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Before and After Freedom
-Tim Whyte, BASE
If the families are resettled on land where they
can feed themselves and their families, the cycle of poverty and
dependence may end. Otherwise, freedom will remain a struggle, and
for many, a dream.
A few weeks after the government declared the
bonded laborers free and their debts waived, a group of landowners
have challenged the decision in court. Seeking precedent in
Chandra Shumsher’s abolition of slavery, they claim that they
should receive compensation just as slave-owners did some 75 years
ago. This strikes me as a particularly twisted use of history. But
then these days many people are referring to Nepal’s original
emancipation. Perhaps we cannot help but look back as we try to
understand what freedom means at the beginning of the 21st
century. Was Chandra Shumsher, the autocratic ruler who
none-the-less campaigned for freedom, not thorough enough in
stamping out slavery? Were the slaves freed then offered
rehabilitation? These are good questions. They should be asked.
There are lessons to be learned from history. Let us look closely
at the past, starting with the question of compensation raised in
the current court case.
The landowners from Kailali are forgetting an
important difference between the recent freedom declaration and
the abolition of slavery under Chandra Shumsher. Before Chandra
Shumsher abolished slavery it was fully legal to own slaves. In
contrast, the current freedom declaration is simply announcing the
government’s intention of implementing the laws against bonded
labor. It has long been illegal to “own” bonded laborers. In
publicly admitting to keeping bonded laborers, the landowners
filing the case are opening themselves to fines and up to 10 years
of imprisonment under the National Civil Code paragraph that
predates the July 17th declaration of freedom. Their claims that
they took bank loans to buy kamaiyas are similar to suggesting
that one took a loan to buy illegal arms or contraband and was
caught. Funds taken from a bank may or may not have been diverted
for these purposes, but that fault - in fact, that crime - rests
with the individual, not with the bank or the state. Surely, a
smuggler who was caught would not have the temerity to ask for
compensation?
If we consider the
amount of money that landowners would have had to pay their
laborers under prevalent salaries, the arithmetic will almost
always come out in favor of the landowner. They have profited for
years, sometimes generations, from the system of bonded labor. In
comparison, the families of freed bonded laborers that are living
on the streets of Dhangadi bazaar these days have nothing to show
for a lifetime of labor. Here is a better parallel to the original
abolition of slavery. Looking at the displaced Kamaiyas today, I
cannot help but think of the story told to me by an old man from
Bhojpur. As a boy, in 1926, he saw the local landowners gathered
together on the parade ground to receive compensation: “The slaves
were told ‘Now you are free shiva bhaktis’ (slaves).’ The maliks
(masters) returned to their homes with their money but the shiva
bhaktis were left there to decide where to go. They had no money,
no property, and no food. Some ended up going back to their
master’s houses, others left for other places.” The lesson to be
taken from Chandra Shumsher’s abolition is this: the people who
were most in need, who had been exploited for years, were
abandoned to fend for themselves, while the local landowners were
compensated. The fundamental problems that lay behind slavery in
Rana-era Nepal- unequal land distribution, highly partial local
government authority, and caste discrimination - were left
untouched in the government’s emancipation of the slaves.
Those who remember their history text books may
object that Chandra Shumsher did give land to freed slaves after
abolition. College courses in Nepal still teach that the
government resettled people in Amalekhgunj, literally Emancipation
place. I would encourage students to go to the highway town and
ask the locals themselves. Few people there have heard this story.
The occasional old people who remember, say that only about sixty
families settled in what was then a railway town in the middle of
the Tarai jungle. All of them had died from malaria or moved away
within ten years. So what happened to Nepal’s 50,000 freed slaves?
Many stayed on with their previous owners, working more or less
like they had done before. Some moved on poor quality land on the
outskirts of villages. A few families managed to work their way on
to irrigated land of their own. For the most part, however, the
freed slaves remained poor and marginalised. It is likely that
among the bonded laborers “freed” last month in the hills, there
are quite a few descendants of slaves freed under Chandra Shumsher.
(The Tharu Kamaiyas of Tarai plains are of course a different
story.)
In the end, the fate
of the freed bonded laborers will be decided not by the
declaration in Kathmandu, but by the rehabilitation programs that
follow in the days to come. If the families are resettled on land
where they can feed themselves and their families, the cycle of
poverty and dependence may end. Otherwise, freedom will remain a
struggle, and for many, a dream. Fundamentally, the bonded labor
problem has always been a problem of access to land. Without
rights to land or an independent livelihood, freedom itself will
not mean much. Take as an example the history of freedom in United
States of America. Much of America’s wealth today has its roots in
slavery. Over a period of 300 years, between 12 and 20 million
black people were taken from Africa to the New World to work as
slaves. (Think about it — that is as much as the entire population
of Nepal!) They worked on great plantations, making white
landowners very wealthy and supporting the creation of industries
that continue to drive the American economy today. When they were
finally freed after a bloody civil war in the 1860s, American
politicians also discussed rehabilitation. The slaves were
promised 40 acres and a mule each with which to start a new life.
But in the end the freed slaves never received anything. With
nowhere to go, many stayed on working as share croppers on the
same fields that they had worked on as slaves. Almost one hundred
years later, in the 1950s, Martin Luther King, Jr. and other civil
rights activists were still struggling for equal rights and
dignity. Many people have said that the deep social inequality
that persists in American society to this day is partly a result
of the fact that rehabilitation was never carried through.
A researcher on the kamaiya system told me of an
interaction she had with a prominent landowner from Kailali,
before the Kamaiya Freedom Movement started. He said that the
media and the human rights organizations were so unhappy with the
Kamaiya system. It caused him a lot of trouble. Couldn’t she think
of another name for his workers, so they would leave him alone?
Well, now the human rights organizations, the media, and indeed
the Kamaiyas themselves, have succeeded in persuading the
government that the Kamaiya system and other forms of bonded labor
are in fact illegal. It is step towards providing people with a
more dignified life. Let us hope that the government takes the
historic opportunity to provide land to the free cultivators.
Their own land under their feet will insure that the bonded
laborers’ freedom is more than a new name for an age-old
condition.
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