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Swami Agnivesh (Vepa Shyam Rao), champion of India’s indentured labourers, died on September 11th, aged 80.
印度契约劳工斗士斯瓦米·阿涅维什（韦帕·施拉姆·拉奥）于9月11日逝世，享年80岁。
The hindu life-stage of sanyasa, or renunciation, is traditionally the last. The elderly lay aside their material possessions and take up a spiritual existence, perhaps in some remote ashram in the forest or the hills. Vepa Shyam Rao, as he was then, was only 30 when he took the title of Swami, or monk, put on saffron robes and travelled to Haryana, in northern India. His mission was still not quite in focus, but his philosophy was.
传统上，印度教徒人生的最后阶段是遁世，或者说是弃绝。老年人把他们的物质财产放在一边，开始一种精神上的生活，也许是在偏远的森林或山区的道场。当时的韦帕·施拉姆·拉奥在30岁时获得了斯瓦米（修道士）的头衔，穿上藏红色的僧袍，前往印度北部的哈里亚纳邦。他的使命还不完全清晰，但他的人生观已经明确了。
He had gladly renounced his life as a lawyer and lecturer in management studies in Kolkata, reducing what he owned to his robes and a bagful of books. His career and his things he could lightly put aside. But the world and its problems, no. His life from that moment was focused on some of the hardest parts of that world. The stone quarries outside Delhi, for example, where men, women and children were paid five rupees a day to dig out, shift and break great blocks of stone, as though they were beasts of burden.
他欣然放弃了在加尔各答当律师和管理学讲师的生活，只剩下一件长袍和一大包书。他可以轻松地把他的事业和他的东西放在一边。但是世界和它的问题，不行。从那一刻起，他的生活就集中在世界上一些最艰难的地方。例如，在德里郊外的采石场，男人、女人和孩子每天拿5卢比来挖出、搬运、打碎大块的石头，他们就好像是负重的畜类。
The unventilated, deafening carpet workshops where labourers were sometimes chained to the looms and locked in at night. Silk factories where hands already white with blisters plunged repeatedly into scalding water to reel the fibres from the cocoons, and tanneries where arms were burned with toxic chemicals. Outside his penetrating gaze, but mentioned in whispers, were the punishments for working slowly: a blow on the head from a brick, a beating while tied to a neem tree, or simply non-payment of the pitiful few coins that were supposed to have been earned.
在通风不良、震耳欲聋的地毯车间，工人们有时被锁在织布机上，晚上被锁在里面。在丝绸工厂里，工人已经满是水泡的手不断地投入滚烫的水中，从蚕茧中提取纤维，还有皮革厂，工人的手臂被有毒化学物质烧伤。在那穿透性的目光之外，阿涅维什还秘密得知对慢工的惩罚：用石头砸头，绑在楝树上打，或者仅仅是不付那少得可怜的几枚工人本该挣来的硬币。
译文由可可原创，仅供学习交流使用，未经许可请勿转载。
