The majority of workers who worked at the BAPS temple site come from the Dalit community, the lowest rung in India’s caste system, the report stated.
As per the report by The New York Times, the prominent Hindu sect Bochasanwasi Akshar Purushottam Swaminarayan Sanstha (BAPS) is accused of using forced labor by luring them from India, confining them to the temple grounds and paying them the equivalent of about $1 an hour to perform grueling labor in near servitude. Federal law enforcement agents descended on a massive temple in New Jersey on Tuesday after workers made the allegations.
In a lawsuit filed Tuesday, the lawyers for the workers said the BAPS, which has close ties to India’s ruling party and has built temples around the world, had exploited possibly hundreds of low-caste men in the yearslong construction project.
The workers, who lived in trailers hidden from view, had been promised jobs helping to build the temple in rural Robbinsville, N.J., with standard work hours and ample time off, according to the lawsuit, a wage claim filed in U.S. District Court in New Jersey. The majority of workers come from the Dalit community, the lowest rung in India’s caste system, the report stated.
According to the claim, the workers were brought to the United States on religious visas, or R-1 visas — temporary visas used for clergy and lay religious workers such as missionaries — and were presented to the U.S. government as volunteers. The complaint also mentioned that the workers were asked to sign several documents, often in English, and instructed to tell U.S. embassy staffers that they were skilled carvers or decorative painters.
However, as per the lawyers of the men, these workers did manual labor on the site, working nearly 13 hours a day lifting large stones, operating cranes and other heavy machinery, building roads and storm sewers, digging ditches and shoveling snow, all for the equivalent of about $450 per month. The complaint went on to add that the workers were paid $50 in cash, with the rest was deposited in accounts in India, the complaint said.
Kanu Patel, the chief executive of BAPS, told The New York Times: “I respectfully disagree with the wage claim.” He also noted that he was not in charge of day-to-day operations at the site.
The spokesman for BAPS Lenin Joshi also denied the accusations to The NYT saying the men did complicated work connecting stones that had been hand-carved in India. “They have to be fit together like a jigsaw puzzle. In that process, we need specialized artisans,” he said, adding that this work qualified the men for the visas.
“We are naturally shaken by this turn of events and are sure that once the full facts come out, we will be able to provide answers and show that these accusations and allegations are without merit,” Mr. Joshi said.
In the action early Tuesday, which was said to be connected to the claims of labor and immigration law violations, according to three people familiar with the matter, at least three federal agencies — the F.B.I., the Department of Homeland Security and the Department of Labor — were involved. Agents had been on the temple grounds but would not comment further, a spokeswoman for the F.B.I. confirmed to the NYT, while spokesmen for the other two departments declined to comment.
According to a person familiar with the matter, about 90 workers were removed from the site.
As per the lawsuit, the men’s passports had been confiscated, and they were confined to the fenced-in and guarded site, where they were forbidden from talking to visitors and religious volunteers. While subsisted on a bland diet of lentils and potatoes, their pay was docked for minor violations, such as being seen without a helmet, the lawsuit claimed.
Swati Sawant, an immigration lawyer in New Jersey who is also Dalit and said she first learned of the men’s plight last year, told The NYT: “They thought they would have a good job and see America. They didn’t think they would be treated like animals, or like machines that aren’t going to get sick.”
She secretly organized the temple workers and arranged legal teams to pursue both wage and immigration claims, Ms Sawant said.
The BAPS, a prominent organization across India, has strong ties with Prime Minister Narendra Modi and the Bharatiya Janata Party. PM Modi has earlier said that Pramukh Swami Maharaj, the spiritual head who built BAPS into the largest Hindu sect in the United States before dying in 2016, was his mentor. Mr. Modi gave a eulogy at his funeral and laid the foundation stone for a temple that BAPS is building in Abu Dhabi.
The BAPS had also pledged the equivalent of about $290,000 to build the Ram Temple in Ayodhya.
Last month, a construction company was ordered by the New Jersey State Department of Labor and Workforce Development to top working on the temple in Robbinsville and another in Edison, N.J., after determining the firm was paying laborers off the books and did not carry workers’ compensation insurance.
The complaint filed on Tuesday named six men who said they were among more than 200 Indian nationals who were recruited to come to the United States starting about 2018 and were made to work grueling hours under often dangerous conditions on the New Jersey site, The NYT report said.
According to the complaint and another worker, one laborer died from an apparent illness last autumn, prompting a backlash among the workers.
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