History in the First Person

Book Review 

ENSLAVED
The New Slavery
Rahila Gupta
HarperCollins India; Price: Rs 350; Pages: 314

Srinivas Parsa Delhi

Rahila Gupta does something that any sensible journalist ought to be doing all the time: record the voices and stories of ordinary people who are buffeted by historical currents, the people who are thrown hither and thither because of political and economic developments which are not of their making and which are beyond their control.

She has chosen the stories of five people: Farhia Nur from Mogadishu in Somalia, Natasha Bulova from Samara in Russia, Naomi Conte from Sierra Leone, Liu Bao Ren from Fujian in China, Amber Lobepreet from Dhahdakurd, Punjab. Gupta, a journalist, co-author of Provoked, the book on which the film was based, and an anti-slavery campaigner in London, met them all in Britain where they landed from different corners of the world. Some of them like Natasha had planned to go to Spain but were forced to come to London.

What Gupta does is to let them tell their meandering stories in their own voices. She does not impose a narrative structure on their tales. The protagonists determine their own way of telling about their lives. The stories are touching because they are about ordinary people tucked away in the far corners of the world. A playwright or a film script writer would be able to make good use of the material of their stories to tell a good story.

Each of these stories is interesting and compelling in itself. What is disturbing though is the felicity with which each one narrates his/her own tale of degradation, abuse, violence and exploitation. Each one of them talks about family, home, small places, the big political convulsions that shattered their lives as in the case of Farhia Nur and Noami Conte, or the simple compulsions to get away from small places to change their economic fortune as in the case of Natasha Bulova and Liu Bao Ren. Or it is simply, as in the case of Amber Lobepreet, a marriage that turns a village girl's life topsy-turvy.

Gupta has her own underlying argument that ties up the life stories of these five. She sees them as victims of modern slavery because in each case the individuals are ferried across borders on land and sea by ‘people smugglers' - the human traffickers. It is the criminal underworld that operates this new slave trade that engages her, and she uses individual stories to reveal how the smugglers are operating. It is an issue of public importance, something that bothers and challenges governments because ultimately the government of the host country will have to check the unlawful activity as well as provide social rehabilitation to the people who are illegally brought into the country.

Beginning each chapter with a vivid description of the political and social background, Gupta weaves the reasons for escape at the start of each chapter. In a very persuasive and compelling style Gupta dwells on the complex issue of immigration and builds a connection with modern day slavery. She keeps the arguments about the question of slave trade in the contemporary world to the end of the book. Her ardent plea that this slavery needs to be fought and ended is both passionate and sincere, but the point is made in succinct and cool prose. Time and again she reminds the reader about the fact that the old slave trade which was abolished at the beginning of the 19th century has reared its ugly head once again at the beginning of the 21st century, and that there is a need to fight it. This
time it is in the form of human trafficking and illegal immigration.