Slavery in India has been accepted from the ancient period. The VEDIC rules known as samaritis framed by NARAD, MANU and KAUTYALA gave a legal sanction to slave trade. Rights of masters over the slaves and punishments are set out by these rules. The VEDIC society called the slaves DASSAS. The Samaritis discriminated the dassas by denying them right to education, property, equality and justice. The rule of Manu declared dassas polluted and excluded them from VEDIC society. A slave can be sold, mortgaged or leased. A slave can be physically tortured and killed on refusal to obey master’s orders. The rules continued during Budha, Mughal and British periods. India attained its freedom from British on 15th of August 1947 and adopted a constitution on 26th January 1950 assuring its all citizens’ right to justice, equality, right to freedom of speech and religion and dignity of individual.

Sh. Jai Singh "General Secretary- VSJ"

The Parliament of India has passed legislations to abolish un-touchability and slavery. The contemporary forms of slavery are well known as bonded labour, forced labour, child labour and trafficking of women.The deep rooted rules of slavery and exclusion on the basis of caste are still continuing. Even passing 33 years of “The Bonded Labour System (Abolition) Act 1976 and 20 years of “The Scheduled Castes and the Scheduled Tribes (Prevention of Atrocities) Act 1989 to abolish slavery in any of its forms and caste discriminations, the practice is still being perpetuated. Dassas are today’s dalits. The passing of law to stop practice of bonded labour and against atrocities on dalits has not proved ironic to those practicing it from generations. Though slavery had been denied in India, but is In Punjab & Haryana the agriculture bonded labourers are known as “Seri”. Hardly there is any landowner without a “Seri”. The Seri is a servant on call & beck. For whole life they cannot clear their debt, they took during medical emergencies, to perform the rituals of death in family and marriages in the families etc. Many a times, the debt obligation is passed to the descendants by the ascendants. The customary and social obligations for being born in a particular caste some services are imposed though the person is not willing to do that. Women agriculture workers are completely deprived of minimum wage fixed by the State. Around 60,000 brick factories in India employ around 18million workers in seasonal bondage. Usually the seasonal bondage converts to permanent bondage. Migrant workers from the drought & flood prone areas are exploited to the maximum. Due to unequal gender ratio the women from poverty stricken areas are trafficked to the region. Child bonded labourers constitute a large bulk of workforce in agriculture, brick factories, domestic servants, dishwashers at cafeterias, stitching soccer balls and producing garments for export.

Volunteers for Social Justice(in short VSJ) is a registered charity under Societies Registration Act 1860 , came in to existence in 1985, is committed to end slavery and caste discriminations. To bring a change in the life of those who are still living in the abject grinding conditions of poverty and discrimination through the established law of the country and international human rights declarations and covenants, VSJ is thriving hard.