Bonded labour in US Swaminarayan temple which used stone carved in Rajasthan?

By Rajiv Shah 

I’ll be honest – when my phone buzzed with a message from Ashim Roy yesterday, I didn’t expect to spend the rest of my day in a state of disbelief. But here we are.

Ashim, a senior trade union activist based in Ahmedabad, forwarded me something that stopped me cold: an explosive article from The New York Times titled “Hindu Sect Is Accused of Using Forced Labor to Build N.J. Temple.” And then he made a claim that I had to verify for myself. He told me that he has been behind the support to the workers who have charged the temple authorities in New Jersey with exploitation.

“Read it,” he said when he phoned me immediately after. “Then look at what I’m sending you... The workers are being kept in a bonded-like situation.”

Along with the article, Ashim forwarded a photograph showing stone carved from Pindwara in Rajasthan – stacked and ready for a temple being built thousands of miles away in New Jersey. Then another photograph: federal agents in buses and ambulances descending on the massive temple in Robbinsville, New Jersey, to take workers away. “Even as a lawsuit charged that low-caste men had been lured from India to work for about $1 an hour,” he reminded me.

I’ve covered labour issues for years, but this hit different. Let me share what The New York Times reported, because the details are staggering.

According to the lawsuit, the Bochasanwasi Akshar Purushottam Swaminarayan Sanstha – BAPS, the Hindu sect with close ties to India’s ruling party – has “exploited possibly hundreds of low-caste men in the yearslong construction project” of their New Jersey temple. The majority of these workers are Dalit – the lowest rung in India’s caste system.

Listen to how The New York Times described their reality:

“The workers, who lived in trailers hidden from view, had been promised jobs helping to build the temple in rural Robbinsville, N.J., with standard work hours and ample time off.”

Instead? Nearly 13-hour days lifting massive stones, operating cranes and heavy machinery, building roads and storm sewers, digging ditches, shoveling snow. For the equivalent of about $450 per month – roughly $1 an hour. The Federal Minimum Wage is $7.25. 

They were brought here on religious visas – R-1 visas meant for clergy and missionaries – presented to the U.S. government as volunteers. They were asked to sign documents in English they likely couldn’t read, and told to tell embassy staffers they were skilled carvers or decorative painters. But their lawyers say they did manual labour, pure and simple.

Ashim was right to be furious. And he wasn’t exaggerating about his involvement – he told me he’s been quietly supporting these workers behind the scenes, connecting them with advocates, making sure their voices didn’t disappear before anyone in India knew what was happening.

One line from The New York Times haunts me. Swati Sawant, an immigration lawyer who is also Dalit, said this:

“They thought they would have a good job and see America. They didn’t think they would be treated like animals, or like machines that aren’t going to get sick.”

Their passports were confiscated. They were confined to the fenced-in, guarded site. Forbidden from talking to visitors or volunteers. Their pay was docked for minor violations – like being seen without a helmet. They subsisted on lentils and potatoes.

BAPS denies it, of course. Kanu Patel, the CEO, told The New York Times: “I respectfully disagree with the wage claim.” Spokesman Lenin Joshi argued the men were doing specialized artisan work – “fitting stones together like a jigsaw puzzle.” But at least three federal agencies – the FBI, Homeland Security, and the Department of Labor – raided the site on Tuesday. About 90 workers were removed.

One worker, Mukesh Kumar, who has since returned to India, told The New York Times that a co-worker died from an apparent illness last autumn. That death, he said, is what pushed him and others to come forward. “We said, ‘We don’t want to die like that.’”

Daniel Werner, a lawyer in the case, told the newspaper he believes this could be the largest forced-labour case in the United States since the 1995 discovery of Thai garment workers held in horrible conditions in California. “There are parallels in other places,” Werner said. “But what’s striking is that this is in the United States.”

Ashim Roy has been on the right side of this fight from the beginning. And now that The New York Times has put the story on the front page, maybe the world will finally pay attention.

I know I am.