Class action suit alleges their caste position was used as a way to keep them subjugated.
A massive Hindu temple in New Jersey brought some 200 workers from India to the US on R-1 visas as religious volunteers, but forced them to work on illegally low wages, a class action lawsuit alleges.
The lawsuit filed in federal court in New Jersey in May alleges they were really held against their will, forced to work 13-hour shifts for weeks on end with no time off and paid just a little more than $1 an hour, NPR reported.
“Their caste position was used by the employer, and the entities affiliated with the employer, as a way to keep them subjugated or keep them constrained and feeling like they didn’t have any options,” Patricia Kakalec, one of the lawyers representing the six named plaintiffs in the civil case was quoted as saying.
Kakalec is suing for wage theft and violation of human trafficking laws, while federal investigators determine whether criminal charges are warranted.
After the civil lawsuit was filed, the FBI raided the walled Bochasanwasi Akshar Purushottam Swaminarayan Sanstha or BAPS temple compound in the city of Robbinsville.
Read: FBI raids BAPS temple in Robbinsville, NJ, following lawsuit by construction workers (May 11, 2021)
Officials from the BAPS sect, which runs the temple denied the allegations in a statement, NPR said. Spokesman Matthew Frankel wrote that “BAPS takes each accusation seriously and is conducting a thorough review.” He wrote that he would not comment further “out of respect for the judicial process.”
NPR cited Professor Raymond Williams, who has studied Swaminarayan Hinduism for decades, as saying it emerged in the 19th century as a reform movement.
Today, BAPS is among the largest and wealthiest sects of Hinduism, due to an emphasis on education among other things, he says.
“Their systems of education are very well organized and administered around the world, including secular education,” Williams was quoted as saying.
“That emphasis has positioned many followers of BAPS to be prominent candidates for high-preference [visa] categories for the United States.”
In interviews near the Robbinsville temple, several immigrants from India said that the allegations were troubling but that they were reserving judgment, according to NPR.
Rohul Dingra, who occasionally worships at the BAPS temple, told NPR that caste conflicts exist in rural India, not in the country’s urban areas — much less in the United States.
However, Dalit rights activist Yashica Dutt said, “Many people think [prejudice] is only caste related when a Dalit is being killed or visibly ostracized, but other forms of discrimination are pervasive.”
“If you hear the experiences of Dalit students on campuses in the United States, they say they have been vetted, by their castes, before being allowed into study groups,” Dutt, author of the book ‘Coming Out as Dalit’, was quoted as saying.
Read: Indian American gay couple ties the knot at BAPS Mandir in New Jersey (July 25, 2019)
NPR cited some Indian Americans with Dalit backgrounds as saying discrimination is far more widespread in the US than many of their fellow Hindus believe, existing for both manual laborers and white-collar workers in the information economy.
According to the Pew Research Center, about 0.7% of the US population is Hindu.
NPR cited authors Sanjoy Chakravorty, Devesh Kapur and Nirvikar Singh as saying in their book, ‘The Other One Percent: Indians in America’, that the vast majority of Indian migrants to the US are from the middle and upper castes.
Dalits are relatively small in number in the US, but they’re increasingly vocal. In a survey of 1,500 Dalits conducted by an advocacy group called Equality Labs, two-thirds of respondents said they suffered discrimination at work, and one-third reported that they had faced discrimination in education, according to NPR.
Meanwhile, advocates are closely watching a lawsuit brought by the California Department of Fair Employment and Housing against the tech company Cisco, NPR said.
The suit alleges that managers associated with upper castes harassed and discriminated against an engineer who is a Dalit.
5 Comments
From the outside sources, there are rumblings that this time its the Omidyar network who opened a war front against Isckon unleashing the FBI.
BAPS. Lol. They are a joke. They’ve done this at every temple they own. They all know this, all their followers, preists and monks. They won’t speak up though. I know a couple who visit a lot and do free work all the time for them. They agree with the stories but are too scared. They’d lose a lot of $$$ from the community.
They don’t care, and once this is over they’ll just take more precautions with their paperwork and start again. Legal discrimination and slave labor.
Hi Shawn.
Thanks for the feedback I do truly appreciate it and I also agree that Hindus are the best people, even though I am not one of them (well, not by birth anyway). Just to clarify some facts, I don’t believe that some law firm launched a “bogus lawsuit” and photoshopped in the FBI on the BAPS Robbinsville grounds. There are facts out there if you want to see them. For example, I don’t think that the mayor of the Robbinsville would get involved in some bogus media stunt. Sure, it’s possible, but this isn’t a media stunt. I also don’t think the FBI would be in agreement with some random (or even super powerful) law group using them to make a religious organization (or anyone else) look bad. Nor would CNN or the NY Times (see links below). So when I used the phrase ‘cover up’ I chose that phrase consciously and intentionally and I stand by it. Here are some links to many of the different sites covering this ‘news’. All one has to do is do a Google search on ‘BAPS Robbinsville’ and these articles show up a few places down on the list:
https://www.cnn.com/2021/05/12/us/new-jersey-baps-hindu-temple-suit/index.html
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/05/11/nyregion/nj-hindu-temple-india-baps.html
https://www.nj.com/news/2021/05/as-hindu-group-built-world-class-temple-in-nj-a-group-of-indian-workers-alleges-they-were-exploited.html
https://www.communitynews.org/towns/robbinsville-advance/fbi-agents-raid-robbinsville-baps-temple-after-labor-lawsuit/article_c5eed9df-e58a-5286-9369-0941cdc9d59a.html
I don’t think the NY Times and CNN are again so easily swayed by a law firm to post fake news about BAPS or anyone else for that matter. And if you’re not familiar with the countless scandals from ISKCON, you should do some research on that. They are famous for consistently and regularly covering up the abuses of their leadership. It is like drinking water for them. One of their most popular and wealthy gurus right now has a history of involvement with murder and he has personally paid thousands of dollars to skew Google searches to bury/hide that info. I could go on and on.
To get back to the positive, I also have had great experience with people at BAPS. I also know of many Hindus that are wonderful people. However there is good and bad everywhere and in every group. Satyam or truthfulness is a foundational principle that all spiritual and religious people agree on. So I would just like to see things dealt with truthfully rather than covered up. So again I will say that, yes it is a cover up and dishonest for BAPS to say on their website that they were closed “due to the COVID pandemic”. Reason being is that they had already opened up after COVID. They had been open for at least one month prior to the FBI investigation. They were then closed due to the FBI investigation, NOT because of COVID. So yes, that slight of words is a cover up.
Namaste.
Does anyone have any updates on this? When you look at the BAPS Robbinsville website, they say they were closed since March 2020 “due to the COVID pandemic” which sadly is a lie. They were closed because of the FBI raid and investigation.
I wish spiritual organizations like BAPS and ISKCON would realize that ‘the cover up is worse than the crime’. It just makes matters so much worse when you try to hide the truth. Better to be honest, admit the mistakes made, apologize, take 110% efforts to right the wrong done (financially, psychologically, etc.), be completely transparent about everything in the future, and move on. I would have SO much more faith in an organization that did that rather than try to hide things in an effort to save face. So sad and disappointing.
Jai Sri Krishna!
You’re a fking retard lol. A “Cover-up”? You don’t even know what you are talking about. People from India are brought here on a contract basis every day. They agree to wages that are way higher than the norm in India for that same work and are brought to the US. Just because a law firm that has nothing to lose and files hundreds of bogus lawsuits launches a media assault on an organization doesn’t mean anything. People like you are the problem, bringing other Hindus down by casting judgment without any facts. I think Hindus are the best people and my experience with members from BAPS has been great.