{"id":9028,"date":"2021-05-18T07:00:00","date_gmt":"2021-05-18T11:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/?p=9028"},"modified":"2021-06-24T08:17:55","modified_gmt":"2021-06-24T12:17:55","slug":"a-place-of-paramount-peace","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/?p=9028","title":{"rendered":"A Place of Paramount Peace?"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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Sometimes a long-ago web post urgently needs an update. In September 2016 I wrote about the BAPS Shri Swaminarayan Mandir the beautiful new Hindu temple in nearby Robbinsville, New Jersey. I\u2019ve taken visitors there. It\u2019s fantastic (in both senses) and a multimillion dollar operation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But, there\u2019s a dark side. Brought to the United States to construct the temple and associated buildings were Dalits, members of the lowest caste in India, also called \u201cuntouchables.\u201d The temple has been open since 2014, but only last week was a lawsuit filed in federal court changing that the BAPS sect had recruited the workers under false pretenses, then exploited them. The FBI and other federal agencies are now investigating, according to Annie Correal\u2019s story in The New York Times<\/a><\/em>. It also revealed that the BAPS organization \u201chas strong ties with Narendra Modi, India\u2019s prime minister, and his ruling Bharatiya Janata Party. Modi gave a eulogy at the funerl of the sect\u2019s spiritual head.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

According to the lawsuit, working conditions were severe. Workers were told they would be working four to seven hours a day and 20 to 25 days per month. Instead they were required to work 13 hours a day and rarely had a day off. For this, they made about $1.20 per hour. Workers had to live in trailers on BAPS\u2019s 162-acre property and not talk to anyone. The lawsuit claims they had to pay their own way to the U.S. and, upon arrival, their passports and visas were confiscated. They were stuck.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cBecause so many Dalits are socially, politically and economically disenfranchised, they are more easily exploited by duplicitous individuals and powerful groups,\u201d said Johan Mathew, director of Rutgers University\u2019s South Asian Studies Program.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

You can read my original article here<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Sometimes a long-ago web post urgently needs an update. In September 2016 I wrote about the BAPS Shri Swaminarayan Mandir the beautiful new Hindu temple in nearby Robbinsville, New Jersey. I\u2019ve taken visitors there. It\u2019s fantastic (in both senses) and … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"A Place of Paramount Peace? - news reports of exploited workers in slave-labor conditions right here in New Jersey are tarnishing a beautiful religious site.","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[1288,104],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-9028","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-culture","category-the-morgue"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2NkiT-2lC","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9028","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=9028"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9028\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9029,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9028\/revisions\/9029"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=9028"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=9028"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=9028"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}