Mr. Chairman and members of the committee, I want to thank you for the privilege and honour of testifying before you on a very important subject that is related not only to India and its people, but also to the whole world.
We all know that for the past 60 years India has had a thriving democracy, great institutions of law, a tremendous judiciary, a great executive, and development on many fronts. As an Indian, I am very proud of the progress that we have made in the last 60 years and where we stand in the community of nations. I am very proud of all of the instruments of government that are available for executing law and justice.
However, we do have a huge social disease. It is called the caste system. Coming out of the caste system we have a group of people--formerly known as the untouchables, today known as the Dalits--who have been called human history's longest-standing slaves. Those of us who are aware know that caste is the socio-economic stratification of people in South Asia and in India.
Untouchability is a practice that our constitution outlawed in article 17, because it is a practice that is so heinous and so deplorable that it consigns 25% of our population by birth to a discriminatory status in society. There are nearly 180 million of scheduled caste, or untouchables, in India, and another 70 million tribals, all of them lumped outside the caste system and without rights of many kinds.
Let me illustrate for you the current problem we have with the Dalits in India. Every week 13 Dalits are murdered. Every week six Dalit homes are burned. Every day six Dalits are abducted and kidnapped. Every day three Dalit women are raped, and a crime is committed with impunity against Dalits every 18 minutes of the day.
We have stated that when it comes to the issue of modern slavery and degradation of human beings, the Dalits today stand as human history's and civilization's last-standing slave system. While we have the laws forbid untouchability, in practice, in the vast number of cases, there is neither enforcement of the law nor a change in the prejudiced attitude of society, and the fate of these millions continues to become worse as the decades go on.
Most of you here have probably seen Slumdog Millionaire, which won several Oscars and many other awards, including awards at the Toronto International Film Festival. Most of the Dalits in India are from the slumdog world. About 70% of India at this present time lives on less than one dollar a day. We have two Indias: the India that's shining, and the India of Slumdog Millionaire. By and large, a vast percentage of the Dalit people make up the world of the slumdog millionaire.
What is particularly terrifying and heartbreaking is that these same Dalits who are untouchables in every way--that is, with no access to religious places or to drinking water from the village well, with double the seating system in schools, and suffering from discrimination in the workplace and in the village, since every village is two villages--these same Dalits are the primary victims of human trafficking in India.
I want to point out to this committee that on the issue of human trafficking, India stands as the single largest nation where human trafficking is going on. In 2005, a U.S. State Department report said that India is the source, destination, and transit country for men, women, and children trafficked for the purpose of forced or bonded labour and commercial sexual exploitation. Here is the stark statistic: 2.3 million women and girls are trafficked in India for the sex trade. Out of that, 67% are Dalit women and girls, who are bought and sold in the sex trade. When it comes to bonded labour and bonded slavery, it's very difficult to give the statistics, but Human Rights Watch contends that there are anywhere between 20 million and 60 million bonded slaves and labourers in India, mostly children.
This problem of untouchability, Dalit discrimination, and caste discrimination has been going on for nearly 2,000 years. A great and noble effort was made by the founding fathers of our nation to deal with this problem through the constitutional banning of untouchability; later, privileges of affirmative action were given to the Dalits through the scheduled castes and scheduled tribes legislation. What do we find, 60 years on, since independence? A minuscule Dalit population has profited from the affirmative action. A minuscule population has found some protection, but for the vast majority nothing has changed.
A devastating report created by ActionAid in 2005 showed that 80% of India's villages not only practise but enforce--I repeat, enforce--the practice of untouchability. After years of campaigning, in New Delhi in 2007 the current Prime Minister of India, Dr. Manmohan Singh, became the first prime minister to publicly admit, in a Dalit conference, that the problem of untouchability is equal to the problem of apartheid in South Africa.
If you forget whatever I've said today, please do not forget that statement: the problem of untouchability in India is equal to the problem of apartheid in South Africa. The only difference, and it's a big difference, is that far more people are affected by this practice; as I said, it is 250 million, compared to those millions who suffered under the apartheid system in South Africa.
In closing this presentation, I have quotes from two men. One, the father of the Dalit liberation movement and a contemporary of Mahatma Gandhi, writing in the The New York Times, said in 1934:
The world will abolish the problem of slavery as seen in the West, but it will not be that easy to demolish the problem of untouchability. It will take nothing less than the concerted and united opinion of the whole world to bring an end to untouchability, India's modern slavery.
That is one statement, honourable members of this committee. The other statement is from another parliamentarian in the British Parliament 200 years ago. He was the man who fought and brought an end to the cross-Atlantic slave trade, William Wilberforce, a contemporary of Prime Minister Pitt. He proclaimed 200 years ago in the British Parliament that caste discrimination is “a system at war with truth and nature”.
It is at war with truth. What truth? The equality of all human beings.
What is it at war with, in terms of nature? It denies to another human being, just on the basis of birth and heredity and ensuing occupation, the equal freedoms we all enjoy as human beings.
Thank you very much.