Chains of Servitude: Bondage and Slavery in India

Abstract

This is a collection of nine essays on various aspects of caste debt, women, child and migrant bondage. The introduction begins with a succinct analysis of antislavery laws enacted and its impact. A definition of feudalism as conceptualised by Maurice Dobb is provided in the introductory chapter. The author then proceeds to feudalism and pre-capitalist employer-labour relations in India and how it differed from those of Europe. An analysis of the caste and the indentured labour system of recruitment is outlined to deal with factors leading to the process of massive displacement of artisans and pauperisation of indebted poor peasantry. This exercise shows how traditional forms of servitude were replaced by monetary forms of bondage. The following three extended influences on agriculture and agrarian relations in the 1950 period has lead to this process: 1. Direct intervention in agrarian relations through land reform legislation; 2. Initiation of a new agricultural strategy from the 1960s to promote modern technology in agricultural production; 3. Indirect effects of an expanding domestic market for agricultural products. Even though land reforms in 50s and 60s did help establish a uniform land tenurial system the result was to replace one form of domination with another. Specifically, while the feudal land tenure system, such as zamindary, jagirdary and inam was abolished, indirect cultivation through tenants was substituted by cultivation through hired labour. The latter did not reduce the vulnerability of landless peasants. Another ill effect of abolishing the zamindary system has been the emergence of rentier landlords, who have used compensation money to introduce mechanical production. This has resulted in the eviction of tenants, with the latter ending up as unrecorded tenants-at-will or agricultural labourers. The heterogeneous attributes of the term ‘tenant’ are also spelt out in the introductory chapter. A majority of the tenants were poor or middle peasants while a small rich peasant stratum was also in existence. The latter groups owned land in addition to the plots they rented and cultivated with hired labour, and had ready cash and access to credit. Ownership of land which taken by the government could be bought back. Since the tenancy legislation did not distinguish between different classes of peasantry, they lost sight of operational constraints that would defeat the primary objective of the law. The poorest sections of the peasantry continued to be evicted and join ranks of labourers, while the best tenants continued to thrive, prosper and enlarge their holdings by continuing to purchase state land. Some inherent limitations on land ceilings and the operational constraints in implementing the law is also discussed. For example, fictitious partitioning and transfers were done resorted to by landlords to retain their monopoly. While the amount of ceiling surplus land taken over by the government was limited, a much smaller proportion was distributed to the landless that was unfit for cultivation. The author comes to the conclusion that the net effect of land reform laws on the labouring poor has been - to perpetuate the old, semi-feudal forms of bonded labour and attached labour on an increasingly monetised basis; - to provide an impetus towards capitalist production for profit. The final outcome of these processes has been to swell the ranks of landless by evicting poor peasants. The essay, ‘Of Dasas and Karmakaras – Servile Labour in ancient India’, has presented the evolution of institutional slavery in ancient India. India does not have the same type of chattel slavery as in the Greco–Roman model, forming an exclusive basis of production, but slavery appears to have originated in the aryan conquest and assimilated into the caste structure. Other individuals too, however, could be enslaved in ancient India in return for subsistence or in default of debt. The next chapter on ‘New forms of bondage in medieval India’ presents the new forms of servitude that came into being after the Ghorian conquests of the 12th century. Various domestic slaves were imported to serve aristocratic households. Special types of slaves are also inducted for manning the army and civil service. Employing eunuchs to guard Muslim aristocratic harems represented yet another barbaric institution superimposed on the exploitative caste-based Hindu society. ‘Bondage in the Colonial Context’ presents an evolution of slavery and debt bondage in the early colonial period. Slaveholdings as an integral feature of large, prosperous royal and aristocratic households, both Hindus and Muslims, and of the new metropolitan white elite - commercial, administrative and clerical groups – in the port cities of Bombay, Madras and Calcutta is shown to exist. Captive agricultural labour employed at pure subsistence wages, usually paid in kind, is closely linked to the local caste structure. Praedial slaves were the absolute property of their masters with bondage often intertwined with several forms of petty tenancies and share cropping arrangement. The author of ‘Debt bondage in South Arcot district – A Case Study of Agricultural Labourers and Handloom Weavers’ deals with the colonial land tenure system, Munro’s ryotwari settlement, which recognised the indigenous proprietary rights including that of slaveholding. The East India Company had arrogated to itself the power to seize and sell slaves on defaulting estates in order to realise revenue arrears. Despite the formal abolition of customary slavery by the Act of 1843 the passage of the Breach of Contract Act soon afterwards in 1859 legalised debt slavery by allowing creditors to lay claim on the debtor’s labour in lieu of interest or amount repayable. As alternative employment opportunities were limited, taking advances against repayment through labour was the only avenue available to the lower castes in traditional bondage. Similarly, loom-less weavers became victims of textile merchants and master weavers. As the latter social group owned weaving units in the village and controlled a majority of the weavers, they advanced yarn and kept the labour bonded. The extensive dispossession of tribal population during the two centuries of colonial rule, their exploitative assimilation into the Hindu population and their conversion into mine and plantation workers is the subject of the essay on “Bondage in Santha Parganas”. The study indicates that majority of the labourers had been bonded for more than one generation, with chamars and musahars - or the most depressed scheduled castes’ formed 90 per cent of debt bondage victims. A link between the agriculturally depressed regions of Bihar and eastern Uttar Pradesh and the rapidly growing and prosperous region of Punjab is exposed in the next essay. There are two allurements that induce at least a quarter of a million labourers from Bihar and eastern Uttar Pradesh; these are: (a) higher wage rates in Punjab, and (b) employment being available continuously for three to four months. The plight and predicament of the people recruited through agents on payment of advance and are virtually reduced to the status of bonded labourers while working for the landlords of Punjab is noted to be despicable. ‘Bondage in a Green Revolution Area: A study of Brick Kiln Workers in Muzaffarnagar district of Uttar Pradesh” is an intensive study of over 300 brick kiln workers in Muzaffarnagar district. It finds that an overwhelming percentage of them belong to chamars, lower castes, with 75 per cent of the landless being also illiterate. Another interesting observation is that a sizeable percentage belonged to Muslim weavers, who were impoverished into non-customary wage labour. Their bondage usually arose from loans taken from landlords and kiln owners for consumption purpose. General observations about the low rate of participation of women in the labour market, poor quality of their employment and discriminatory treatment meted out to women workers is noted in the introduction. However, the most revealing account of the exploitation and suffering of women is in the chapter on “Himalayan Polyandry: Bondage Among Women in Jaunsar Babar’. Land relations in Jaunsar Babar area of Uttar Pradesh led to monopoly of landed proprietorship by the brahmins and rajputs employing koltas - chamars, doms and bajgees. The colonial settlement explicitly forbade the holding of land by kolta. Collectively property held by the patriarchal family of the landed gentry was paralleled by a polyandrous family structure. Through a series of case studies, the author establishes the main features of degeneration in the position of kolta women where as the common property of men within the patriarchal family, they are obliged to become prostitutes. The author of the last article in the series deals with the evolution of the law in relation to slavery and bondage both during the colonial period and post independence period. She makes a thorough and dispassionate analysis of the severe limitations in the laws and in the legal system to eliminate debt bondage which has been in vogue in India over thousands of years.