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- [00:08]
Stephen Barden
Wars, persecution and poverty are probably the main causes of people fleeing their countries when they have no choice but to abandon their roots and their communities simply as a chance to survive. But those who try to stick it out, who stay, may be no less vulnerable to predators who will use that vulnerability to traffic them or their members of their families as well actually as slaves. Whether we call it sex trafficking or forced labor, it's slavery. My guest today is Ruchira Gupta. Ruchira has been a lifelong activist against human trafficking. She's also a journalist and academic and author and much more. She first came to the fore with her Emmy Award winning documentary and the Selling of innocence in 1997, which I personally found extraordinarily painful to watch. Not because it was sensational, but because, precisely because it wasn't. It was the banality of the evil of the madams and the traffickers, the matter of factness, if you like, and the resignation of sometimes these very pure faces of young women and mostly children who were being prostituted that made it extraordinary, painful for me to watch. Actually had to stop and start a number of times. Ruchiro went on to found apnea with women worldwide dedicated to eradicating sex trafficking. She's worked with the United nations in Iran, Nepal, Tanzania, Thailand, Kosovo and many other places. And apart from the Emmy, Ruchira has been awarded the Ordre Nationale du Merite for her works in helping shape and and actually change laws in many countries. Amongst her many publications, she has written two novels for 8 to 18 year olds. Her first was I Kick and I fly, published in 2023 about a young girl in Bihar, India who escapes being sold into the sex trade by the best I can describe it is learning to fiercely value and fiercely defend herself and her body. Her second novel, The Freedom Seeker, published on August 5, 2025, again starts off in India and traces the forced migration of a 12 year old daughter of a Hindu Muslim mixed marriage to the us but more of that later. Ruchira, welcome to Migrant Odyssey. It's a privilege to have you with us.
- [02:46]
Ruchira Gupta
Thank you, Stephen. I'm a big admirer of Migrant Odyssey and the Human Balance, so it's a privile for me. Likewise.
- [02:54]
Stephen Barden
Thank you very much. Obviously we've got now double privileges because it's a privilege for me too. Regina. I didn't actually ask you. Either that or you avoided that when we were doing the the briefing a couple of weeks ago. Tell me something of your own backstory. Tell me something about where you come from and what turned you into A journalist and an activist.
- [03:23]
Ruchira Gupta
So I was born in Calcutta, one of the most populated cities on our planet. You know, it grew and grew from the time it became the capital of the British Empire. It also grew poorer in the process because the native, so called native populations were exploited mercilessly. And then when India became independent, Calcutta became this thriving, thriving center, was the thriving center of commerce and also intellectual outpouring because we had been through a lot. And I was born in that city to a merchant family. My family used to own rice mills and solvent extraction plants, etc, but my family were also influenced by Gandhi and they were socialists. They are socialists. They would hate for me to say were and they. My dad went to prison as a 15 year old just because Gandhiji had asked all young people to go to prison for India's freedom. And my dad has always worn, since I can remember as a child from that time onwards, homespun khadi cloth, you know, a white long shirt and a white dhoti. Because Gandhiji said that we have to avoid wearing British made in England cloth. And people were spinning yarn at home and making cloth. So my dad has always worn that. My mother wears no jewelry. She always wears a white saree. This was all part of India's symbol for freedom. It was also the new modern India that was being created. And I grew up in that kind of household and atmosphere. And my uncle was very much into the founding of India Socialist Party. And we had leaders from Nepal and Sri Lanka and India who came home all the time holding meetings, talking to each other about the more equal world they would create. And I was made a member of four libraries, you know, so I would go and get books all the time. I was influenced by this conversation going on at home and with the books I was reading, which, you know, made me empathize with everything I was listening to in more sort of academic and policy ways. And I too wanted to make a difference, just like all of them. And I decided, okay, I'll be a writer. And I. My first published article was in my school magazine as a 10 year old. It was called the Autobiography of a Pencil. So then I knew I was on the right track.
- [06:07]
Stephen Barden
What was it that made you actually follow that? Because children, many children of political families go completely the opposite way. They just say, I don't want this anymore. What was it that made you become even more adamant about supporting a cause and supporting human rights?
- [06:31]
Ruchira Gupta
One was that, you know, I read a lot of books, I was a bookworm. So that made me understand the larger world around me and that I wanted to do more in that world. The second was that while my family was political, they were also, it was a very loving family and we had like a family of birth and a family of choice. So all these political leaders also who came home would include us, they would never exclude us. And I was always asked my opinion on things, even when there were party meetings being held. What do you think? And so for me that became like a fun time. I didn't really want to study, I wanted to sit in on their conversations. So I think that was it. And also, you know, in our home, I was not asked, what are you going to be? I was always asked, how are you going to make a difference? So I think the love that I got, the sense of inclusion in this wider political community, how are you going to make a difference? Motivated me to actually go out and make a difference.
- [07:35]
Stephen Barden
That's an extraordinary lesson, isn't it? It's caught me quite by surprise this, what are you going to be? Which of course most children are asked, including when I was a child, and how are you going to make a difference? It's a wonderful way of approaching one's children's future, isn't it? Yeah, yeah. So you went off to, went on to, to be a journalist and you wrote for a number of newspapers in India. Correct? And also.
- [08:03]
Ruchira Gupta
That's right. So at that time, you know, I didn't really see a pathway to becoming a writer when I was in college, but there was a new newspaper opening and I thought, okay, you know, I'll go be a journalist. And that's the way. And so I went to college in the morning and in the evening I went, worked with this newspaper in Calcutta and it was quite an eye opener because on one hand it was one of the first newspapers in India to give jobs to women and give them not just jobs as people who are writing on gardening or social columns, but as correspondents, as bureau chiefs, et cetera. And they were also like an anti establishment paper. So it was a lot of fun because they were breaking stories, investigative journalism, those were all fun things that were happening there. At the same time, that paper had a sexist atmosphere, I think without even the editor realizing it, he was also sexist. And you know, what were stories related to women were considered cultural and what were stories related to men were considered political. And also, you know, how women were treated in a sort of, you know, jokes and teasing and all of that. It was not professional and I always wanted to speak up, but because I was the Youngest, my nickname in the paper was Kiddie. And so I didn't really like it. I was uncomfortable with it. So when I reported, I would make sure I quoted women in my stories. And if I reported, say, riots, I would report how caste violence actually affected the woman in the kitchen, or if rape was reported, what did she have to go through and why was she targeted as the enemy, as the colonizing of the enemy, etc. So I did begin to ask those kind of questions very early on as a reporter. And that of course then led to the next steps in my journalism journey. So take us there.
- [10:05]
Stephen Barden
The next step.
- [10:06]
Ruchira Gupta
So, so, you know, then I was given an assignment to see how villagers in nep managing the natural resources. It was quite interesting. Like how do you divide water from a river? How do you make a path through a field? And who does that path belong to, the field owner or the community? So things like that, it was good. So I was hiking through Nepal when I came across rows of villages with missing girls. And I was really puzzled. So I asked the men sitting around, drinking tea, playing cards, you know, where are all the girls? Some were hostile, some were sheepish, but a few did answer and they said, don't you know, they all are in Mumbai. And I was a bit taken aback because Mumbai is like 1400 kilometers away from these remote, remote hamlets in the Himalayas. So I, you know, of course I had to follow the trail as a good journalist. And I found that a smooth supply chain of human beings existed from Nepal to Mumbai. There were the recruiters. These could be shop owners, truck drivers. They would come to these villages, offer a little money to these very isolated, poor and starving farmers, cluster together three or four girls, take them in a bus to the border of India and Nepal, wink, wink, nod, nod, pay the border guard some money, take the girls across the border. And then there were these lodges where the girls were starved and beaten and drugged and completely subjugated till they were willing to do any and then put into trains and buses, handed over to another set of agents or transporters who would take them to Calcutta, Bombay, Delhi. And then there were these pimps waiting for them in these red light districts who would negotiate the price of the girl by what they defined as beauty. And to them beauty meant fair skin, voluptuous, docile. The younger the better. The youngest I met was a seven year old.
- [12:18]
Stephen Barden
Seven years.
- [12:18]
Ruchira Gupta
And then they would handle seven years old. And then these girls were handed over to the brothel managers who would lock them up in rooms and bring them out for eight or Ten men every night for the next five years. And then behind the brothel managers were the landlords, the money lenders, organized criminal networks. And finally, of course, the customers called clients in India johns in America. Who would want young girls, virgin girls, docile girls, you know, etc. Etc. Driving the whole trade. And when I reached Bombay, I saw girls on display in cages, literally in cages. And I was so taken aback that first, of course, I burst into tears. And I sat down on the sidewalk, and then I got up and I decided, I've got to do something about it. So I was a journalist. I said, I'll break the silence. I'll tell the story. And I spent the next 18 months of my life between Nepal and Bombay investigating, building friends, building trust, with the women and girls taking on criminals. One of them pulled out a knife at me while I was filming in the brothels of Mumbai and said, I won't let you film here. And the women in the brothels formed a circle around me and told him that if you kill her, you've got to kill us first because we have decided to tell our stories because we want a different future for our daughters. And he slunk away, knowing it was too much trouble to kill 23 women. And that's when I experienced the power of women's collective action. They rescued me, you know, literally before I even thought of the word rescue. And so I finished making this documentary. It was for the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation.
- [14:12]
Stephen Barden
Sorry to interrupt. Sorry to interrupt. Were you. So you were filming on your own? You were using, were you. Were you doing camera all by yourself and everything else?
- [14:21]
Ruchira Gupta
No, no, no, no.
- [14:22]
Stephen Barden
You had a crew.
- [14:23]
Ruchira Gupta
No, sorry. So I was the field producer, like the investigative reporter. And there was a director who was Canadian. There was a cameraman who was Indian, a tall, strapping Sikh man. And, you know, when the criminals attacking us and throwing stones and threatening to break our cameras and all of that, he actually, this guy said, I'm not going up into the brothels with you because it's too much danger. And I told him, I said that, you know, if I can go it, I'm half your size, and I'm a woman, then you can certainly follow. I'm going up anyway. And he followed me. So, you know, I had a whole crew. And they were funded by cbc. And later the film was shown on HBO and cbc. The Selling of Innocence, it's called. And I won an Emmy for Outstanding Investigative Journalism for that documentary. And then I'm on stage and I'm looking at the bright lights in New York, Broadway, Marquis Hotel. I still remember applause, clinking glasses and bright lights. But all I could see were the eyes of the women who had told me their story. And that's when I decided in that instance that I'm going to use my, me and my documentary, the Selling of Innocence, not to build a career in journalism, but to make a difference.
- [15:49]
Stephen Barden
And that's when it came home. Didn't it make a difference? Yeah, that's when you, you also met a member of, is that right? Clinton's cabinet, Is that correct? And that's.
- [16:01]
Ruchira Gupta
That's right. That's the how of it then. So what happens is I step off the stage. I'm 20, don't know how, but I've decided, right? So I turned to the lady who gave me the award, Donna Shalala. She was the US Secretary of State for Health in President Clinton's time. And I said, thank you for the award and can you help me do more? And she looked a bit wary, but she said, what do you want? And I said, well, I want to change laws in the un, the United States, and I want the traffickers to be punished and countries to invest in the most vulnerable girls so they are not trafficked. And, you know, I want offices and governments to take this seriously. And she paused and she took me seriously and she gave me her email and her contact people and she said, okay, get in touch. And I did. And she connected me with the Clinton administration with their help. I showed my documentary at The United Nations 30 years ago this year. And you know, actually with 180 countries watching, I was able to get into a dialogue about the kind of laws we needed, show the film and convince a lot of people who were in the audience, you know, member states, ambassadors, policy experts, NGO leaders, foundation heads, that yes, we needed a new law. And then I went on to contribute to the passage of the UN Protocol to Entry Trafficking in Persons, which is now the gold standard for the 180 countries who have to change their laws as per that UN Protocol. I did the same with Republican and a Democratic senator for the United States government. I went to the Senate, testified, showed my film, and helped pass the first US law on trafficking, the federal law, Trafficking Victim Protection Act. So through these acts of doing, I became bolder. But for me, I could still not forget the women that I had met who had told me their story and who had rescued me from death. So I also went back to them simultaneously. These are overlapping activities. And I said, listen, I won the award. Here's the Award. And you know, I've told your story, broken the silence, the world is going to do something about it. And the women said, that's fine, but how does the ward help us? You've got to help us. And I said, what do you want? I'm not a lawyer, a doctor, a social worker, I'm just a journalist. And they said, but you have two things. You know English and you have access to money and networks. So I said, yes, I do. But I said, you know, the battle is really yours because you are the exploited. And they said, we can do it together. And I thought that was true. And I said, you know, I didn't even know how to make a business plan at that time. So I asked them, I said, what are your dreams? And they said, we have four dreams. One is a school for our children, a room of our own where we can sleep for as long as we want. And nobody can walk in when they want or molest our children either. This was Virginia Woolf in the brothels of Mumbai. And then they wanted a job in an office which to them, if you really saw those brothels, you know, they were rat infested. 20 rooms to one toilet. Constant fighting and noise all around, drunken brawls, shouts from women being raped, the smell, the stink, because you know, the rooms were closed, there were iron bars on the windows. And in the middle of that they said they wanted a job in an office. And I understood after conversation that it really meant something which would give them dignity, a fixed income, no violence and old age pension. And the fourth dream was they wanted punishment of their perpetrators. They said, those who have brokered away our dreams, bought us and sold us. So that's how we set up this NGO and we called it apneaap. Women Worldwide. Apnea means self action in Hindi because we agreed that we would fight for our own rights and justice, but women worldwide, that we would federate with women around the world who were going through similar experiences. And you know, we put, we found a room in an abandoned municipal school, put a straw mat on the floor, I hired a teacher and that's how we began. And you know, now fast forward, you know, we've educated more than 20,000 women and girls, connected them to livelihoods, put them through school and College. Even now 1400 kids are in school and college in India from the red light area. And many of them have become lawyers, police officers, nurses, managers of pizza parlors, gas station attendants, animation artists, so many things. And they are helping their mothers out of the red light area. And those red light Areas themselves are transforming not by putting the kids and the mothers into institutions, but by putting the kids in schools, connecting the mother to bank accounts and livelihoods, and putting the traffickers years in jail. So just like the domestic violence movement, where, you know, till 50 years ago, it used to be called a private matter, it's their family, etc. Now it's called a crime. We were able to shift what the prostitution of so many women and girls and get the world to acknowledge that it was sex trafficking. So we shifted the paradigm.
- [22:05]
Stephen Barden
Couple of questions come to mind. It's fascinating. The one is, the mundane one was, which is you've. You've done so much through apnea. How did, did you get funding? Is it public funding? Is there funding from private people? Donating both. All of those.
- [22:26]
Ruchira Gupta
Funding is very precarious. So I have created a model where I can expand or shrink the work that I do, and so I don't have to dance to a donor's tube soon. But I have had money from governments, you know, including in the past, the US Government. Now there's no likelihood of it because after Trump was accused because of the Epstein case, he's closed down the Trafficking in person's office altogether. This week, sorry, this week, the global Trafficking in person's office is closed and everyone's lost their jobs there. And so, yeah, we've had from different governments, from the United nations, from private family foundations, and from individuals, you know, students and activists and survivors, sometimes even and, you know, friends and family. Of course, it all began with money from friends and family and a little bit from my own salary. And then slowly, I didn't even have a salary because I gave up my job in the United Nations. But by then we'd begun to get funding from other places. I hire people from the community in India and then train them to become leaders and teachers and program managers and build their capacity. So, you know, it's little inefficient. Sometimes we make mistakes, sometimes the work is not slick, but it's good and real. And in America, what I do is that I do a lot of policy work out of New York, especially with the United nations and different governments, you know, on what child protection should be. How can we make laws better? How can we make policies better? I also engage with foundations and universities here. And because of that, I have a whole bunch of students who work for me. And so students in America and Europe and India actually also are a big part of what I do. Who fill in for what, like salaried staff would be Doing the other thing.
- [24:33]
Stephen Barden
That struck me as you were talking about how you went and you met the Secretary of State of Health and then you said to her, what I want is more then more stuff. Then she puts you in touch. Then you got into the United Nations. You made it all sound very easy, but it clearly wasn't. How did you manage to get to those steps? So it's fine getting her contact, but then you managed to persuade her, and then you managed to, to persuade, you know, somebody to go that you were going to go and talk, present this film to the United Nations. Then you the task of persuading cynical bureaucrats, you know, who, who have been in the business for a very long time sort of thing. And how did you manage to do that? What, what was it? The film?
- [25:22]
Ruchira Gupta
Was it every game? Every game there was a loss and there was a lot of heartbreak because people would tell me things like, men will be men or, you know, prostitution is as old as the hills. They would insult me. They would say, what is this 20 year old woman coming and saying things like this? I would be heckled. I would be turned away. I would wait for hours and hours outside the offices of senior police officials. I remember when we wanted time at the un, someone from the Clinton administration and I would literally go north knocking. And even though they were part of the Clinton administration on doors to ask for time and we would not get them, you know, all together. But then on the other hand, I also formed so many alliances which became this groundswell that people could not ignore with other NGOs, with other leaders, other activists. And, you know, we just kept pushing with the people who would respond and, you know, let go of the people who would not. But it was not, not at all easy. I made the film in 1996 and it was only in 2000 that we were able to get the law that we wanted. So you can think about the four years like we would go. I would have alliances with NGO leaders from say, Philippines and Canada and Norway and South Africa, and I'm still friends with them. And we still laugh about how we used to reach out to our own country delegates and say, we need this UN program protocol. And we are sitting in the lobby of the hotel in Vienna or Geneva or wherever, and we see the delegate actually being given an escort by someone. And so there was all that, you know, masculinity and patriarchy and, you know, resistance. Even the head of the Gates foundation at that time in India, you know, they were funding a program, I remember in Calcutta, actually a million dollar. You know, a program which was more than less like 15 million all over India to control AIDS. And the great bright idea was exactly like the British colonial times idea that, you know, save the men from disease and never mind what happens to the women and girls. So they were distributing condoms in the brothels and hiring pimps and brothel managers as their so called peer educators through this program. And everyone I knew, because they were spending millions of dollars including, including school friends and college friends, they were all consultants for this Gates program. And so, you know, I created a hue and cry, went and made speeches all over the world. And finally I got a meeting with the CEO of the Gates foundation. And he said, oh, what can I do? Here we are. You know, I said, you're damaging, you're in, you're actually making the system of prostitution stronger by hiring pimps and brothel keepers. And the first thing women and girls need is not a condom. They need like, like basic needs food, clothing, shelter and protection from all the violence which they are facing every day in the brothels. So he said, oh, we don't do, we only do health, we don't do education. I said, you can do something. So he set up a meeting with the Indian head of the Gates Foundation. And I still remember it clearly, that guy said, I said, you know, okay, whatever, you are doing your AIDS program, you know, and you're saying it's reducing aids. Until date there is no evidence of that. And I said that, you know, but you're enabling these prostitute buyers and haven't you thought about that, that you're creating a false notion of ethical demand, that if they put on a condom, it's all right to buy sex. And he didn't even understand what I was saying. And then I said, you know, but he refused to budge. So I said, what about investing an equal amount of money in the education of girls? If you have, have so much money, or even one third of the money, we can work with governments, identify the most vulnerable girls who are most prone to being trafficked and put them through school in government schools which are not even very expensive. So his eyes glazed over and he said, oh, but you know, if, if prostitutes don't exist, girls from good families will be raped. And I thought, this man is so sexist and so elitist at the same time, you know, that some poor women should be available and so entitled that, you know, some women should be available for men who can buy sex. And the other thing he told me was also awful. He said that, you know, and their children are prostitutes what's the guarantee that they will finish school? And meantime, his two sons were in Stanford or wherever. So I was so taken aback. In any case, I said, I'll just keep doing my community service and my groundwork and we'll see. And eventually the Gates program was closed down, shut down quietly. The whole Epstein thing blew up there too, as Melinda Gates now says. And I ended up actually getting education to these thousands of girls who now are my testimony and the evidence of what I was talking about. And the red light area in Bihar where I spend the most time working, that's nearly shut down. You know, there were 300 and something brothels there and now there are two or three. And not by running institutions or spending tons of money, just changing the ecosystem of the community by investing in the women and girls. So the first book that I wrote, I Kick and I Fly, actually is, is just that, because, you know, these foundations keep talking about data, but they forget looking at human beings in the process. And that is such a danger. That is such a danger because data can be fudged. And that's why even, you know, this whole thing that's happening in America right now with child migration is exactly the same thing. You know, the data becomes just a statistic, right?
- [31:33]
Stephen Barden
Yeah.
- [31:33]
Ruchira Gupta
People say 300,000 children are missing. Are they being trafficked? Then the response is that, okay, let's strip them of legal representation now. Will that push them more underground? Will it make them more fragile? What will happen to the protection system then? So, you know, it's a problem. Data, just data without thinking about human beings is a problem.
- [32:00]
Stephen Barden
Yeah. You also worked with the United nations in refugee camps. And of course, as we were talking, and as we both know, where there is whatever institution where there is a regime of oppression from the top, if you like, that oppression almost magnifies as it goes lower and lower and lower. So you found exploitation in refugee camps and in war zones as well. Even soldiers. UN soldiers exploiting the women, Correct?
- [32:41]
Ruchira Gupta
Yes. So in Kosovo, when I was posted there, I saw that there were UN staff members who would be buying girls from the communities who were at risk because we were just out of a war. And Kosovo had this indeterminate status. And so, you know, we really didn't have systems in place to protect anyone. And Serbian women were in danger, Roma women were in danger. And they didn't have food. They were displaced from their homes. They had kids to feed. And the UN soldiers would go meet them, invite them home, etc. Pick them up in their cars and literally become what the term now is called sugar daddies. So in exchange for food and information and even just safe passage, they would exploit these women and girls. And I saw this, and there were nightclubs where they would go. There was this UN official who would actually invite girls to his house and just sit and stare at them. That's what I saw. I don't know what else he did after that. So I was, I saw all this and I spoke to my boss. I was very young at that time, so I spoke to my boss and I said, what can we do about it? And, you know, I obviously can communicate well because of my journalist training or as a storyteller. So she said, let's create a gender task force. And we work together to create a gender task force in Kosovo, which then became the blueprint for doing other things. Like we made certain areas off limits to UN officials. We said, we created guidelines for UN officials saying they would be sacked if they were found with a girl and things like that. And then I was posted to New York for the UN and I worked with the Secretary General's office to create a zero tolerance policy for any UN official who wasn't. Who was buying or selling girls. And then I ended up also making a training video for all UN peacekeepers who were getting posted to, you know, these conflict zones where girls are the most vulnerable to being trafficked and exploited. And that training video is still being used.
- [35:04]
Stephen Barden
So there are monitors as well. Are they in these zones? I assume you in these.
- [35:08]
Ruchira Gupta
Absolutely, there are monitors, there are cases, people are caught. You know, so there are standards now. You know, there are 50 conflicts going on in the world right now. And, you know, there is so much flux. And of course, women of the enemy group are often targeted by people in conflict, right, for rape and sexual violence as a message to the, the whole community. And, you know, like when Ukraine was attacked, Ukrainian girls became the most searched for term on the Internet for some time. You know, the story about the ISIS survivors, etc, so, you know, I've been to refugee camps and I've seen traffickers literally prowling outside the traffic, the refugee camps to pick up girls who are running away or whatever. And then there are stories of rape and sexual exploitation inside some of the camps. The most notorious was the one in Salem where these Congolese women were exploited in the camps. So, yes, you know, the predators are out there, organized crime is out there. The United nations says that human trafficking is the second largest organized crime in the world. There are. It's crossed the drug strait because, you Know you can use a human being again and again whereas you can just consume drugs once. So it's a multi billion dollar industry and it often overlaps with migration and people smuggling. So the more I see our world today, I feel that this is going to be the issue of our, I feel not even just the next decade, much longer because people are on the move. There is so much inequality and there is conflict, conflict, there is climate change and you know, wherever there's food and stability, people will go there. So we have to think about ways how can we humanize and not criminalize these people.
- [37:14]
Stephen Barden
Yeah. Yes. And I think that to, to make a segue into your book, I think that's the one thing when I said it was, it was very clever and very moving. It was clever. It's clever because it does humanize your characters enormously. I mean your protagonist is a 12 year old girl who's very clever, a leader in her school, the captain of the hockey team, very articulate, independent. It comes from a loving family. It's a mixed Muslim Hindu family and yet is put in this absolutely helpless straitjacket almost when she has to leave, her father has to leave first and then she has to with the mother. And then of course trying to get into the United States on that illegal path and just completely drowned in that system, in that all that chaos of the, the, the coyotes, you know, the pretending to get them through the desert, etc. Etc. I found it, I found it very moving. I mean, much to my, much to my surprise, because I thought this, yeah, this is going to be aimed at 8 to 18 year olds and I'm a little older than 18, as you know, but it, it was very moving. And, and the moving part of it was of course that this was in every step of the way you could imagine oneself or one's children in, you know, in getting through that. You aimed it specifically at 18 and 18 year olds. Is that because you feel this, there is a need, an educational need? Is my first question on that one. And did you base it on cases that. You know? Because your, your research, it seems on, on, on that whole whole trek through the desert and from Mexico onwards was quite detailed. So those two questions. Did you feel that this could be a great educational book? I think it is, by the way. And to your research, how much experiential research, if you like, did you track.
- [39:45]
Ruchira Gupta
Yeah. The Freedom Seeker is not just a novel, it's a call to conscience. Right. And it's a story which says we must not look away, we Must listen to children. We must see them not as illegal aliens of, you know, whatever the terms are, flight risks, but as what they are. Kids who want safety, family and freedom like any child. Because, you know, there's a whole propaganda movement going on right now now that immigrants are criminals. They are military age men being released from prison who are coming to take over our countries. And actually they are not. They could be kids, they could be families who are just basically seeking home and safety. So through Simi, I wanted people to humanize, not criminalize. That was my first attempt. And I'm glad that you found that you could relate to her and she felt like your children. I also wrote this book because I've met girls trafficked across borders, boys separated by war, and children who've never known a home. You know, I've sat with them in shelters and prisons and classrooms. And their work gave me not just knowledge, but empathy. And so I wanted to write this book to wear, bear witness to say I see you. But also, Indians are now the third largest group of migrants crossing into the United States, by the way. And many are Sikhs, Hindu Sikhs and Sikhs fleeing religious persecution, or Gujaratis who are Dalits from marginalized castes escaping political and economic insecurity. So when I began writing this book, I'd read two articles. One was about a Gujarati family who tried to cross into the US from Canada in the dead of winter and they froze to death in the snow. And the other was about a Sikh mother and daughter who were crossing from Mexico into the US through the Arizona desert, called the Sonoran Desert. And the mother went to look for water for her daughter. And the daughter's remains were later found by the border guards. So I began to think, who are these people? Why did this happen to them? And then when I dug in, I found that surprisingly, India has the largest number of migrants to the US One, but also how they are being treated, languishing in jails in, in San Diego, in Texas, in California. You know, some Sikhs even went on hunger strike because of the harsh treatment inside the jail. And also, you know, kids who are here who have to make, who have now been labeled as unaccompanied alien child. Now that takes away the face of the child. You, you ac. You know, you can't see her anymore. You can't see them anymore, anymore. And so I decided that I would go and see for myself what's going on. So I went after doing all my research and seeing the numbers and all of that, you know, 17 million people are living with a child In America, an undocumented alien child. I hate using that word, so I stumble over. It is very unique, often not unaccompanied. She may be undocumented, and she normally has a family member here, but because of this whole indifferent system, she's just labeled as unaccompanied, as Simi is in my book after she separated from her mother in the Arizona desert. So I went to the desert because I wanted to know what it was. I went to the US Mexico border, and I saw that streets were cut. You know, barbed wire fences, cut streets. They were divided by wire mesh fences. And families were still trying to connect with each other. The passing soda cans and gossip and flowers and food. And then I decided to even walk through the desert for a day or two without water to feel what it must be like for these migrants. How desperate were they? Because I wanted to write about it in my book to show they're not coming here to colonize. They're running away. You know, they're running gang war or they're running poverty, hunger, conflict. You know, so many things. And I met missionaries who left water bottles for migrants in the desert and local townsfolk who opened homes to strangers with few, you know, give them a set of clothes or allowed them to take a shower in their home or gave them some soup. And then in Queens, where my. The remaining part of my story said, I spent hours and hours meeting South Asian families through gurdwaras and through youth groups and all of that, helping immigrant kids in schools. And, you know, I saw how lost they were, how scared they were, how they wanted desperately to build a new life here of safety and love. And then I also met, you know, NGOs who were ferrying undocumented mothers from detention centers like the Eloi prison to New York so a mother and a daughter could unite. So I saw absurd policy things, which were so tragic. And then I saw human acts of kindness while doing my research. And all of that came through in the book, as you noticed.
- [45:11]
Stephen Barden
Yeah.
- [45:13]
Ruchira Gupta
And, you know, these narratives which frame children as threats, you know, it's just such a lie. And so the need for my book is too. When you asked me, you know, did I feel there was a need for the book? I really felt there was a need for the book because I realized that this is happening to so many kids, but nobody's talking about it to kids. And, you know, teachers can't. Don't have anything to talk to kids about it. Parents don't have anything to talk to kids about it. And so I thought you know, if I can write a book for young people, then I know that older people will read it because they are the gatekeepers to what young people read. But at least it will definitely get into the hands of young people who might find an answer to their own lives or to a friend's life. And also, you know, kids who are being brainwashed by all this propaganda will see something else. That nobody's coming to invade America, you know, and that a child at the border is still a child. Not a policy, not a statistic, but a person suffering from fear and loneliness and yet they have courage and it comes through perfectly.
- [46:25]
Stephen Barden
And it's, it's a. It. I recommend it strongly. It's the Freedom Seeker and it's published by Scholastic and It's available from the.
- [46:34]
Ruchira Gupta
5Th of August and available for order right now. So the more orders I get for the Freedom Seeker, the more likely it is to get into a bestseller list, which means that it will get more attention and more kids and parents and teachers will find out about it and help build empathy, humanize instead of criminalize.
- [46:55]
Stephen Barden
Wonder. Richa, thank you so much. That's been, it's been a, a wonderful conversation and I wish you all the success with the book and I wish you all the success with all the work you're doing. And I wish you lots of happiness, which is even more important.
- [47:12]
Ruchira Gupta
Thank you. I hope we stay in touch. You know, I'd love to someday meet you in person.
- [47:18]
Stephen Barden
We will do. We will do. I promise we will do. My guest today was the wonderful Ruchira Gupta, author and lifelong activist against human trafficking and particularly the trafficking of women. As Ruchira said, with the increase in wars and destitution that they create, the preying on the vulnerable by human predators will grow horrifically unless nations, specifically the richer ones, devote energy and resources to stamping it out rather than blaming the victims. So when people recklessly call for war from their armchairs against this or that so called enemy, I hope they think for a moment at least, about the many forms of human cost that every war exacts. Ruchira Gupta's book is the Freedom Seeker. It goes on sale on August 5th and is available now for pre order. It's aimed at young people, but I would be very surprised if their parents did not find it both incredibly moving as I did, and an eye opener. I'm Stephen Barden. This has been another episode of, of Migrant Odyssey.