KATHMANDU, NEPAL – Kamala Bhul, 15, is in Kathmandu, the nation’s capital, for the first time. She is bewildered to see the lights that bedazzle the city, the streets and the stretch of vehicular traffic, which she had previously only heard of.
As she slips under a blanket on the second floor of Anand Guest House, her temporary shelter in central Kathmandu, the tall, slim, soft-spoken teenager says she came to the capital from Baitadi, a district on Nepal’s western border, for medical treatment.
The daughter of a freed haliya, or bonded laborer, Kamala says she hasn’t been able to walk properly for eight years after she fell and hurt her right knee. She says her mother advised her to put a hot compress on it, which was ineffective but all her family could afford.
“I didn’t have any option when my mother told me she had no money for my treatment,” Kamala says.
Thanks to a nongovernmental organization, NGO, she is now in the capital city receiving treatment after almost a decade. But she says that when she returns home, the same financial woes will be waiting for her.
The story of her family’s haliya status dates decades back to when her father, Khuile Bhul, wanted to buy a winter coat when he was 25. His wealthy landlord, Padma Singh Bhandari, said Bhul could become a haliya and work at his house to earn the coat and a small piece of land. Bhul jumped at the chance to earn his coat, but the decision cost him the remaining 40 years of his life. The 25-year-old died at age 65 before paying off the coat and land.
“After my father’s death, the landlord abducted both the land and my father’s coat,” Kamala says, her eyes moistening. “We are in distress.”
Kamala’s brother, Harish Bhul, was forced to become a bonded laborer to pay off his father’s debts. Today he is a free man, thanks to a 2008 declaration by the government freeing all haliyas, but he still hasn’t been able to free his family from their economic distress.
Kamala says that both her mother and brother work menial labor jobs in order to provide for the family. Despite the haliya tradition’s revocation, she says the fierce poverty it has caused continues to enslave her family.
Without their own land or an independent source of income, haliyas continue to work for their landlords for little or no wages to pay off their loans or the debts from past generations. The government declared all haliyas free in 2008, but haliyas and advocates say that without policies to rehabilitate the haliyas or to grant them the land they have worked on, little has changed. As families continue to struggle to escape the slavery of their past, even the government admits little has been done.
The Nepali dictionary defines a haliya as someone who ploughs fields as a source of income, does hard labor and comes home late for dinner. According to the National Haliya Freedom Society Federation, an organization advocating for haliyas’ freedom and rights in Nepal, haliyas are people who have been forced to work in their landlords’ houses and fields for the debts their forefathers couldn’t repay.
Although Nepal abolished forced bonded labor, or slavery, in 1925, bonded labor, or the haliya tradition, is a residue that has continued the centuries-old practice. The International Labor Organization includes Nepal’s haliya tradition in its categories of forced labor.
In Nepal’s Far-Western and Mid-Western districts, such as Kanchanpur, Dadeldhura, Baitadi, Doti, Bajhang, Bajura and Darchula, there are still more than 20,000 haliyas and more than 100,000 families affected by the haliya tradition, says Chakta BK, coordinator of the National Haliya Freedom Society Federation.
“This has become a tradition, and thousands of people are getting exploited in the name of it,” BK says.
In the Far-Western and Mid-Western regions, 97 percent of the haliyas are from the Dalit community, the lowest caste in Nepal commonly referred to as the “untouchable” caste, according to a 2009 study by local social organizations in coordination with Lutheran World Federation Nepal, an international NGO engaged in development and humanitarian projects. Of 2,176 haliyas in 56 village development committees – or municipalities – across seven districts, 82 percent are illiterate, 33 percent don’t own their lands and 86 percent don’t even have citizenship. The average debt of each haliya is 8,545 rupees, or just $120 USD.
Farmlands in these regions are rich in production, creating plenty of work for haliyas. The fields burst with crops before the harvest, and haliyas start working for the next season immediately after harvest.
According to the National Haliya Freedom Society Federation, haliyas work for minimum wage or no wage at all. Often their work is divided among multiple landlords.
“The most ridiculous reality is when the landlords partition their property, even the haliyas are divided among the family,” says Bhakta Bishwokarma, president of the Nepal National Dalit Social Welfare Organization, which works to end caste-based discrimination here. “This automatically fragments a haliya family as well. How pitiful is this system?”
He says that the lineage of a haliya continues from one generation to the next when the previous generation fails to pay back a loan and its interest.
Rijhan Sinchuyri has lived his life as a haliya. He says he doesn’t even know how long his family members have been working at their landlord’s house in Baitadi.
“We don’t know how we ended up here,” he says. “But as far as I know, my father and grandfather were in debt to the landlord.”
Sinchuyri says that the day after his wedding, he and his wife were forced to separate and work for their landlord in different villages an hour trek apart.
“You can’t even be together with your family,” he says. “Life becomes very uninteresting.”
Bali Lohar, 45, from Baitadi, is also a haliya.
An active man with a fair complexion and lean body, he says he wakes up early to feed his landlord’s cattle then ploughs the landlord’s field until the sun sets. After a hard day’s work, he eats only if his landlord gives him food. Otherwise, he sleeps on an empty stomach.
“We don’t have our own lands,” he says. “We work hard for our master and survive on their mercy.”
Since Lohar is landless, he has made a small shelter for his family on the land of his landlords, Bhaskar and Shiva Dutta Awasthi. He is responsible for his wife and five children, who all work for the Awasthis. His wife and children do the household chores, including doing the dishes and laundry, feeding the cattle and collecting maize from the farm.
“If we don’t obey our masters, we end up hungry,” says Lohar, who has been a haliya for 15 years.
But Lohar doesn’t get paid for his work. He works to pay off the loan of 11,000 rupees, or $150 USD, that his landlord loaned him at 4-percent interest 15 years ago. He says he borrowed the money to build a small house made of stone, mud and a thatched roof for his family.
“I have borrowed money from my landlord,” Lohar says. “That’s why I’m here, as a haliya.”
Since he had no source of income, he and his family chose to work for the Awasthis. He can’t go elsewhere to find other forms of work or borrow money to feed his family because once someone has taken a loan from a landlord in his village, tradition dictates that other landlords deny this person’s requests.
“We are obligated to do this,” he says of his family’s work. “If only I could have paid them on time, we wouldn’t have to be haliyas.”
The haliya community has been fighting for its rights for years. When the government ignored its demonstrations in the Far West in 2008, members of the movement opted for a 21-day hunger strike, BK says. In response, the government declared the haliyas free in September 2008.
BK says that the haliya tradition of bonded labor is also outlawed in Nepal’s Interim Constitution’s Clause No. 29; Civil Code, 1963; Land Reform Act, 1974; Comprehensive Peace Accord, 2006; Citizens’ Rights Act, 1955; Kamaiya Labor Prohibition Act, 2002; and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, 1948.
But despite these acts, haliyas’ positions in society haven’t improved, says Dal Bahadur Dhami, legal adviser for the National Haliya Freedom Society Federation.
“Because the government doesn’t have special laws for the haliyas, they seem to be in a confused state,” he says. “The present policies aren’t clear or [they aren’t] implemented properly, because of which the so-called freed haliyas do not feel relieved or rehabilitated.”
Haliyas say their freedom has been essentially meaningless, as their quality of life hasn’t changed.
“After their freedom, the haliyas had no work, which denied them from food and shelter,” BK says.
Nearly three years since the government declared the country haliya-free, the on-the-ground reality is very different, says Laxmi Bohara, social mobilizer of the Baitadi Haliya Freedom Society Federation, its district-level office. Bohara, who belongs to a haliya family herself, says that the landlords ridicule and pick on her and her family members to pay their dues.
“The freedom doesn’t mean anything to us as it seems,” she says.
Trilokchandra Bishwas Bishwokarma, who is not from a haliya family but is an active member of the National Haliya Freedom Society Federation, says that the government should punish the landlords or should give the freed haliyas rights to the lands they’ve worked on.
“They didn’t get any compensation,” he says. “[No] actions were taken against the landlords who used them for years.”
BK says that although the government has labeled the haliyas free, it hasn’t implemented adequate policies to offer them alternative livelihoods. He says that, as a result, some have migrated to India, while many still live as haliyas.
“Because of the government’s inefficiency, the haliyas’ rights are in jeopardy,” he says.
Lohar, one of these haliyas, says that the government declaration of freedom hasn’t helped them. He says he has no choice but to continue to work for his landlord.
“What do we do following the government’s policies?” he asks. “At least, if we don’t follow it and keep working for our landlord, we have a place to stay and work to do.”
Land expert Jagat Deuja, coordinator for the Community Self-Reliance Service Center, a local NGO that advocates for land rights, says that the haliyas should have the rights to the land they have been living and working on and a partial right to the land their ancestors worked on.
He says that the Nepali government hasn’t looked seriously at this issue.
“Nepal[’s] government should rehabilitate and resettle the haliyas as soon as possible,” he says.
Janardhan Sharma Prabhakar, the minister of peace and reconstruction in 2008 who was signatory to the Haliya Freedom Project that granted the haliyas their freedom, admits not much has been done.
“This is because there was a lack of good planning and also a lack of national consensus,” he says. “There is still a lot to be done.”
Naresh Kumar Chapagain, a Ministry of Peace and Reconstruction undersecretary, says that the haliyas’ data and statistics have been identified and forwarded to the Ministry of Land, Reform and Management so that they can be rehabilitated.
But Laxman Kumar Hamal, a Ministry of Land, Reform and Management undersecretary, says that the Ministry of Finance has not released the proposed budget of 30 million rupees, $420,170 USD, and that a policy to rehabilitate the haliyas has not yet been created.
While the government works out these policies, haliyas say they continue to be denied their basic human rights when it comes to health, education and employment and are still prohibited from working alongside their neighbors, fetching water from the public tap and even going to the temple to practice their faith.
“We’re not even as free as an animal,” Bohara says.
But Bohara says they can celebrate the tiny steps forward they’ve made.
“But everything just isn’t depressing,” Bohara says. “Haliyas have been working toward and striving for their rights and dignity. This can be taken as a big accomplishment in their lives.”