Malaria Eradication to Bonded Child Labour: A Counter-Intuitive Relationship

- Corey Black

Excerpt from a blog post published as part of the Advocacy Project on July 13, 2011. Read the full post here.

Can our seemingly altruistic actions, conversations, policies affect the progression of history in unintended ways, altering relations and behaviours of individuals, networks, or systems? Is equilibrium forever on the precipice, only needing a nudge to tip its fine balance, one way or another? Reference here is to the butterfly effect and chaos theory, where actions in one non-linear system can lead to larger changes down the road.

In Nepal’s terai (plains) southern region, the Tharu people have braved its tough climate and geography for some 600 years. Arriving from India, they had to clear its dense jungle to grow crops and defy its fearsome wildlife and virulent malarial mosquitoes. The few Tharu that survived and prospered had natural anti-malarial immunities, and were the only Nepalese that could survive in the terai year round – Darwinian evolution, epitomized. Other upper-caste Nepalese from the hills would come in the mosquito-free winter months for agriculture and hunting, but had to depart once the mosquitoes appeared in the hot springs and summers.

Researcher Thomas Cox notes that in the 1950s and ‘60s, USAID and other aid agencies implemented anti-malarial programs in the terai, mostly eradicating the disease from the region. As malaria vanquished, the upper and educated castes of Nepal’s hills moved in permanently, clearing and claiming most of the jungle’s remaining land. Once settled and organized in the region, the upper castes (including Brahmans, Chetri and Thakuri) forced most Tharus off their land, or took advantage of their illiteracy and tricked them into legally signing away their land, or using their land as debt collateral at inflated prices. All told, close to 80 percent of the Tharu had lost their land by 1980.

Without land and its means of production, the Tharu were helpless and took loans from the upper castes to pay for basics like food, medicine, clothes, etc. As a way of paying back the loans, Tharu were used as bonded or tenant labourers for meager wages of 10 to 20 rupees per day (15 to 25 cents). Tenant labourers were paid a small percentage of the crop towards the debt, while bonded labourers worked under similar conditions, but paying back debt incurred generations ago (reinforced by Nepal’s old legal code). As these labourers’ wages are so low, they’re forced to go further into debt with landlords and masters. And through this system of bondage, Tharu families send their children to work in the fields (kamaiya) or as domestic servants (kamalari) – robbing them of a childhood, friends, education, and chance of a brighter future.

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So, foreign aid flaps its altruistic wings on one side of the ocean, and causes a hurricane on the other, with the wreckage only beginning to be cleared. The innocence of eradicating one deadly disease leads to the robbery and enslavement of an indigenous people on their own land. Our grand actions from afar, schooled in our detached and isolated institutions, can often have disastrous unintended local consequences in foreign lands.

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Read the full post here.

Corey Black is a recent master’s graduate in international politics from the University of Edinburgh. His research interests lie in structural forces and power and political mobilization, along with environmental politics and policies. While at the Kathmandu-based Jagaran Media Center as an Advocacy Project Peace Fellow, Corey’s mandate is to help report, research, and expose the human rights abuses against the minority Dalit caste. 

Read more about Corey here

Durga Sob: Nepal’s trailblazing Dalit feminist

This interview-report first appeared in the New Internationalist, May 2010, Issue 432. You can find it online here [pdf file].

Durga Sob was just 10 when she realized she was from the Dalit, or ‘untouchable’, class of Nepal: ‘I drank from a water pot that other people used, and by sharing this water, I’d made it ‘unclean’. I was screamed at and chased away. I told my mother and she said: “God made us Dalit, that’s just the way it is.” It was then I knew the pain of being a Dalit, and had to do something to change things.’ The injustices experienced during her childhood in the remote village of Silgadi in western Nepal inspired Durga to found the Feminist Dalit Organization (FEDO) to fight against caste and gender discrimination.

“I felt it was no good if I were the only one who was educated; I had to educate others”

Nepal is one of the poorest countries in Asia and Dalits represent around 20 per cent of the population. The term ‘Dalit’, chosen by the community itself, means ‘broken people’, and although caste discrimination was outlawed in 1963, its practice remains widespread. Dalits are considered polluting and suffer an apartheid of segregation: ‘[We] are often denied proper housing, access to healthcare and other public services, like use of water taps and temples,’ says Durga. ‘Dalit women suffer a triple oppression, and are at the bottom of the pile. As women they’re second-class citizens anyway, but as Dalits they’re subjected to social exclusion, and as the poorest group in Nepal, they experience chronic poverty.’ Indeed, more than 90 per cent of Dalit women live below the poverty line and life expectancy is just 51 years, as opposed to a national average of 59. Education is also denied to many Dalits. Around 80 per cent of Dalit women are illiterate and the first milestone Durga achieved was being admitted to school: ‘My mother, a wonderful woman, encouraged me, despite everyone saying she was wasting her money.’ Dalit girls traditionally work at home and are married young. Despite continual discrimination and bullying, Durga completed school by the age of 16. Realizing that she was equal to her classmates, and again breaking Dalit rank, she started teaching English to other Dalits: ‘I felt it was no good if I were the only one who was educated; I had to educate others. I would bring all the girls to my home and teach them. After this, many went to school and completed their education.’

Moving to Kathmandu when she was 19 years old, Durga started working for ActionAid and it was here that she met the US feminist Robin Morgan and told her about the situation for Dalit women. Although there were many projects which were working to empower Nepali women, none had been initiated to address Dalit women’s specific issues. Morgan encouraged Durga to form FEDO in 1994. The early days were difficult: ‘We needed seven Dalit women on the board before we could register FEDO and it was hard to find educated and committed Dalit women, they were so oppressed.’ Moreover, women in urban areas did not wish to expose themselves as Dalit. Durga also experienced prejudice from other women activists: ‘High caste women would not accept us and I was routinely excluded.’

Durga was, however, used to chronic discrimination and continued to strive for inclusion: ‘Initially, FEDO was small and focused on informal education and income-generation programmes. We began our work in the Lalitput district and held literacy classes for 50 elderly women. These were successful, so later we focused on formal education, health, sanitation, advocacy and awareness.’  FEDO now works in 45 districts in Nepal and has 40,000 members. Some 3,000 Dalit children were sent to school after FEDO’s school enrolment campaign. In addition, 50 Dalit health workers have been trained, 5,000 women have benefited from microfinance programmes, and 2,000 Dalit women’s groups have been established. Nepal is, however, a country in recovery after 10 years of a civil war which ended in 2007, and because of their perceived association with the Maoist guerrillas, the Dalit community bore the brunt of the violence. Dalit women are particularly vulnerable to all forms of gender violence, including domestic abuse, trafficking for prostitution and rape as a weapon of war. In response to this, FEDO began working in partnership with the British-based organization Womankind to establish healing and support units for Dalit women survivors of violence. There are now four centres and almost 1,800 women have benefited: ‘The healing centres have seen an overwhelming response and for the first time, Dalit women have been able to break the taboo of talking about the violence they’ve experienced. Many now understand that violence doesn’t have to be a part of their everyday lives.’

Also crucial to empowerment is education around rights, and FEDO makes use of CEDAW, the international bill of rights for women, as legislative support: ‘We provide training for women about how to file cases to police to ensure that they have equal access to justice,’ explains Durga. ‘Women often immediately practise what they have learnt and CEDAW is seen as a basis on which to fight back against oppression. This is a vast shift in perception for Dalit women.’

The current post-war situation in Nepal, as well as being a time of challenge, also represents an opportunity for the community. Following the 2006 Peace Agreement, political parties are currently formulating a new constitution for the country: ‘Up until now, in terms of participation and representation, there have been no Dalit women in positions of power. However, this is changing: 25 Dalit women have been elected as members of the Constituent Assembly and this is one my happiest achievements. The constitution-making process is a unique opportunity to ensure that the constitution will guarantee equality and, for the first time in Nepali history, Dalit women are represented in political processes.’ Durga’s pride is palpable: ‘It’s taken 15 years, and it’s still early days, but FEDO has created an environment where Dalit women have started to see themselves as respectable citizens.’

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Durga Sob spoke with Claire Colley for the New Internationalist (NI). According to the description here [pdf file], the NI workers’ co-operative exists to report on issues of world poverty and inequality; to focus attention on the unjust relationship between the powerful and the powerless worldwide; to debate and campaign for the radical changes necessary to meet the basic needs of all; and to bring to life the people, the ideas and the action in the fight for global justice.

Comparative Contexts of Discrimination: Caste and Untouchability in South Asia

Excerpts from the paper by Surinder S. Jodhka & Ghanshyam Shah, Working Paper Series, Volume IV, Number 05, 2010
Indian Institute of Dalit Studies, New Delhi

Read the full paper here
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Breaking ranks with the Government of India, the foreign minister of Nepal, Jeet Bahadur Darjee Gautam during a meeting of the United Nations in September 2009, welcomed the inclusion of caste based discrimination against Dalits as a case of human rights violation, to be treated at par with the racial discrimination. This move of the Nepalese government opened-up way for implementing the proposal mooted by the UNHRC to involve “regional and international mechanism, the UN and its organs” to complement national efforts to combat caste based discrimination.
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While caste indeed has a religious dimension and it finds legitimacy in religious texts of the Hindus, it is also a socio-economic system[1] which shaped local economies, social and cultural entitlements and political regimes. In other words caste was much more than an ideological system. The idea of caste and associated social and economic structures persisted with varied religious tradition of the South Asian region.
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Similarly, the Sinhala Buddhist communities of Sri Lanka seem to defy the theological position of their faith. Even when no one is “unclean” in the sacred meaning of the term, social anthropologists have documented the presence of caste like hierarchies, identification of occupations with social groups and even “outside untouchables” (Banks 1960; Leach 1960; Ryan 1993).
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However, it is the colonial constructs and theoretical models of caste that continue to dominate not only the popular but also academic imagining of caste. Even the leaders of nationalist movements in the subcontinent accepted this colonial common-sense on caste quite uncritically. Thus when the new states were formed, of India, Pakistan and even Sri Lanka, it was only India which had Hindu majority, recognised the need to deal with caste and untouchability and made provisions for the uplift of those who had been kept out of the system, the untouchable whom the colonial rulers had designated as Scheduled Castes.
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Though caste continues to be an important category of kinship and community classifications in Pakistan, Dalit question is a little more complicated there. Given that the term Scheduled Caste is still officially used for the “untouchable” communities of its small Hindu minority and that almost the entire Christian population of the country are converts from Dalit Chuhras of Punjab, caste question gets closely entangled with the minority question in Pakistan. However, quite like Bangladesh, caste and untouchability also exists among the Muslims of Pakistan. Though the mainstream Islamic ideology completely denies any place to caste in Pakistan, its presence, in the form of social intercourse, birth based occupation, segregation in residence and taboo in social relationship is very widely recognised and plays an important role in structuring kinship and political economy of the country (see Alavi 1972; Gazdar 2007). Popular categories with which Dalits of Pakistan are identified are not completely alien to Indians. For example Mochi (cobblers), Pather (brick maker), and Bhangi (sweeper) are mostly Muslims and considered “lower” castes on the basis of their family occupation, regardless of their religion. There are other titles, such as Musalman Sheikhs, Mussalis (both used for Muslim Dalits) and Masihi (Christians) universally refer to specific groups of people, also identified with specific occupation and used to segregate them from the rest as “untouchable” groups. It is not only the Dalits who are identified through caste names. Others too have caste names and maintain caste boundaries…

One of the most striking features of South Asia is the association of Dalit communities with certain types of jobs. For example, the cleaning of streets and latrines, dealing with dead animals, casual and bonded labour on land are almost everywhere identified with Dalit communities. Not only are these low status jobs, invariably they are also low paid jobs. Another common feature of Dalit life in these four countries is their residential segregation. They seem to be either living in segregated settlements away from the main village, or in the urban slums where living conditions are generally poor. The experience of untouchability and discrimination was also a shared reality but its details varied.
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The pre-colonial Sri Lankan state was built around caste-based privileges of the ruling elite and hereditary and mandatory caste services of the bottom layers in society. Unlike the Hindu caste system founded on the basis of religious notions of purity and pollution, the caste systems in Sri Lanka have relied more on a kind of secular ranking upheld by the state, land ownership and tenure, religious organisations and rituals, and firmly-rooted notions of inherent superiority and
inferiority. The official requirement and support to the caste systems has indeed eroded over the years but the state has also turned a blind eye to the deprivations caused by caste discrimination. The militant Tamil movement led by LTTE also imposed a ban on the practice of caste for consolidating Tamil identity, which only turned it into a kind of underground reality, not to be confronted openly through politics and policy.
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Dalits in Bangladesh also face discrimination in political sphere as well as in civic life. Many of them reported that they were not treated well even by the doctors and nurses in hospitals and clinics. They were also not allowed entry into their houses. The Hindu Dalits faced much more discrimination in religious life. They were not allowed entry into temples and were discouraged from participating in religious/community functions. Though in past some sections of Muslim Dalit
communities such as Lalbegi, Abdal and Bediya, (popularly known as Arzal), engaged in occupations such as toilet cleaning and garbage collection were often not allowed entry into mosques, there seemed to be no such restriction in place any longer. However, otherwise, the condition of Muslim Dalits did not seem to be any better than those of the Hindu Dalits. The number of Muslim Dalits complaining about practice of untouchability against them in tea shops was much higher (around 40 per cent) than the Hindu Dalits (around 15 per cent). Same was the case with having access to hotel rooms. Access to water from public and private sources was also denied to both categories of Dalits.
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Caste and religion have always been interwoven in complex ways. While Hinduism has often been seen, and rightly so, to provide a theological justification to caste hierarchy, the Pakistani state uses Islamic identity and ideology to completely deny the presence of caste in the social and economic life of country even when caste-based identities and caste related discrimination are quite rampant in the country, including among the Muslims. Such official denial of caste also works to the double disadvantage of the Hindu and Christian Dalits of Pakistan. While being members of a small religious minority, they confront a hostile majoritarian state and civil society; being Dalits they also remain marginalised within their own religious communities.
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Caste divisions and differences have perhaps not been as strong in countries like Sri Lanka, Bangladesh or Pakistan as they have been in India, or in some of its regions. However, unlike India, there has been no recognition of their special situation as socially excluded and deprived. Since the states in these countries do not recognise caste, they also do not collect data on their numbers and around variables of their economic status. In contrast the state policies have played a critical role in producing Dalit elite, which has played an important role in articulating Dalit aspirations and identity. No such process is visible anywhere else in South Asia. In this context Gellner’s  observation made about Nepal is worth quoting. Writing in 1995, Gleener observed:

… Nepalese state has so far taken no measures of positive discrimination in favour of those disadvantaged by the caste system, as have long been in place in India. Thus, in spite of the changes… it remains true that traditions, practices and ideas which have long been rendered controversial in India are still in Nepal relatively uncontested parts of everyday life (Gellner 1995:2).
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Read the full paper here

Footnote [1] For example, some scholars stress that the origin of caste system lay in the nature of agrarian production and generous of surplus in early agrarian system (see Klass 1980; Yurlova 1989). Similarly, some others have pointed to primacy of the political in structuring caste hierarchies in India (see Raheja 1988; Quigley, D. 1993)

Inter-caste marriages in Nepal

Excerpts from an article on the Global Press Institute website

Article found via the Inter-Caste blog intended to ‘end inter-caste and intra-caste caste apartheid in Nepal’

Inter-caste Newlyweds Face Eviction, Discrimination in Nepal

by Tara Bhattarai, Senior Reporter, Tuesday – August 17, 2010

 
KATHMANDU, NEPAL – “Love recognizes no barriers. It jumps hurdles and leaps fences,” says Sunita Sahi, 19, as she looks out the window of a bus. Her gaze falls on a young couple, kissing. “We were also in [an] affair,” she says, gesturing to her husband who sits next to her, caressing her hand. “But our families and society did not accept us.”

Sahi married Bimal Auji, 22, one year ago.

Sahi has a fair complexion, an oval face and a slim body. Her looks give away her caste. She is a member of the Thakuri caste. Sahi is from Kanchanpur in the far-western district of Nepal, nearly 400 miles from Kathmandu. Today, she and Auji live in Kathmandu. Auji is also from Kanchanpur, but he comes from a different background. To Sahi’s family, he is “untouchable.”
When news spread that a lower-caste man had proposed to an upper-caste woman, Sahi says her parents were determined to prevent the wedding.

“But our love was like an unbreakable chain,” Sahi says. “Nobody could separate us despite [the] torture,” she says as Auji shows the scars on his arms and hands — remnants of a fight where a group of villagers, including Sahi’s brothers, attacked him.

“I don’t care about the attacks by her family, I only care for her,” Auji says.

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One year ago, Sahi and Auji left home without informing their parents. They eloped in India. Both families found out about the marriage a week later when the couple returned to Kanchanpur. Immediately, Sahi and Auji began receiving threats from Sahi’s family.

“I was physically attacked by relatives of my wife’s maternal home three times,” Auji says. “They even threatened to kill [me] if I did not leave Sahi.”

Auji says his family members are not against the marriage.

As the threats continued, the couple decided to leave their village.

“I sobbed my heart out for days when we left our village for a far-off place, leaving all our relatives,” Sahi says. “Had my family not gone against my will to marry the guy whom I loved to bits, we would have happily stayed there.”

The couple moved to Kathmandu and found themselves in a position similar to many other inter-caste couples – evicted from their homes and villages. Jagaran Media Centre, JMC, an NGO working for Dalit rights, recently released a report that revealed that dozens of couples were forced to leave their homes and villages in 2008 after marrying a member of a different caste. According to the report, there is no data available about this issue on the national scale.

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*After the publication of this story, both Sahi and Auji got jobs and their case received national attention. A television documentary was made on their story and the prime minister’s special cell on violence against women has taken this case.

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Read the full article here