by SARITA SARVATE
In 1971, V.S. Naipaul published a short story collection titled In a Free State. The first story is about an Indian domestic servant who accompanies his diplomat master to Washington, D.C. The man bundles up his belongings in a piece of cloth and rides the airplane where he squats on the toilet seat. In Washington, he sleeps outside his master’s “government sanctioned” apartment, until he finds a closet. “I will be able to make myself very comfortable,” he says. “I wouldn’t even hit my head on the ceiling.” He receives a monthly salary of one hundred rupees plus a “dearness allowance” of fifty, a concession to America.
With his fortnight’s pay of seven hundred and fifty cents—the exchange rate being ten cents to a rupee—the servant ventures out on to the streets of America, only to discover that all he can buy with his riches are cheap snacks.
When I first read this story, I cringed. “There goes Naipaul again,” I thought. But now I realize that the story, like any great literature, is fresh forty-five years later. In fact, it reads like a popular creative writing assignment in which students are asked to write fiction based on a newspaper headline.
I am talking of Devyani Khobragade, the Indian diplomat who exploited her domestic servant to such an extent that the United States government was forced to expel her from the consulate.
In the Naipaul story, the servant confesses, “I was a prisoner. I accepted this and adjusted.” Khobragade’s servant too no doubt accepted her reality, at least for a while. But it is 2014 now. We have in our hands a recent United Nations (UN) report, which ranks India at the top of its index of slavery. Of the 30 million slaves living worldwide, it turns out, 14 million are in India. A distant second is China, which, in spite of its larger population, has about a fifth of the slaves India has. The other countries that lag behind our esteemed nation are Pakistan, Nigeria, Ethiopia, Russia, Myanmar, and the Democratic Republic of Congo; in other words, poor nations with autocratic governments and with internal conflicts bordering on civil war.
“India exhibits the full spectrum of different forms of modern slavery,” the report says, “from severe forms of inter-generational bonded labor across various industries to the worst forms of child labor, commercial sexual exploitation, and forced and servile marriage.”
And still we claim to be one of the most advanced nations on earth, with an allegedly democratic government, a free press, a technologically advanced workforce, and an educated class that excels in art, literature, music, and spirituality?
India Currents for more
(Thanks to reader)