Sita Chhaudry was sold as a slave at 10 years old. Starved, beaten and denied an education, she has since been elected to local government – and is determined to fight poverty and human rights abuses

Sita Chhaudry became a slave for the first time just after her 10th birthday. Almost every year over the next decade, her parents would sell her again and again to wealthy landowner families, for the small annual fee of $50 (£38), to clean floors, cook meals and look after children.



As a “kamlari” – domestic bonded labourer – Chhaudry was beaten, starved and forced to work 12-hour days for families across the country, many of whom had travelled long distances to “recruit” a young servant as cheaply as her poor, lower-caste parents would sell her.



The buying process would begin every year at the same time – the Maghi harvest festival in January. Prospective employers would haggle with indigenous Tharu families like Chhaudry’s over contracts, fees and requirements. This is where Chhaudry learned that her first job, aged 10, would be caring for a newborn baby in a wealthy family.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Sita Chhaudry: ‘I used to wake up at 4am and spend all day working in fear of the family.’ Photograph: Kate Hodal/The Guardian

“I was a traumatised child,” says Chhaudry, now 30. “I used to wake up at 4am and spend all day working in fear of the family – whether they would shout at me or beat me, what leftover scraps I would be allowed to eat, or which outside space I might be allowed to sleep in, because I wasn’t allowed to enter their house.

“When I went to sleep, it was always in fear of what I may have done wrong that day, or what I might do wrong the next day.”

Today, Chhaudry’s life could not be more different. Freed from slavery a few years ago by a supreme court decree, she was recently elected as an official in Nepal’s first local elections in 20 years. It’s an incredible feat, given the country’s entrenched patriarchy and semi-feudal caste system.

Chhaudry – who never attended school or learned to read or write – plans on using her five-year government post to prove the value of both her indigenous Tharu community and women in Nepalese society.

“Despite being uneducated, I’ve been through a lot in life – and this is a huge opportunity for me, for women, and for minorities like us,” says Chhaudry at an adobe homein Saathbidggha, a 30-household community consisting entirely of former slaves like herself.

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“We have more to deal with here than just poverty and monsoons. I want to identify all the issues – from poor infrastructure in schools to helping the elderly – and work to solve them.”

Change is definitely afoot in this Himalayan nation of 29 million, where women are paving the way towards greater equality and representation. With their husbands, sons and fathers largely working abroad – one-third of GDP comes from remittances, the highest in the world – Nepalese women have been thrust into economic and social independence, forced to look after themselves, their finances and their communities. An estimated 20,000 women stood in Nepal’s first round of elections in May, many of them under 30.

For Chhaudry, who spent her early years caring for her six younger siblings before becoming a kamlari, the fact that her daughters can go to school and eat regularly is a point of pride.



“I can’t blame my parents for what happened, because everyone was doing it,” she says of being sold into slavery. “There was no family planning or contraception, and most Tharu families were actively having more children because they could earn more money from selling them [each year].”



For generations, Tharu girls as young as six were sold or given away by their families in order to “repay” debts owed to higher-caste, landowning families. Tharu boys were forced to work as cattle herders or farmers under the indentured labour system, and daughters sold as kamlaris, for sums equivalent to as much as 20% of a family’s annual income. Although kamlaris were supposed to be fed, housed and educated, this was often not the case, and sexual, mental and physical abuse was common.

However, many families had little choice. Falki, 60, a former slave, was forced to sell her five daughters into the kamlari system to keep the rest of her family out of abject poverty, a decision she regrets to this day.

“My youngest was 14 when the family [she was working for] informed me she was ill and I should come and get her,” says Falki, fighting back tears. “It took us many days to travel there. When we arrived, we were taken straight to the hospital morgue. The police said my daughter had hanged herself from the rafters inside the house and that they wouldn’t investigate. The family kept saying they never touched her, she was just depressed. But how would I know if she had been raped or killed?”

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Although all forms of bonded labour were officially banned in 2000, nationwide protests broke out in 2013 after police failed to investigate the suspicious death of a 12-year-old kamlari, who was doused in kerosene and burned alive in her employers’ home. Hundreds of girls are still believed to be living in slave-like conditions today, many in the homes of prominent politicians and businessmen, according to the Nepal Youth Foundation.

Under a government programme, some kamlaris were given land and housing materials in order to rebuild their lives after being freed from slavery. But having had no schooling or real-life experience, and with little chance of employment, many former kamlaris have ended up worse off than when they were slaves.

The village of Saathbidggha, where Chhaudry lives, is an example of the scheme’s failings. Built in a dusty zone in the middle of a river basin, it is prone to flooding during the monsoon season. This year, Chhaudry’s home was inundated by floodwater, forcing her to flee with her two daughters to an evacuation centre.

“The [government’s] decision to give former slaves their own land has ultimately caused as many problems as it sought to solve,” says Gopal Ghimire, a project manager at Practical Action Nepal, an NGO that has helped Chhaudry’s community learn about flood-warning systems and evacuation procedures.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Former kamlaris protest against the government in Kathmandu. Photograph: Prakash Mathema/AFP/Getty Images

“These communities lose everything when there is a natural disaster, so we are helping them evacuate more effectively when floods do occur so they can save some of their livelihood and not start from a position of zero after every disaster.”

Chhaudry is the community’s de facto leader and also charged with monitoring the flood warning system. She spends busy days looking after her children, organising meetings within the community and learning what it means to be a politician. She does all of this alone, as her husband, a former indentured labourer, works over the border in India as a restaurant chef.

“We have no choice but to be strong,” she says. “It is just us women here, as all the men are in India or in towns far away, and we are a tight-knit community.”

Another former kamlari, Kamala, says: “If you imagine a prime minister of a country, that is what she [Chhaudry] is for our community.”

Chhaudry laughs. “When I was a child, I used to see women on TV and think that if I’d just had the opportunity, I’d be one of them. Now my dream is coming true.”