Ramphal and his entire family were slaves
in the rock quarries of India for as long as anyone can remember.
Slowly - with the help of grassroots activists, Ramphal and the other
slaves in his village realized that freedom was possible. Getting there was dangerous.
"If I would move in my house or out of my house, if I want to sit somewhere, get up, if I want to eat, if I want to drink - anything that I wanted to do - I required permission."
The villagers of Sonnebarsa began meeting with other slaves across the
area and demanding their rights. Violence broke out at a meeting. A
slave owner was killed. Slave owners retaliated by burning Ramphal's
village. What little the families had was gone. Nine slaves were jailed
and charged with murder. Ramphal was one of them.
Other
freed slaves in the area took in the desperate families, still some
babies in the village died. Legal activists worked to get the slaves
out of jail. Grassroots activists applied for leases to mine nearby
rock quarries. They won the leases. The men were freed. Finally the
villagers were able to build a new village - Azad Nagar or 'Land of the
Free'. Today Ramphal is still giddy with freedom, "I’m just so happy with this new life
that I’ve got and it gives me so much joy, the fact that I can control
my own mind, my own thoughts, my own movements. I can’t even look back
at my earlier existence." Ramphal's children are going to school for
the first time. He has dreams of opening his own business but won't
share the details. He is just getting use to the idea of daring to dream.
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