A MARCHER'S TESTIMONIAL
 THANGA RAJU, A slave turned citizen for solidarity

© Emmanuel LOUAIL

We met Thanga Raju as he gave a testimonial examining his life, which was spent in the charge of a camp that cared for youth from extremely marginalized families, organized by Ekta Parishad. This man, whose face is etched with traces of his painful experience, explained how individual and collective mobilization can lead to liberty and recognition of human rights.

" I was born into a family of bonded laborers who lived in the state of Tamil Nadu before settling in the state of Madya Pradesh, which has been situated in the middle of India for many generations. For reasons I don’t really know, my ancestors migrated towards the North looking for better living conditions and work.

My family really had nothing. We didn’t have a house, money, or land to cultivate.

When my parents arrived by chance in the village of Chandatta 300 kilometers from Bhopal, they asked for work in a mine because they didn’t know what else to do.

The property owner loaned my parents money so that our family could meet our basic needs. In exchange, they had to work for him until they had paid back their debt. That’s how they entered into a vicious, endless circle.

When I was born, my parents were still working the same job of breaking rocks with a sledge-hammer, in truly horrible conditions. With the system of astronomical interest rates imposed on them by the “zamindar” (boss), their debt had grown. Since this debt is inherited, from the age of ten I, in my turn, had to break rock.

Inhumane living and working conditions

I had to break 500 blocks of rock every day. This corresponded to my salary of 500 rupees a month, but nobody in my family was paid because the boss told us that it was paying off the debt! We found ourselves in the condition of bonded labor.

The zamindar had an arrangement with a street vendor to furnish us with 5 kilograms of rice per person, per week. The rice was our only food. Other than that, they gave us alcohol to help pass the gloominess of our workday, but especially to avoid having us try to revolt.

They also furnished us with old clothes, torn and dirty, so that we would have something to wear to work.

He never gave us money, he thought that then, we could never escape.

We often thought about escaping but the zamindar’s henchmen hit us, as soon as they found out that we wanted to leave.

Our women, our girls, were raped and beaten everyday, for the pleasure of the zamindar. If they didn’t suit him, they were forced to work just like us. It was despicable! These people were like “tigers.” They were inhuman and they destroyed our lives.

One day, I escaped alone, without anything, without anybody. I couldn’t take anymore of the torture that they subjected us to everyday. Besides, I couldn’t possibly find a worse situation then I was in now!

I lived off small, illegal jobs that allowed me to survive. I had to leave my entire family behind. I knew that we weren’t the only people in this situation. I heard that in a village near ours, there were eighty families living in conditions similar to ours. I decided to start my investigation right then.

During the next eight years, I alone met all across India 15,000 people that were in our situation. In each place that I went through and for each violation of rights, I collected testimonies (of the exact names of the villages and the precise conditions in which these people were living.)

One day, I met someone who told me that a certain man named Rajagopal fought for farmers without land and bonded workers. He told me that I had to go see him, to talk to him about my situation and my experience for the past eight years. Rajagopal told me that he would go alert the police.

Eight years after I left, my family was finally freed along with the 15,000 other people I had met. The “tigers” though, they still hadn’t been bothered by justice! Today, at forty-seven years old, I live with my family, near Pondichéry and I work with an organization.

So “Janadesh,” of course I’m going to be part of it! Look at the village where we are, everybody lives in the fields but nobody has “patas” (the right to own land.)

Nobody possesses this right to own land, so everybody works for a landowner!

I’m familiar with the situation in mines, and I know that in the state of Tamil Nadu, there are millions of people who live the same way in the rice fields. In other parts of the country, it’s the same thing!

One of India’s problems is that there is no single piece of legislation governing land access. There are several, and they sometimes contradict each other!

How do you make the “tigers” worried if there is nothing to prevent them from acting the way they do?

I know that “Janadesh” will change things a lot for these millions of people who have been humiliated and denied their rights. This type of “padyatra” (march) has already done a lot for the poor populations of India! We must struggle because this suffering can not last!”

Account taken by Emmanuel Louail
Translation from Tamil to French by K. Kumar
Nagappatinam- State of Tamil Nadu
August, 2006

English Translation Jordan Maril