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By Devendra Gautam

Kunta wondered if he had gone mad. Naked, chained, shackled, he awoke on his back between two other men in a pitch darkness full of steamy heat and sickening stink and a nightmarish bedlam of shrieking, weeping, praying, and vomiting. He could feel and smell his own vomit on his chest and belly. His whole body was one spasm of pain from the beatings he had received in the four days since his capture. But the place where the hot iron had been put between his shoulders hurt the most. 

“Jump!” shouted the oldest woman suddenly, in Mandinka. She was of about the rains of Kunta’s mother Binta. Bounding out, she began jumping herself. “Jump!” she cried shrilly again, glaring at the girls and children, and they jumped as she did. “Jump to kill toubob!” she shrieked, her quick eyes flashing at the naked men, her arms and hands darting in the movements of the warrior’s dance. And then, as her meaning sank home, one after another shackled pair of men began a weak, stumbling hopping up and down, their chains clanking against the deck. With his head down, Kunta saw the welter of hopping feet and legs, feeling his own legs rubbery under him as his breath came in gasps. Then the singing of the woman was joined by the girls. It was a happy sound, but the words they sang told how these horrible toubob had taken every woman into the dark corners of the canoe each night and used them like dogs. 

“Toubob fa!” (Kill toubob) they shrieked with smiles and laughter. The naked, jumping men joined in: “Toubob fa!” even the toubob were grinning now, some of them clapping their hands with pleasure. 

The above two paragraphs are from chapters 34 and 36 of Alex Hailey’s much-celebrated book,  ROOTS The Saga of an American Family. It explores the African heritage of the author and exposes a very dark chapter of humanity: the slave trade. 

In vivid details, it shows how those who thought it was their duty to civilize the rest of the world would go a-hunting for slaves in Africa in coordination with local traitors in the 18th century, cram them in ships by chaining them, commit unimaginable brutality if the captives failed to fall in line, sexually exploit women and girls, force the slaves to work the fields in the United States of America and even sell those people in the market like commodities. 

Fast forward 2025. Those still shouldering the residual task of civilising the rest of the world no longer traverse the world anymore in their vessels. In fact, they don’t have to. On the contrary, millions of people from the Third World (is the term Global South more palatable?) seek to move to proverbial lands of milk and honey, to the USA in particular. 

According to the UN World Migration Report 2024, there were 281 million international migrants, which accounts for approximately 3.5 per cent of the global population, which is an increase from 2.8 per cent in the year 2000. Per the report, India is the origin of the largest number of international migrants in the world, touching nearly 18 million.

As of May 2024, the total number of overseas Indians worldwide was approximately 35.42 million, which includes about 15.85 million non-resident Indians (NRIs) and nearly 19.57 million individuals of Indian origin (PIOs), according to India’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

India, which has surpassed China to become the world’s most populous country, with an estimated population reaching 1.4286 billion according to the UNFPA 2023, leads the world in emigration.

Per data from India’s Ministry of External Affairs, the top 10 destinations for Indians are the USA (overseas Indian population 54,09,062), UAE (35,68,848), Malaysia (29,14,127), Canada (28,75,954), Saudi Arabia (24,63,509), Myanmar (29,14,127), the UK (18,64,318), South Africa (17,00,000), Sri Lanka (16,07, 500) and Kuwait (995, 528). By the way, is it not quite surprising to not find Nepal as one among the top 10 destinations for Indians on the move? 

Any idea on how many aliens enter this country through a porous border on an average day? How many of them pose security threats to us, our two neighbors and the world beyond? 

Needless to say, Nepalis are quite competent when it comes to migrating, if not at making their own country livable. The 2024 edition of Labor Migration in Asia report states that among the 13 countries of origin from Asia presented in the report, Nepal recorded the highest increase in outflow migration compared to 2019. The report notes that the number of workers going abroad from Nepal increased by 102 percent in 2019-2023, marking the highest increase among the 13 Asian countries compared. 

Malaysia was the most popular country of destination with 219,357 Nepali migrant workers going there in 2023, whereas UAE, Saudi Arabia and Qatar were the top three destinations among the countries under the Gulf Cooperation Council. Per the report, there is a significant increase in the number of Nepali workers going to Europe. Romania, Croatia, Malta and Poland, which received more than 30,000 Nepali workers in total in 2022-2023.

As our government has many other important things to do like staying on in power somehow, managing discords within party folds and politicising each and every organ of the state, it probably does not know much about the number of Nepalis living and working illegally around the world, including in the United States, which has begun expelling illegals after Donald Trump’s reelection as the president. As part of that campaign, the Trump administration recently flew back the first batch of around 100 Indian illegals—out of around 18,000 Indians identified for deportation—in shackles and handcuffs, eliciting sharp criticism of this inhuman treatment in the Indian parliament and beyond, with voices raising questions over Modi-Trump friendship and cordial relations between the two countries that share forums like QUAD.

The images of repatriation of men, women and children, who had chosen to leave their home country in search of better opportunities elsewhere, often by paying hefty sums to traffickers, brings back some of the horrors of the slave trade.

Dangerous treks through treacherous stretches like the Darien Gap, which often end in tragedies, prove that hungry people are easily led, with or without traffickers. 

As around 1365 Nepalis await deportation from the land of the free and the home of the brave, one wonders if we as a people will ever learn to be true patriots by making our political and bureaucratic leadership accountable to the people and working for our individual as well as collective betterment within the country instead of continuing to function as modern-day slaves.