Oppression All The Way Down

For shame.jpg

Quick– read the following paragraph and tell me what you think:

The women legally arrived…in 2002; (their employers) then confiscated their passports and refused to let them leave their home, authorities said.

Domestic slavery? Nightmarish abuse of Sri Lankan maids, at the hands of Arab employers? That’s what I thought. I was only half right (Thanks, KXB).

Two Indonesian women were subjected to beatings and other abuse and forced by a couple to work in their home in a swank Long Island neighborhood without pay for several years, federal prosecutors said Tuesday.
Authorities said they uncovered the abuse after one of the women was found by police wandering outside a doughnut shop on Sunday morning, wearing only pants and a towel…[IHT]

Apparently, employees at the store thought the woman was homeless, until she started slapping herself and trying to utter the word “master”.

Varsha Mahender Sabhnani, 35, and her husband Mahender Murlidhar Sabhnani, 51, both from India, entered not guilty pleas at their arraignment in U.S. District Court and were ordered held pending a Thursday bail hearing. Their attorney did not immediately return a telephone call seeking comment. [IHT]

The women were only allowed outside of the house if they were taking out the garbage; when anyone visited, they were stashed in a 3×3′ closet. That’s pleasant compared to this:

The women were subjected to beatings, scalding water thrown on them, and forced to climb up and down stairs as punishment for misdeeds, prosecutors said. In one case, they said, one of the women was forced to eat 25 hot chili peppers at one time.
One of the women also told authorities she was cut behind her ears with a small pocket knife and both were forced to sleep on mats in the kitchen. They were fed so little, they claimed, that they were forced to steal food and hide it from their “captors.”[IHT]

It’s just so depressing. What quirk of destiny relegates one South Asian woman to endure the beatings of her Arab mistress while halfway around the world, her desi– albeit privileged– counterpart metes out similar viciousness to another brown human being? Sri Lankan and Fillipino maids get abused in the middle east, the Indonesian survivors from this cringe-inducing story were enslaved by people our parents might associate with, right here in the U.S and desperate, option-less women everywhere are exploited by those who should know better but don’t care. For shame.

323 thoughts on “Oppression All The Way Down

  1. A friend said Mahender and his son, Rahul – who attends Syosset HS – regularly worship at the Guy Gobind Singh Sikh Center in Plainview. “The high school is in shock,” the friend said. “Teachers can’t believe it.”

    This is another thing about Sindhi Hindus…they have a unique version of Hinduism, with a lot of Sikh influences (especially veneration of Guru Nanak, some (limited) use of the Gurmukhi script, often having weddings in gurdwaras, etc.), as well as some unique Sindhi deities (Jhoole Lal for example), and sufi influences as well.

    And, they really know how to party.

  2. Female circumcision, Hema, not castration. It’s about taking away the pleasure, not the functionality.

    Maybe, but locally, the term used for the practice among Somalis is “castration”. Probably packs a bigger emotional whallop in court than circumcision.

  3. Female circumcision, Hema, not castration. It’s about taking away the pleasure, not the functionality

    this is not true. not to get off topic, but castration is also accurate as clitoridectomies, excisions, and infibulation operations remove the clitoris entirely, thus effectively taking away its functionality.

  4. Crap. She’s only 35?!?! Not to sound catty, but she looks like a desi version of a 50 year old Cruela DeVille.

    The Post ran a story describing her as exactly that. I actually had the same reaction re: her age, but being a tyrant and infusing your every fiber with hatred can be, oh so taxing on the skin. But I agree the post article was stretching by damning Pooja with a friendster profile. Her gene’s are damning enough, I hope the bitch and various bitch, jr’s. gets theirs.

  5. “while I cant speak for every domestic”

    exactly Vik…but yet you do it anyways…

  6. glass houses, I can speak for every domestic. And I have it on authority that there is nothing more they would do rather than serve. All you need to do is to give them some old rag or some such thing, and they and their descendants are yours for ever.

  7. Whatever happened to “Innocent until proven guilty”? Intellectual honesty please.

  8. Rahul props on reminding us of the plight of the house elves….we need more Dobbys out there fo sho’ breaking the rules!

  9. The feds are probing whether a millionaire couple accused of enslaving and torturing two Indonesian women at their ritzy Long Island home were aided by their four kids – including their eldest, shopaholic daughter…

    The family that preys together stays together…

  10. The idea that their punishment should be lenient due to some sort of cultural understanding is absurd on two counts.

    First, in America, equality before the law for all, while not practiced perfectly, is a strong cultural value. So, we show respect to one foreign value (it’s ok to beat the servants) while disrespecting the value of 300 million Americans in their own country? That makes no sense. The fact that they emigrated to America should prove they preferred the American system, they chose it, they rejected the value system of their homeland, and thus the American system, in it’s entirety, should then be used to judge them.

    Second, the more important reason: where, exactly, is slavery considered “okay”? If you claim that this is less of an outrage in their homeland, then shame, shame on their homeland! Perhaps word of this will get back there. If even one person says “the Americans take this seriously, and we should too!” then the effect will be positive. Slavery should be despised and fought everywhere. If you say, “this would not have been such a big deal” in their home nation, what you are really saying is “their people practice this horrible thing and are collectively guilty!” It is a good thing, then, that at least, in America, these people were caught and will stand trial. May the same happen to all the slave masters in their home nation. Slavery is never okay, never acceptable, and any society that goes lightly on this subject must take a good look in the mirror and ask “why are we not as ethical as Americans?”

    Ben

  11. “where, exactly, is slavery considered “okay”?..

    In India Ben where some believe they are and will forever be superior to other ‘lesser’ human beings for all eternity…but to be fair Paris Hilton most likely doesn’t enjoy cleaning her toilet.

  12. . May the same happen to all the slave masters in their home nation. Slavery is never okay, never acceptable, and any society that goes lightly on this subject…

    And if any society is aware of that. It’s AMerica.

  13. There is no excuse for this type of behavior, regardless of the cultural background.

    At the same time, I am certain that events like this happen in wealthier white households with their ‘undocumented’ servants all the time too. The power relationship involved there is so fucked up that it would be really tempting for people to take advantage of it.

  14. Ben, I am with you on the fact that basic human equality and rights are not negotiable and should not be sacrificed at the altar of cultural relativism (or religious mumbo-jumbo, for that matter).

    But, please, let’s not hold America up as a beacon of morality, shall we? Are you talking about a legal system which, on one end, lets Paris Hilton get away with less than 3 weeks of jail time for repeated drunk driving when the usual sentences are 3 months, and on the other hand, holds people in legal limbo indefinitely without a single indictment, tortures them illegally in countries ruled by dictators, and has people in top positions who are venal and corrupt (Wolfowitz, Gonzales, Rove, Cheney, Bush – any government where Ashcroft emerges as the good guy is seriously questionable)?

  15. Slavery is never okay, never acceptable, and any society that goes lightly on this subject must take a good look in the mirror and ask “why are we not as ethical as Americans?”

    Because man, nobody in the United States is nostalgic for the antebellum South or anything…

  16. lol, well yeah… there’s another poster here named “Neale”, so I was differentiating myself from him. I wrote that phrase and it made me laugh and there you go… A LEGEND WAS BORN!!!!!!!!

  17. “Rahul” and “Neal with no e”. OMG, I can’t get away from you guys. And I think I recognize SP too.

    Sheesh, it really is a small world.

  18. Like a lot of other things in India, most people KNOW that child labor is wrong and there have been laws guarding against it for decades. But it’s hard to get a country of a billion people on the same page, especially when the choice is between following an inconsistently enforced law and surviving in abject poverty. I would argue that this is definitely not an example of “slavery” simple being considered ok by the whole populace.

  19. Not to take away from the gravity of the subject, but latter half of this thread has been funny as hell, and I think Rahul needs his own humor blog (or needs to become a contributing Mutineer; he could give A N N A a run for her money in bringing out-loud-laughter to many of our days… no offense, A.).

  20. he could give A N N A a run for her money in bringing out-loud-laughter to many of our days… no offense, A.

    absosmurfly none taken. he’s mad funny. many of you are. 🙂

  21. most people KNOW that child labor is wrong and there have been laws guarding against it for decades.

    Whats the point of a law if there is no will to enforce it? Obviously these laws are passed to appease western sensibilities, for there is no intent to actually enforce them. Both the Indian government and the Indian culture turn a blind eye towards widespread child slave labor. Doesn’t that mean that child slavery is OK in India?

    This family of sindhi maid abusers would shock few in India:

    abuse of child house slaves in India:

    It is an extremely lucrative business. This is a slave trade. Parents are, directly or indirectly, selling their children.”

    Seven days a week, 8-year-old Jasmina K. rises before dawn to fetch water for the household where she works as a maid. She washes, sweeps and hauls until about 11 at night, when she lies down to sleep on the floor by the bathroom door.

    Her employers have little patience with her exhaustion.

    “I get tired and forget things, so they hit me,” she said, her eyes cast down. “They want the shoes polished. If I don’t do it fast enough, they hit me with a cooking spoon. They want to go to the toilet. If I don’t get the water fast enough, I get a beating.”,

    Jasmina has been a member of India’s child labor force for more than a year now. After her father died, she said, her mother sent her and her sister from their West Bengal village to work as maids here. Each month, she is paid 100 rupees, or about $2.25.

  22. Thanks, kusala. I’m always glad to dilute the tone, seriousness, and intellectual level of a debate with my contributions.

  23. as am I. I knew a guy named Rahul once, we all called him Raoul. We were boycotting H’s, and Ricky Martin just came out with La’Vida Loca.

  24. We were boycotting H’s

    So you were just a regular MF’er back then? 😉

  25. If the last 3 comments are anything to go by, to quote another person who can be relied on to douse intellectual content, “Mission Accomplished“.

  26. I wonder if anyone has seen this but Sabhnani is a Marwadi family name. I had once encountered a Marwadi family with the same family name and the family was always at the edge. Mom-in-law was always at odds with the Daughter-in-law. SOn could not/did not say anything. Neighbors had to come to free the fights. Sad coincidence or does it have a common ground?

  27. So you were just a regular MF’er back then? 😉

    Took the words right out of my mouth.

  28. I wonder if anyone has seen this but Sabhnani is a Marwadi family name. I had once encountered a Marwadi family with the same family name and the family was always at the edge. Mom-in-law was always at odds with the Daughter-in-law. SOn could not/did not say anything. Neighbors had to come to free the fights. Sad coincidence or does it have a common ground?

    First of all, this family is definitely Sindhi. One of my friends actually knows them. But beyond that, why would you think that just because another messed up family has the same last name, it might be more than a coincidence? So you seriously think there could be something inherently wrong with people named Sabhnani? Your description above could apply to a lot of desi families I know.

  29. The game’s afoot, Watson, it’s indeed the name. Sabh-nani. Everybody’s a nanny. With that jaundiced viewpoint, no wonder you treat others badly.

  30. Hema/No sense of humor:

    I don’t even know why I care, but this is the definition on Wikipedia- and as Michael knows, that’s where you go to get your information

    Castration (also referred as: gelding, neutering, orchiectomy, orchidectomy, and oophorectomy) is any action, surgical, chemical, or otherwise, by which a male loses the functions of the testes or a female loses the functions of the ovaries (link)

  31. “Nightmarish abuse of Sri Lankan maids, at the hands of Arab employers?….”

    I thought this happened only to East Africans going to the Middle East looking for work. A very good friend of mine who is a radiologist in Ethiopia saw a woman who came from Yemen at his clinic. She had symptoms of severe adjustment disorder and was missing one kidney on abdominal ultrasound done for an unrelated complaint. She apparently had her “gall bladder” removed while she was in Yemen working for this allegedly abusive family. I never knew folks from Sri Lanka go to the middle East to work.

  32. legionary pullo @ 136 — sorry, i meant that castration was accurate in that the removal of the entire clitoris is part of the procedure, rather than simply the foreskin or ‘hood’ in the majority of fgc cases. should have clarified. and yes, regardless of dictionary/wikipedia/brittanica definitions, female castration is the term that is most commonly used by activists rallying against the practice. and it’s more about suppressing female sexuality and control over one’s own reproductive processes, and less about taking away pleasure. though there is that, too. and forgive my ignorance, but who is michael?

  33. You Kidding me Camille? Her daughter lived in the house. If I see her or her parents I will spit on them. SHAME!

    No, I was serious. But in light of recent posts, I retract.

    Just be careful you don’t give them socks, Rahul.

    hema, I appreciated this harry potter reference so much 🙂

    Seriously, didn’t think I would be giggling on a post about modern day slavery, but thanks for the last 20 or so posts. I say keeeeeeep it comin! Unless it’s about whether “castration” is the appropriate term for removing the clit.

  34. liked the article but:

    What quirk of destiny relegates one South Asian woman to endure the beatings of her Arab mistress while halfway around the world, her desi— albeit privileged— counterpart metes out similar viciousness to another brown human being?

    does the fact that the victim was brown make it any worse, really? Does any human being deserve this treatment? maybe i’m just being pedantic..

    Appalling story – shame on the couple!

  35. I say keeeeeeep it comin! Unless it’s about whether “castration” is the appropriate term for removing the clit.

    LOL.

  36. Prema # 127

    No all indians do not turn a blind eye to child slavery or casteism or anything.There have been cases of employee abuse in India and there have been cases that have been prosecuted ( recently in Mumbai a doctor’s daughter was arrested for severely phyically abusing their domestic underage servant) Your comments are so vituperative and ignorant that they take away from the kernel of truth that they are based on .

    Ben and others, I want to try and dispel this notion that slavery is okay in India. With a country that is third world, has large economic disparities and centuries of feudalism – it will take time for society to evolve to a modern, first world society like the US. The fact is that with widespread poverty, children will be put to work .I am not defending this – just stating a fact. Even here in the USA lets not forget that slavery was legal a little more than 150 years ago . See(here .

    Change takes time and while I understand the change of pace is not as fast as all of us will like it, I think Neale said it perfectly in # 124 – its not easy to get 1 billion+ people on the same page.

    I have been observing this trend on quite a few discussions here at SM- a tendency to paint everyone in India and DBDs with the same broad brush. So it makes those of us who are Indians feel like we are being stereotyped as cousin-loving, underwear free, casteist, slavery apologists.( I am too upset to look for the links)

    On another post on SM, a DBD is guilty of much the same by oall 2nd/3rd genners and that’s not okay too in my book.

    I moved to the USA expecting that there will be some Americans who would carry preconceived and erroneous notions about me.I guess I was naive in not expecting those Americans to be of South Asian origin – or maybe I carried preconceived notions of my own

    Sorry for the long post but I am truly hurt

  37. I have been observing this trend on quite a few discussions here at SM- a tendency to paint everyone in India and DBDs with the same broad brush. So it makes those of us who are Indians feel like we are being stereotyped as cousin-loving, underwear free, casteist, slavery apologists…Sorry for the long post but I am truly hurt

    Runa, allow me to echo your “let’s not paint a huge group with one brush”-statement by telling you that not all 2nd generation South Asian Americans/ABCDs think that way about our first gen/DBD counterparts. Not at all.

    The couple blogged above kept slaves in this fantastic first-world country– and I’m sure they aren’t the only ones. Injustice occurs everywhere, India doesn’t have a monopoly on it, that’s for damned sure.

  38. Pondatti, Thanks – let me clarify that I know that everyone does not think this way. I was just expressing my immediate emotions at what I see as a rising trend . The last thing I want to do is be guilty of the same ..that’s why I also took exception to comments that a DBD had made on another post accusing 2nd/3rd genners of being ignorant , latte -sipping types. I was trying to reference that with the “On another post on SM, a DBD is guilty of much the same by oall 2nd/3rd genners and that’s not okay too in my book” but it ended up garbled.

  39. (apologies in advance to Camille)

    “…female castration is the term that is most commonly used by activists rallying against the practice…”

    Hema: I know I can google this to find out the relative frequency of each phrase, but I’ve noticed “female genital mutilation” to be most commonly used in most of the literature I’ve seen. Is “castration” supplanting that? I’m just curious.

  40. As a second-generation Indian who has only been to India on short visits, I have no idea what the dynamics of the home-owner/servant dynamics are there. I presently live in Muttontown (but don’t know this family) and have a babysitter/housekeeper from India. I am so grateful to have a woman in our home who can care for my children when I’m at work. I can’t be in two places at once, so I’m happy to have someone who I trust, someone who can expose my children to a little culture, and who my children love. In addition, she cooks Indian food. Without her, I would have to stress about who my children are with. We pay her a decent salary,and we have mutual respect for each other.

    However, I can tell you that I have met many Indians who have absolute contempt for these women who take care of our children. They somehow think they are making more money than they should be and that they don’t work hard enough. I know people who won’t allow their help to take a break during the day – if they do, it’s like they’re sleeping on the job. I’ve even heard people say they prefer to hire nannies who have no family here, clearly so the nanny will have no advocate for them. Some women actually dump their children on the babysitter – they work long hours and then go out with their husbands or friends while the nanny watches the kids. They feel like this way they’re getting their money’s worth, but this is very short-sighted – they don’t realize that it also hurts their children and their relationship with them. So while this case is disturbing, I can certainly see how it could happen.

  41. You people must be wondering how these people communicated with indonesian maids when they did not speak word of english. Pooja sabhnani was born and schooled in indonesia to wealthy indian family setteled there more than 60 years ago. She had plenty of maids when she was young because most of indian families there have 4 to 5 maids in there household, maids ther are paid about $25 a month plus lodging and boarding. It is possible she got in habbit of abusing them when she was young. But in my opinion some abuse may be true but not to that extreme. Newer jump on conclusion without hearing from otherside.