Orissa outlaws oppression

In 2002, a high-caste school teacher in Orissa’s Brahmagiri area quit his job to begin on a long, lonely battle. Baghambar Pattanaik was fighting to end the bartan system, which permits upper caste people to force lower caste barbers and others to work for them, often at menial tasks, in exchange for 15 kilos of rice a year. The system was so rigid that if the lower castes refused, they faced a debilitating social boycott.
Pattanaik set out to challenge it. Some of the affidavits filed with the National Human Rights Commission (NHRC) in support of Pattanaik’s nine-year campaign illustrate why.
In Mouza-Barudi in Puri district, 65-year-old Braja Barik faced the ire of the whole village when he bravely decided in 2002 to stop working for one Khiru Pradhan under the bartan system. His defiance did him little good. Instead, he was forced to serve 200 upper caste families in the village.
Then there was Aparti Barik, 50, from a neighbouring village. He stopped bartan work for local leader Karunakar Sahu and was promptly prohibited from using the village road and threatened with a 5,000-rupee fine if he spoke to another villager.
When fellow villager Babula Barik refused to wash the feet of guests at an upper caste wedding, he too became persona non grata in the village.
There are many such stories of inequity and injustice but only one of courageous opposition. Baghambar Pattanaik’s persistence paid off last month when the Orissa government finally issued a notification abolishing bartan.
It was a hard won victory. Pattanaik recounts aspects of the struggle. “In 2004, I filed 17 cases of bartan. On July 15, 2008, the NHRC issued a notification to Orissa stating that bartan was a manifestation of bonded labour. I got strength from that notification and filed more than a 1,000 cases soon after.”
The going got tough in 2007, say NHRC officials, when Orissa refused to admit bartan was bonded labour. This because the Bonded Labour System (Abolition) Act may not always be seen to apply to the bartan sewaks of Puri district. They do not appear to fit the stereotypical image of bonded labourers because they live in their own homes and and have freedom of movement. It was Pattanaik who gave a horrified world a nuanced understanding of their lives and why the compulsory servitude of bartan needed to be banned.
Pattanaik was supported by the NHRC, which kept up the pressure and even held a two-day camp in Bhubaneswar in January. Satyabrata Pal, NHRC member, was part of the camp, and says it was a particularly long and difficult struggle because the practice being challenged was ancient and deep-rooted. “The real challenge now will be to charge offenders under the Bonded Labour System (Abolition) Act, 1976. And Orissa will have to show the way,” he says.
Pattanaik, the man who started it all, is not thinking that far ahead — just yet. He says he’s happy he made a difference. “Many people will be freed from bonded labour,” he says.