Country: India

Group: Dusadh

Date Finalized: November 13, 2023

Team: Ashley Thompson (Lead), AmarHammad, Ash Pessaran, Laura Pruett

Content Warning: Forced labor, slavery

Approximate Time Period: 1800, 1960-1980

            The Dusadh community live in Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, and West Bengal (People Groups, 2023). Dusadh people have been designated a scheduled caste in the state of Bihar (Dehli Dusadh Parivaar, 2019). Many Dusadh people work as agriculturalists and watchmen for upper caste landlords. (Dehli Dusadh Parivaar, 2019). Due to being underrepresented politically, the Dusadh people formed a political party, Lok Janshakti Party, in the 1970’s (Sinha, 2011).

            There is evidence that members of the Dusadh community have experienced forced labor in Bihar. The most recent case of forced labor that could be found was in the 1980’s.

            In the beginning of the 19th century, during British colonial rule, upper castes enslaved the Dusadh people, along with other communities, for agricultural labor. The upper castes in Bihar forced labor from the communities of the lower castes through either a type of indenture, where landlords allotted land and forced debtors to work off debt, or by forcing them to labor for life with no route to freedom (Dhar, 1973)

            Similarly, in Dumari village, in Bihar, from the 1960’s until the 1980’s, upper caste landlords, mostly from the Kurmi community, forced Dusadh people to perform labor to pay debt. The landlords would set interest charges that were impossible to pay, and the debtor would be forced into servitude (Kunnath, 2009). If a debt was unpaid after the debtor’s death, the upper caste landlord would demand the same debt and indenture on their families (Kunnath, 2009).

Data Quality: The data quality is rated 2/3 because there is information from scholarly sources and webpages. However, the information from these sources isn’t specific.

Sources

  1. Dhar, Hiranmay. (1973). Agricultural servitude in Bengal presidency around 1800. Economic and Political Weekly, 8(30), 1355. Retrieved: October 23, 2023. http://www.jstor.org/stable/4362899
  2. Dehli Dusadh Parivaar (2019). A brief history of the Dusadh community. Dehlidusadhparivaar.org. Retrieved: October 29, 2023. https://delhidusadhparivaar.org/history.php
  3. Kunnath, George J. (December 11, 2009). Smoldering Dalit fires in Bihar, India. Dialect Anthropol 33, 309 (2009). Retrieved: October 29, 2023. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10624-009-9134-5
  4. Peoplegroups.org. (November 13, 2023). People cluster: Dusadh. Retrieved: November 13, 2023.
  5. Sinha, Arun. (2011). Nitish Kumar and the rise of Bihar. Penguin Books India. Retrieved: October 29, 2023. https://books.google.com/books?id=rT2xWp_iTCYC&pg=PA83#v=snippet&q=Lok%20Janshakti%20&f=false