11 am

Mr. Stephen Crabb (Preseli Pembrokeshire) (Con): I am grateful for the opportunity to raise the subject of caste and human rights in India with the Minister, who I hope will share many of my observations and thoughts. I say from the outset that I speak first and foremost as a friend of India, with huge affection and respect for its people, culture and history and a profound sense of optimism and excitement about its future and emerging role on the global stage.

I have had the privilege to visit this amazing country on numerous occasions, including a 10-day visit there last year with the Conservative parliamentary friends of India during which we benefited from wonderful hospitality from the Ministry of External Affairs and the Confederation of Indian Industry. I have previously spoken in the House about the importance of our relationship and trade with India and the need for the UK to do far more to capture a greater share of India’s enormous increase in foreign trade.

I speak in a spirit of friendship and respect, but true friendship does not mean shying away from difficult issues, and caste-based discrimination is one such issue. What moved me to seek the debate was a trip to India in February with David Griffiths of the human rights group Christian Solidarity Worldwide. The purpose of the visit was to consider the issue of untouchability and to see what challenges and barriers Dalit communities face. Dalits are the so-called “untouchables”—the 170 million people who fall outside the four main Hindu caste groups.

I went in February with a critical mind, keen to separate the challenges common to many developing countries in south Asia from specific examples of discrimination or human rights violations resulting directly from caste-based identity. During my short trip I was presented with an enormous array of evidence of persistent, systemic human rights abuse on the basis of caste, which results in the life chances of Dalits being severely curtailed. It is a practice that goes back perhaps 3,000 years and continues in many forms in the world’s largest democracy, whose constitution and body of law does not just outlaw discrimination on the basis of caste but contains specific legislation to protect scheduled castes and tribes.

Where does one start? I should like to start in Khairlanji, a village in the state of Maharashtra. On 29 September last year the wife, daughter and two sons of Bhaiyalal Bhotmange, from that village, were dragged from their home and lynched in full view of neighbours and other villagers. After they were bludgeoned to death by a mob, their mutilated bodies were dumped in a nearby canal. There was strong evidence to suggest that the female family members had been gang raped and suffered extreme sexual violence before being murdered. That was never proved because of the inadequacy of the police response.

At the heart of that horrific case was a village property dispute fuelled by a toxic mix of caste-based jealousy and prejudice. The Bhotmange family was one of just three Dalit families in a village dominated by a higher caste. The attack on the family cannot be explained away as a typical village feud, and the negligent police response cannot be explained away as mere bungling.
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Caste goes to the very heart of that horrific and troubling case. The police took several hours to respond to the initial call by the father of the family, who reported his family as missing and reported a suspected murder. Their initial investigation was wholly inadequate. They arrived three hours later, at 10 o’clock at night, dismissed the claim and demanded a fee of 500 rupees for coming to the village. Despite the report of missing persons, no search was undertaken, resulting in the loss of what might have been crucial evidence including that ofgang rape.

The following day, officers at the local police stations refused to register a case, and the incident received full recognition only when the body of the teenage daughter was recovered from the canal. Despite seeing evidence of an attack in the home, police dismissed the allegations as rumour. On the following day, when Mr. Bhotmange attempted to file a first information report at the local police station, the inspector initially refused to do so.

The Khairlanji killings and the woeful response by the local police and judiciary led to violent protests by Dalit activists, and in the past eight months the case has received significant international attention from the media and human rights groups. It has thrown a spotlight on an issue that many Indians feel uncomfortable talking about. On my visit to India in February, with the permission of the local police, I was taken to Khairlanji by a group of Buddhist activists who had helped to disseminate information about the massacre in the days afterwards. I later met Mr. Bhotmange, who is now living under police protection and fears that justice will never be served on those who murdered his family. Recent reports that I have read in the press about the progress of the trial do not fill international observers with confidence that all those complicit in the massacre at the end of last September will be punished appropriately. The case has become massively important.

Jeremy Corbyn (Islington, North) (Lab): Will the hon. Gentleman acknowledge that one of the great problems is that although caste discrimination is wrong under Indian law and there is theoretically complete protection for people, in reality there is no access to justice through either the police or the judicial system because few people are prepared to represent victims of caste discrimination? The authorities do not get the whole message all the way through, so it remains unsaid and unreported. It is a vile system.

Mr. Crabb: I thank the hon. Gentleman for that intervention and echo his sentiments. The problem is the huge gulf between the text of the legal documents that provide theoretical protection for Dalits and the implementation on the ground, which is wholly inadequate, particularly in rural areas.

I encourage the Minister to raise the Khairlanji case with the Indian Government and inquire about the progress of the trial. Of course I understand the sensitivities of inquiring into judicial proceedings in another country, but will he affirm that it is a case of international concern that he will raise at his next meeting with the Indian high commissioner?

Khairlanji was not unique in its core elements. In another landmark case, in February last year, a Dalit man named Bant Singh was brutally attacked after
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seeking justice for his daughter, who had been raped by higher-caste men in the village. He eventually secured the prosecution of three men, but the upper-caste men in the village then beat him in retribution.

In yet another case of retributive caste violence, which was reported in The Independent last November, a 15-year-old Dalit girl named Asha Katiya was raped by a higher-caste man from her village. She reported the incident to the police. Because she would not withdraw the claim she was burned to death in her bed. It is thought that the man whom she accused of raping her was responsible for her murder.

Official records show that the rate of atrocities against Dalits continues at about 26,000 a year. That figure is enormous but is unlikely to represent anything like the true extent of caste-based violence against Dalits. A seminal study last year, “Untouchability in Rural India”, found that in 28 per cent. of villages surveyed Dalits faced discrimination in entry into police stations and that in 32 per cent. they encountered discrimination in how they were treated in police stations. The testimony shared with me on my recent visit to India corroborates those statistics. Bhaiyalal Bhotmange told me that the tragic massacre in Khairlanji was initially dismissed out of hand by the local police. Other people stressed that Dalits face considerable social pressures from higher caste members in their communities not to register cases against them.

It is tragically true that women often suffer the brunt of caste violence, as happened in Khairlanji and to Bant Singh’s daughter and many others. Given the stigma associated with sexual abuse, it is highly likely that many cases go unreported. Sometimes the attempt to seek justice leads to further violence. Khairlanji is just one example of the systemic caste-based human rights abuse that still exists in India despite a constitutional and legal framework in which the manifestations of the caste system are abolished.

Mr. Geoffrey Clifton-Brown (Cotswold) (Con): I am grateful to my hon. Friend for giving way. He is making a moving and telling speech, to which I am listening attentively. On his trip to India, did he come across any problems with anti-conversion laws? Given that the Dalits, the lower-caste people, are born into the system, they face discrimination from the moment they are born. One way they can get out of the system is to convert to a different religion, but in many states they are hampered in doing so. Did my hon. Friend manage to conduct any investigations into that aspect?

Mr. Crabb: I thank my hon. Friend for his intervention. Yes, I did come across that issue. I understand that seven states in India at present have anti-conversion legislation either on the statute book or in the process of being passed. My hon. Friend is right to say that many Dalits seek to escape from their caste-based identity through conversion, often to Islam, Buddhism or Christianity, yet in numerous states they come up against the barrier of anti-conversion laws. I shall return to that point later in the discussion.

Our concerns involve not only caste-based violence. Dalits are also subject to the worst forms of labour exploitation as a result of their caste, and are particularly vulnerable to trafficking, sexual exploitation and bonded
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labour. In the UK, considerable attention has been devoted to those issues in recent weeks, following the bicentenary of the abolition of the transatlantic slave trade. Bonded labour—debt bondage—is a massive problem in India. Although it was outlawed under the constitution and the Bonded Labour System (Abolition) Act, 1976, it is still widespread, with estimates of the number of people who are affected by it ranging from 10 million to 40 million.

One striking feature of the Indian caste system is the extent to which it overlaps with the practice of bonded labour, by which people are forced to work as security for a loan that they cannot repay in any other way. Bonded labourers are extremely vulnerable to exploitation. Entire families may be bonded, and debts may be passed down through the generations. The vast majority of the victims of bonded labour are landless Dalits whose susceptibility is heightened by poverty, exclusion from education and caste attitudes.

During my most recent trip to India, I visited a settlement near Hyderabad that is colloquially referred to as “pipe village”. It is populated entirely by the work force of an adjacent factory that produces concrete pipes, and around half of the families are, in effect, enslaved to the bosses of the factory through debt bondage. Each family of workers inhabits one of the discarded concrete pipes, most of which stand at approximately waist height. The village is isolated, there are few facilities for its inhabitants, and no education is available for the children. Water is provided, but the villagers told me that their electricity supply, which is mediated by the factory, was cut off last year on the grounds that it was intended only for lighting but was being misused by workers who wanted to use kettles and televisions.

The typical working conditions that the labourers face are extremely severe. Some of them described to me their experience of working alternate 12-hour day and night shifts for a daily wage of some 70 rupees, or approximately 80p. Obviously, they considered their working conditions to be extremely poor, and they described the poor safety precautions in the factory.

Human trafficking, which is often described as a modern equivalent of the slave trade, is another problem that we see in a new light when we look at it in the context of caste. I heard testimony from an activist in Nagpur who works among trafficked women in the state of Maharashtra. The situation was simply described as, fundamentally, “a Dalit problem.” In February last year, the Bihar-based non-governmental organisation Bhoomika Vihar found in a local survey that 98 per cent. of trafficked women belonged to Dalit communities, low castes or religious minorities, many of whom are themselves of Dalit background.

A closely associated form of exploitation of Dalit women and minors is the devadasi system of temple prostitution. Although traditionally considered a noble vocation, the experience of its victims is that it is a highly exploitative and degrading practice. Commonly, devadasis are minor girls who have been dedicated to a temple god. They serve as concubines to the priests and as prostitutes for temple users. They are often sold into prostitution after serving an open-ended tenure in the temple, and their children may suffer a similar fate.

India has several laws to prevent sexual exploitation, including the Immoral Traffic (Prevention) Act, 1956,
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which specifically prohibits the procurement of any person for the purpose of prostitution. However, the implementation of such laws was described by the activists whom I met as being very weak indeed.

Millions of Dalits fall prey to those most severe forms of labour exploitation, yet a greater number still are blighted by the continued association of caste with occupation. The jobs that are specifically reserved for Dalits, who are, literally, the outcasts of society, are the most menial, dangerous and, frankly, disgusting jobs. There is no escape from their occupation, which is dictated by birth. According to the most recent official figures, nearly 700,000 Dalits in India have the occupation known euphemistically as “manual scavenging”—the cleaning and removal of human excrement with the hands. Again, women are the worst affected.

The problems are worse in rural areas than in urban centres, where the new India is being forged. Segregation is a reality of life for many Dalits in rural areas. The report that I referred to earlier, “Untouchability in Rural India”, states that in 73 per cent. of villages surveyed, Dalits cannot enter non-Dalit homes; in64 per cent. of villages, they cannot not enter places of worship; and in 48 per cent. of villages—nearly half of all villages in rural areas—they cannot use the same water source as non-Dalits, on account of their supposed polluting influence.

Perhaps one of the most alarming statistics is the one revealing that segregation is not absent among today’s young generation: in 39 per cent. of schools, Dalit and non-Dalit children did not eat together. During my trip to India in February, I visited the village of Garipalli in Andhra Pradesh, where I saw non-Dalit children refuse to eat the food prepared by Dalit cooks. That is a sad reflection of the pervasiveness of caste attitudes even among the generation of tomorrow.

The United Nations Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination recently expressed concern that, despite the formal abolition of untouchability by article 17 of the Indian constitution, de facto segregation of Dalits persists, particularly in rural areas, in respect of places of worship, housing, hospitals, education, markets and other public places, and water sources. The committee urged the Indian Government to intensify their efforts to enforce the Protection of Civil Rights Act, 1955, especially in rural areas, by effectively punishing acts of untouchability, by taking effective measures against residential segregation and segregation in public schools, and by ensuring equal access for Dalits to places of worship, hospitals, water sources and any other places or services intended for use by the general public. It is worth noting that an estimated 700 million people in India live in rural areas. The majority of the Indian population live in rural communities.

Against that backdrop of continuing caste-based discrimination, it is no wonder that Dalits are one of the groups that endure the worst socio-economic conditions in India. The estimated proportion of Dalits below the poverty line is 35 per cent. in rural areas, compared with 21 per cent. among other groups, and 39 per cent. in urban areas, compared with 21 per cent. among other groups. Those figures are based on the most recent large-scale national sample survey, which was carried out by the Government of India in
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2000. The overall proportion of the population living in poverty was assessed as 35 per cent.—360 million people in total—according to the international definition of poverty, which is based on income of$1 or less a day.

Child mortality for those under five years old among Dalits is 83 per 1,000 live births, compared with 22 for the general population. In fact, on virtually any statistical measure of well-being that one may choose, the figures for Dalits are much worse than the national average.

I appreciate that the Minister is not responsible for international development, but perhaps he could shed some light on whether any of our aid to India is targeted specifically at Dalits, with the aim of closing the gaps between life outcomes for Dalits and those of the wider community.

Dalits experience violence committed with impunity, severe labour exploitation and modern forms of slavery, and discrimination in almost every sphere, yet escape from the shackles of the caste system is beyond the realm of imagination for millions of them. Freedom from the identity conferred on Dalits and low castes by the caste system is crucially important, and they have long seen the embracing of new faiths as a route for escaping from their identity. Of course, to say that is not to identify the caste system wholly and exclusively with the Hindu religion. It is practised by every religious group in India, including Muslims and Christians.

I recently met a well-respected Dalit activist, Dr. Kancha Ilaiah, who stressed to me that religious freedom is a vital right in the struggle for self-awareness and identity among the Dalit people, but that that right can be severely curtailed through legislation and social pressures. Dalits who embrace Islam or Christianity lose their eligibility for the benefits of the reservation policy that reserves certain jobs in the public sector for Dalits. State level anti-conversion laws are an increasingly prominent way of obstructing freedom of religion and are in force in seven states; further laws are expected soon. I would welcome hearing the Minister’s thoughts on the use of anti-conversion legislation in India. What discussions have he or his colleagues had with the Indian Government about such laws and does he think that they are compatible with the ideals and aspirations of the new India?

India is a beautiful and wonderfully diverse nation. It is also a truly remarkable liberal democracy. Human rights issues in India relate to a fundamentally different set of problems than those associated with the authoritarian regimes of Burma and North Korea. There is freedom to debate the issue of caste in India and an increasingly critical media respond to the new aspirations and values of young Indians. Earlier this year, a BBC World Service poll found that 55 per cent. of Indians think that the issues relating to caste are holding their country back.

Last December, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh became the first sitting Indian Prime Minister to openly acknowledge the parallel between the practice of “untouchability” in India and apartheid in South Africa. He described “untouchability” as a “blot on humanity” and added that

“even after 60 years of constitutional and legal protection and state support, there is still social discrimination against Dalits in many parts of our country.”

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Opponents of that view in India maintain that, unlike apartheid in South Africa, the constitution in India does not endorse or tolerate any form of discrimination. Other Indians prefer to think that the situation facing Dalits is comparable to that faced by blacks 40 years ago in the southern states of the United States when, even though Supreme Court rulings had outlawed segregation, the reality of daily life for many was de facto segregation, barriers to advancement and continuing poverty.

When discussing possible remedies to the effects of caste-based discrimination in India we need to tread carefully and respect the fact that these are fundamentally questions for Indians themselves to resolve. However, I will put a number of questions to the Minister about what the British Government can do to assist the Indian Government and people in addressing this difficult issue. What assistance are we giving to organisations in India that represent and provide a voice for Dalits? Are we providing any specific assistance to organisations that are trying to raise the issue in India itself? What advice and assistance can we offer to help the machinery ofIndian Government—the judicial system and thearray of public services—to stamp out caste-based discrimination and to work more effectively for Dalits and those of lower castes? What encouragement and assistance can we provide to UK investors in India explicitly to recognise the plight of Dalits? How can UK companies build into their investment plans and corporate social responsibility plans a commitment to seeing their investments deliver real gains for Dalit communities?

At the end of March this year, the Conservative party’s human rights commission hosted a hearing at Parliament with Dalit representatives from India to take evidence on this subject. One of the strongest calls from that group of people was for greater English-medium education for Dalit children. In the new India, the ability to speak and write English is more important than ever, so what assistance can the Government provide to enable the expansion of English-medium education to Dalit children?

The nature of our relationship with India was described in a Foreign Office briefing paper as “strong, wide and deep”. Shared interests with India across many different fronts bind our two countries together: economically, commercially, strategically and environmentally—in the way that we try to tackle climate change—and through our shared language and history. Most fundamentally, we are connected to India through our shared humanity and commitment to freedom.

Will the Minister and his team make a commitment today that they will not allow a single opportunity pass them by to encourage our friends in the Indian Government to renew their efforts to end all forms of caste-based discrimination? I also ask the Minister not to let our common European position on India prevent us from raising the issue vigorously and on a bilateral basis. We should not let sensitivity about our colonial past prevent us from robustly raising the issue and we should not be fearful of undermining commercial and economic interests. As a good, critical friend of the
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Indian Government, we should offer whatever assistance we can to help stamp out caste-based discrimination.

I am hugely optimistic about India’s future, but we know that the societies that are likely to do best in the 21st century are those in which the conditions of freedom and social mobility are maximised. Human capital is India’s greatest asset and yet almost a quarter of the Indian population are held back by systemic discrimination, segregation and human rights abuse. Caste-based discrimination constrains the life chances of approximately 200 million people and must have no place in the new India.

In conclusion, I ask the Minister to express his strong commitment to working with the Government of India to challenge, not least through education, the persistence of a degrading and pernicious system that threatens the social stability and economic progress of India.

11.25 am

Rob Marris (Wolverhampton, South-West) (Lab): It is a great pleasure to follow the wonderful speech of the hon. Member for Preseli Pembrokeshire (Mr. Crabb). I speak as an unpaid trustee of The Dalit Solidarity Network UK and regard myself as a critical friend of India. I am aware that millions and millions of Hindus in India and around the world, including the UK, object to casteism and consider that it entrenches discrimination based on work and descent. The hon. Gentleman mentioned that Dr. Manmohan Singh has recently likened casteism to apartheid and called it a “blot on humanity”. That is a significant step forward.

Hon. Members often discuss poverty in Africa, and rightly so. However, there are more poor people in India than in the whole of Africa. One of the main causes of poverty in India—although it is not the only cause—is casteism because it holds people back from development. Some of my points have already been raised by the hon. Gentleman in his excellent speech, but one aspect that was not mentioned has a huge bearing on the UK as an international power: it is what was said to me and other hon. Members when a group of Dalit leaders visited the House this spring. We were told that there is a significant risk of civil war in India unless the Dalit issue is addressed—and I do not say that lightly.

For the past 35 or 40 years there has been an incipient naxalite rebellion, particularly in the north-east of India. That rebellion is spreading because of the frustration of Dalits at their lack of life chances and with the daily discrimination, violence, poverty and rape that they face. A growing number of Dalits do not believe that those issues can be adequately addressed within the constitutional framework of India. I dearly hope that they are wrong. I do not believe that engaging in violence provides a tit for tat solution for the daily violence suffered by Dalits and I stress that that is not the way forward. However, I understand why, 60 years after independence and after a huge number of laws have been passed to address Dalit discrimination, a growing number of Dalit in India feel that the laws and the constitution are simply not working.

A civil war in India would be a disaster for India and its residents, but it would also be a disaster for other
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countries, including the United Kingdom, as we have close family and historic ties with India—it is the leaders of the Dalits, not me, who are giving that warning. I emphasise that they are not in favour of a civil war, but that they recognise the risk of it happening. The pot is starting to boil and things must change.

If we are honest, one of the many difficulties is that the rule of law in India is, to put it mildly, somewhat weak. The Dalit are excluded from enforcing their rights and victims of anti-Dalit action often find that the police will simply not investigate their complaint. If they do record it, they do not investigate it.

Education is part of the reason. Police officers must be better-educated perhaps than the average person in India, which means that it is harder for Dalits to become police officers. All too often—not all the time—the prevailing culture of the police is anti-Dalit. All the laws in the world giving people rights are almost useless if people do not observe them and there is no effective sanction for breaking them, which happens in India all too often.

Coupled with that is corruption, which is still far too widespread in India. Naturally, it is not confined to the private sector, but leaks into the public sector, including the police and judiciary. Dalits face another obstacle even if they manage to get the police to record and investigate an incident: in many parts of India, proceedings in the higher courts are still conducted in English. Owing to a lack of educational opportunities, the vast proportion of the overall Indian population are not fluent in English, but that proportion is disproportionately large among Dalits. The courts in their own country are conducted in a foreign language. That is most regrettable.

The lost opportunities for India’s economic development resulting from the blocked potential of hundreds of millions of Dalits can be highlighted by the example of one of my political heroes, who is well-known to my hon. Friend the Member for Islington, North (Jeremy Corbyn)—Dr. Ambedkar. He was born a Dalit—an untouchable—in 1893, but through patronage he became an incredibly well-qualified polymath in the social sciences, economics and law.

Dr. B.R. Ambedkar chaired the committee that drew up the Indian constitution, behind which he was the driving force. He had help, but effectively he wrote the constitution—certainly, he set the tone. Many of us in the Room have visited India—I have done so on two occasions. Across the country, one can see—rightly—statues of Dr. Ambedkar. He rose from his humble background to great heights. In 1956—the year of his death—he converted to Buddhism. He was frustrated after more than 50 years of trying to get his countrymen—principally, but not exclusively Hindus—to recognise and act against caste-based discrimination.

Hundreds of millions of people in India have that potential, but they do not receive the kind of patronage that Dr. Ambedkar was fortunate enough to have in his youth. They do not get to travel to America to study, or to London to become a barrister at the Inns of Court. They do not receive the same education. That affects UK businesses operating in India as well, because the pool of labour—often educated labour—from which
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they would like to draw is correspondingly smaller than it should be, owing to those blocked opportunities.

I pay tribute to companies such as Cobra Beer, headed by the noble Lord Bilimoria, which has tried to address that problem. In particular I pay tribute to Richard Stockdale, the chief executive officer of Lloyds TSB plc in India, whom I met in Mumbai and again when he came to London, partly in order to push issues concerning Dalits. Such companies should be encouraged by the Government to observe what are rightly—I think—called the Ambedkar principles, which were launched in London, last July, at a meeting of the London School of Economics. I had the pleasure to be at that meeting, along with Baroness Royall who was representing the Government.

I shall not read out all of the Ambedkar principles, but refer briefly to them, if I may? They state that companies should have an employment policy that reflects

“the unacceptability of caste discrimination”,

that they should develop

“and implement a plan of affirmative action, including training on caste discrimination”—

we would call that “awareness”—

and that they should ensure that they and their suppliers

“comply with all national legislation”.

I stress the word “comply”. The legislation exists, but too often it is honoured in the breach.

Fourthly, companies adhering to the Ambedkar principles should recruit fairly. Fifthly, they should take

“full responsibility for their workforce...including the supply chain”.

That is very important because globalisation, including in India, brings long supply chains with component manufacturers and so on, and too often the large corporation at the top of the chain is not aware of the employment practices down it.

Sixthly, a company should provide comprehensive training opportunities, particularly for Dalit employees, who all too often, owing to their position in society, have been denied them. Seventhly, a company should designate a senior manager to carry out those policies and—this is the tenth principle—appoint a specific board member for oversight. Eighthly, there should be

“effective monitoring and verification mechanisms”

Most importantly, from the United Kingdom’s perspective, the ninth principle states that the company should publish an annual report on its progress so that UK businesses operate transparently in India and other countries so that we know what progress is being made.

That is likely to affect UK businesses, not only now, but particularly in the medium term, if the growing demand in India for reservation in the private sector is met, which is possible. Currently, there is job reservation in the public sector for Dalits. We might call that affirmative action. It is to ensure, as far as regional state Governments and the Union Government in Delhi can, that the work force of public sector organisations are reflective of the population that it serves.

In the last 15 years, however, the proportion of the population covered by public sector reservation has been shrinking owing to privatisations. That has
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corresponded with India’s welcome economic growth, although sadly it is confined mostly to urban areas and has not extended to the 650,000 villages inhabited by 750 million people—one hopes that it will get through. Of course, the private sector is growing without reservation, but the public sector, where that protection exists, is shrinking.

Jeremy Corbyn (Islington, North) (Lab): I acknowledge the value of the reservation system inthe public sector. However, does my hon. Friend acknowledge that one of the problems has been that although the reservation system has led to employment for some Dalits, anti-Dalit attitudes remain among high-level management throughout the public and private sectors? Great difficulties remain for Dalits in breaking into other non-reserved jobs in the public sector. Obviously, if the same thing applied in the private sector, we might have the same problem.

Rob Marris: I agree wholeheartedly with my hon. Friend. Often there are difficulties with anti-discrimination legislation, although I support it entirely—we have it here. The Government, on the basis of the democratically expressed will of the people, can try to set the tone, but in every workplace, household, village and so on, there will be different manifestations as to how deeply that goes. One has to press for a change in attitudes. The legislation sets the tone, but my hon. Friend is right that in too many workplaces there is a ceiling. I do not know whether one would call it a glass ceiling in India, but there is a ceiling, and cold-shouldering and similar things are going on.

If it comes to pass that there is reservation in the private sector, that will affect UK business. I have mentioned some good examples, but to the extent that UK business has not already done so, it should be gearing up for that; otherwise it will come as a tornado for those businesses and they will find it very difficult to adjust.

With regard to the Ambedkar principles, I have the honour to be a member of the Select Committee on Trade and Industry. We visited India in March 2006 as part of our preparation for a report on trade with India. I pay tribute to my fellow Committee members who were on that visit for the patience that they accorded me when I persistently asked business leaders and others whom we met about caste-based discrimination in India. I have to say something about the body language and sometimes the verbal response of those of whom I was asking the questions, none of whom I strongly suspect was a Dalit, although I do not know, partly because I did not know their names sometimes. Their response was too often negative—as though I was asking them an unseemly question such as how often they washed their underwear. People should not ask such questions, whether they are foreigners or people within India—that was the tone of too many responses that I received.

In the Trade and Industry Committee report, published in June 2006, we said in recommendation 30:

“We recommend that UK companies operating in India should be careful not to break the letter or spirit of the laws protecting Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes. Preferably,
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they should take note of the ‘Ambedkar Principles’, launched by the International Dalit Solidarity Network, and look carefully at their recruitment and employment policies in India.”

May I say to my right hon. Friend the Minister that I was very pleased with the Government response to the report? That response, published last October, referred to Baroness Royall going to the launch of the Ambedkar principles in the UK and mentioned certain big corporations in the UK that are supporting the Ambedkar principles, including Lloyds TSB, which I have mentioned, Standard Chartered, HSBC and Barclays. The Government response also stated:

“Under the UK Presidency the EU-India joint action plan was agreed, identifying key areas in which the EU and India agree to work together including human rights. The British High Commission in New Delhi has also discussed the issue of caste discrimination with the Indian National Commission for Minorities and National Commission.”

I am pleased with that response. As supplicants such as myself always do, we want more, and I will come to that, but the UK Government are starting to move on the issue, which affects not only hundreds of millions of people in India of course, but people in places such as Bangladesh, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Japan, parts of Africa, Yemen and so on. I am referring to discrimination based on work and descent. However, we are focusing today on India. I pay tribute to what the Government have done thus far, but we need to recognise, if you will allow me a little latitude, Mrs. Humble, the risk of caste-based discrimination in the UK.

There are thought to be 50,000 Dalits in the UK. We do not have numbers because we do not collect figures. However, the Dalit Solidarity Network-UK, of which I am a trustee, published a report last July called “No Escape—Caste Discrimination in the UK”. I have passed that to my hon. Friend the Minister for Women and Equality and she is looking into it, because as well as trying to encourage India and assist India as much as we can to move on from caste-based discrimination, which to say the least is an affront to humanity and is an historical anachronism, we need to have a look at our own backyard to ensure that we do not import caste-based discrimination into the UK.

When we are unifying legislation through a single equality Act in the UK under the Commission for Equality and Human Rights, based in Manchester, we should consider having caste-based discrimination as one of the threads of discrimination that that unifying legislation, which will be very welcome, should address. Were we to do that, we would set a tone around the world, because I think that we would be the first country outside India to be dealing with the matter, in respect of what is very much a minority population in our own country, and I think that it would improve relations with India.

Many powerful people in India support caste-based discrimination, but growing numbers of powerful people in India oppose it, and that is the case from the top down. The Prime Minister, Dr. Manmohan Singh, to whom we have referred, is, as his name suggests, a Sikh. Guru Nanak founded Sikhism as a religion of equality, and one of the founding tenets that he and the subsequent nine gurus espoused, was to be against caste-based discrimination. Sad to say, that has not worked out fully, although there is much less caste discrimination in Sikhism. Dr. Manmohan Singh
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comes from that background. As an Indian, he will of course be aware of the issue of caste, but as a Sikh he will have a particular angle on that, so although the United Kingdom and Her Majesty’s Government always have to be careful about how they seek to transmit views, and about the views that they transmit, to a sovereign foreign country, which India happily has been for 60 years, we should also be aware that some of the nuances mean that to some extent we may be pushing at an open door, and that will be in the interests of our country, as well in the interests of hundreds of millions of people in India.

I shall finish by posing some questions, in time-honoured fashion, to the Minister who will reply to the debate. First, what encouragement are the UK Government giving UK business to ensure that UK business, when operating in India, observes the spirit and the letter of the laws of that country on caste-based discrimination? Secondly, how frequently does the UK raise with the Government of India the issue of Dalits?

Thirdly, what steps do the UK Government take to seek to ensure that aid in India, whether it is what one might call routine aid or emergency aid, is not distributed on a caste basis? There were widespread reports after the hurricane in Orissa, the earthquake in Gujarat and the tsunami, for example, that aid from abroad, including from the UK, was not distributed fairly. A major reason for that—I can tell my right hon. Friend that there is very good evidence of this—was not any action of the UK Government, but inaction. Again, when it comes to education, it is often the case that Dalits have less education, not because they have less potential but because they are blocked, as I have termed it. People distributing aid tend to be higher up the social scale and therefore more likely to give in to caste discrimination, perceiving it to be in their own interests and in the interests of their family and friends to preserve the social hierarchy and ensure that aid goes higher up the social scale rather than to Dalits at the bottom of the social scale. What steps are we taking to try to prevent that from happening?

Fourthly, do the UK Government agree with the resolution passed by the European Parliament, in January I think, on the human rights situation of the Dalits in India? Fifthly, will the UK Government assist with English-language education programmes in India, as asked for by Dalit leaders, if the Union Government of India ask for such support? Clearly, it is a delicate issue. As a former colonial power, we cannot swan in and say, “We’re going to teach you all English”—that would be an unacceptable affront. However, can my right hon. Friend assure us that the UK Government would step in to assist with English language training—within our means, of course—if the national Government in Delhi asked us to do so?

I finish by welcoming the cross-party consensus that we are starting to build on this issue. My hon. Friend the Member for Islington, North has been toiling on a long and lonely furrow in seeking support in the House, although the same is not true of support outside the House. Our numbers are expanding, and to my knowledge there are now three MPs—myself, my hon. Friend and the hon. Member for Preseli Pembrokeshire—who are very much seized of the issue. I hope that we can get other right hon. and hon.
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Members to take it up and encourage the Government to do even more to address this ongoing, abhorrent atrocity in India and other countries.

11.51 am

Jeremy Corbyn (Islington, North) (Lab): I commend the hon. Member for Preseli Pembrokeshire (Mr. Crabb) for securing the debate and for what he said. By way of a declaration of interest, I should say that, like my hon. Friend the Member for Wolverhampton, South-West (Rob Marris), I am a trustee of the Dalit Solidarity Network, as well as its honorary chair. I hasten to add that no fees are paid for either of those positions; indeed, if anyone wants to make a donation to the network, that would be extremely welcome and well received.

As my hon. Friend said, a small number of hon. Members have regularly taken up this issue, including myself, my hon. Friend and the hon. Member for Hazel Grove (Andrew Stunell). I take this opportunity to invite the hon. Member for Preseli Pembrokeshire to join the Dalit Solidarity Network and attend our meetings in the future. What he has done today has been of enormous help to the network’s cause, and I thank him for that.

I have been involved in the issue for some time, and it is hard to describe to anyone who has never witnessed it the way in which Dalit people are so grossly discriminated against, not only in India—although it is the main place—but in other countries. It is also hard to describe the sheer verve and exuberance of Dalit campaigners in India, who are doing their best to overcome the most appalling discrimination and suffering.

I have had the great fortune to go to India on a number of occasions and I was a guest speaker at the World Social Forum in Mumbai in 2004. The event was preceded by a Dalit rights march throughout the country, which was designed to be equivalent to the great marches that Gandhi organised in the 1930s. When the marchers finally arrived at the former factory where the World Social Forum was being held, there was a fantastic sense of joy and exuberance among the Dalit people, not only because they had achieved something by having the march, but because, in the confines of the World Social Forum centre, they could be treated like normal, decent human beings like everybody else. That experience is not part of the daily life of Dalit people in India or elsewhere.

As part of the World Social Forum, Rodney Bickerstaffe, the former general secretary of Unison, Rev. David Haslam, who has done fantastic work on the issue, myself and many others addressed a Dalit rights conference. We were joined by the vice-chancellor of the university of Mumbai, who is himself a Dalit. Again, there was a sense not only of injustice, but of joy at the achievements of Dalit solidarity campaigns around the world and at the fact that people in other places recognised exactly what was going on.

It is hard for anyone outside to understand just how huge the issue is. At some point, everyone in this room will have campaigned against apartheid in South Africa. It was an evil and pernicious system if ever there was one, and many of us spent an awful lot of time campaigning against it. Fortunately, it is now behind us in legal terms and, largely, in reality.
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However, for at least 260 million people around the world—mainly in India—the caste discrimination system is alive and kicking. It discriminates from cradle to grave, and the fact that it is so discriminatory means that that journey from cradle to grave is unfortunately very short for most Dalit people. Discrimination exists in education, health, employment, daily life and, of course, the legal system.

As my hon. Friend the Member for Wolverhampton, South-West said, the Indian constitution was drafted by Dr. Ambedkar, a Dalit, who later renounced the Hindu religion and adopted Buddhism as his faith. Article 14 provides for “equality before the law” for all citizens. Article 15(1) refers to non-discrimination on the basis of caste and gender. Article 21 deals with the right to life and security of life. Article 46 relates to the protection of Dalits from

“social injustice and all forms of exploitation”.

The Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes (Prevention of Atrocities) Act, 1989 does much the same. It is therefore clear in Indian law that caste discrimination is completely illegal, but it happens in every aspect of life there.

Caste discrimination is also illegal under the terms of the universal declaration of human rights of 1948. Article 6 states:

“Everyone has the right to recognition everywhere as a person before the law.”

Article 7 states:

“All are equal before the law and are entitled without any discrimination to equal protection of the law.”

The universal declaration was followed by the international covenant on civil and political rights and the international covenant on economic, social and cultural rights of 1966, the international convention on the elimination of all forms of racial discrimination of 1965, the international convention on the elimination of all forms of discrimination against women of 1979 and the declaration on the elimination of violence against women of 1994.

However, those of us who attend the UnitedNations Human Rights Council—formerly the UN Commission on Human Rights—will find that assoon as one wishes even to raise the subject of discrimination on the basis of work or descent—in effect, discrimination against Dalit people—one is met with the most ferocious objections from Indian delegations. When the subject was raised at the millennium summit in Durban, there was enormous opposition from the Indian Government even to discussing it. It is not anti-India or anti-the Indian Government, but pro-human rights to demand that everyone be treated equally before the law, wherever they are on this planet. That, surely, is what the universal declaration of human rights is all about and what it was designed to achieve.

Rob Marris: Would my hon. Friend, like me, find it difficult to support India becoming a permanent member of the UN Security Council until it started fundamentally addressing this huge human rights issue?

Jeremy Corbyn: It is hard to see how one could believe that a country should be on the Security Council permanently to defend human rights around the world if it was clearly doing nothing like enough to address caste discrimination in its own society. My hon. Friend makes a strong point.

As my hon. Friend and others have said, the problem exists not only in India. If I may crave your indulgence for one second, Mr. Conway, I should like to mention the related issue of Dalit discrimination in Nepal. Last year, in this very room, I hosted a representation by Dalit women from Nepal and colleagues from India about Dalit discrimination. For those women, who had been abused and forced to work as prostitutes, and whose lives had been destroyed by the very fact of their place of birth as Dalit people, it was an incredible achievement simply to be able to present their case in this hall in the Palace of Westminster.

We owe it to those brave women, who have stood up against caste discrimination, and to many others to do our best to do two things. First, we must ensure that the Government do all that they can to support measures to eliminate caste discrimination. Secondly, we must get the message across to the Government and lawmakers in India and other places.

The Hague declaration on the human rights and dignity of Dalit women was made in November last year. It pointed out the vast numbers of people involved, and made a series of demands, including identifying the millennium development goals with the cause of Dalit women, and placing the focus of international development on the elimination of caste discrimination. It made recommendations to the international community, the United Nations and the European Union. Recalling that India, like many other countries, is a signatory to the universal declaration of human rights, it called for a reduction, as quickly as possible, in the large gap in living standards between Dalits and other people, particularly women and girls. It called on the

“United Nations Human Rights bodies and mechanisms, the United Nations organisations, intergovernmental institutions and organisations...to give full recognition and effect to the content and the recommendations of the Hague Conference on the Rights of Dalit Women”

and on the

“international community to express its outrage against the caste-induced, systematic practice of untouchability and atrocities against Dalits in South Asia in general and against Dalit women in particular”.

It continues by calling on the Human Rights Council to address the issue; perhaps the Minister will be able to help with regard to the UK Government’s doing all that they can to ensure that that happens.

In parenthesis, one of the problems with the UN Human Rights Council, as with several UN agencies, is that too often we hide behind a bland Euro-formula, in which the European Union speaks for all 25 member states, but the reality is that there is hardly any verve in the contribution, for fear of offending any one of the 25. I wonder whether it might be an idea to opt out on this occasion, and say something a little stronger, if that is possible.

The International Labour Organisation’s annual report on fundamental labour rights specifies adherence to the policy of no child or forced labour, non-discrimination
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in employment, and the right to association and collective bargaining, but for Dalit people in India the idea of being active in a trade union and ensuring that their employment rights are complied with and wage demands met is a difficult one. I hope that, again, our representatives at the ILO will ensure that those demands are met.

In 2002, the UN Committee on the elimination of all forms of racial discrimination drew substantial attention to the issue of caste discrimination, and suggested that the state parties should take several courses of action, including to

“identify those descent-based communities under their jurisdiction who suffer from discrimination”.

That is a requirement on all member states, including Britain, not just India. Secondly, it suggested that they should

“consider the incorporation of an explicit prohibition of descent-based discrimination in the national constitution”.

It is very unclear what part of British law would apply if it could be argued that descent-based discrimination was happening in this country. I say that without hostility towards the Government; however, issues of discrimination against Dalit people do arise in this country. As well as calling on the state parties to

“review and enact or amend legislation to outlaw all forms of discrimination”

the committee demands a comprehensive national strategy to carry out the actions identified.

To conclude, discrimination against Dalit people in India is an outrage of the first order and must be dealt with, so pressure must be put on the Indian Government. Following the raising of this question with the Department for International Development it has been made clear to us that there is no discrimination on the basis of caste or descent associated with any British aid going to India. I am very pleased about that and ask for as much aid as possible to be directed particularly towards education in Dalit communities. It seems that discrimination is strong throughout, but particularly in education.

My hon. Friend the Member for Wolverhampton, South-West helpfully quoted the Ambedkar principles. The Dalit Solidarity Network has done a great deal of work in promoting them and hosted a conference last year on private sector involvement with them and the attempt to encourage foreign investors in India, who are now quite substantial, and substantially involved in employment, to adhere to the principles. That initiative is supported by the Amicus trade union, Lloyds TSB and others. It will be helpful if the Government also give full support to that approach.

We all today applaud the abolition of the slave trade 200 years ago, and at this very moment Kofi Annan is about to speak on that subject. It was an incredible achievement, although unfortunately slavery went on for several decades after that. However, we must ask hard questions. When a Dalit child is making carpets or bricks, or working in whatever other horrible occupation they are forced into, denied education, health care and childhood, is not that slavery in another form? We should not be too self-congratulatory. We have a long way to go to ensure that the UN declaration of human rights of 1948 means something to the people for whom it was intended to
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mean something—those at the bottom of the pile, suffering centuries of discrimination and the horrors that go with it. We must do all that we can.

12.6 pm

Mr. Geoffrey Clifton-Brown (Cotswold) (Con): I am grateful to you for presiding this morning, Mr. Conway, and grateful to see the Minister for Europe here this morning. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Preseli Pembrokeshire (Mr. Crabb) for his comprehensive, mature and knowledgeable introduction to the debate. Although it is not particularly well attended this morning—and we particularly mourn the absence of any Liberal Democrat representation—the subject is an important one. The fact that it has been raised again in this Parliament shows that the issue is increasingly recognised on the international stage and that the Indian Government will increasingly have to act to deal with the dreadful problem that hon. Members have described.

There is not much time and I want to give the Minister plenty of time to reply so I shall make my remarks brief. My hon. Friend the Member for Preseli Pembrokeshire chaired the Conservative Human Rights Commission earlier this year, as he mentioned in his speech, and, to show what I think should be the tone of the whole debate, I shall quote his public statement:

“We conducted the hearing very much in a spirit of friendship with India, recognising the long-standing and special relationship between our two countries. But we would not be a true friend to India and its people if we did not raise these very serious issues.”

He is right: a true friendship involves telling one’s friend when they have got it wrong, and the Indian Government do need to take action over those serious problems.

India is, nevertheless, one of the world’s largest democracies. It is reckoned, by Freedom House, to be in the free category. It allows public assembly and has a relatively impartial judiciary, particularly at senior levels, and, above all, it has a relatively free press. Without that free press it would not be possible to report some of the atrocities happening to Dalits, such as the Khairlanji incident that he referred to. I think that that free press will eventually bring about change in the system for Dalits.

I was a little concerned about the remarks of the hon. Member for Wolverhampton, South-West (Rob Marris). Violence is never the way to bring about change. Change should be brought about by peaceful means and campaigning, and people in a democracy and those who believe in democracy should respect that.

The plight of Dalits continues to be a serious concern. Amnesty International has termed India’s caste system the hidden apartheid, as many hon. Members have mentioned this morning. The Indian caste system has historically prevented the Dalits, or untouchables, as they are called, from doing any but the most menial jobs. Today’s speeches have highlighted the very real sense of discrimination against Dalits that still exists, particularly in rural areas. Dalits continue to face socio-economic discrimination, abuse and sometimes torture and indeed death, simply because of their family descent.
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As I said in an intervention, those people are born into the system and discriminated against from the very time that they are born. That is quite unacceptable.

It is estimated that the system affects up to a fifth of the population in India—so up to 200 million people. Most of those affected are based in India, but not all of them, as we have heard from the hon. Member for Islington, North (Jeremy Corbyn), who met Dalit representatives in Nepal—as, indeed, did I when I went there last year.

The United States Department of State 2006 human rights report notes that:

“Social acceptance of caste-based discrimination remained a problem, and for many, validated human rights violations against persons belonging to lower castes.”

The Select Committee on Foreign Affairs heard testimony that