Bondage is not something that stares you in the face. It hides behind a range of traditional relations — of debtor and creditor, of master and servant, even of traditional ‘protector’ castes and their clients. But the relation that is pervasive is that of the debtor and creditor. It may or may not involve a trans-generational character, though there is tendency for debts to be transmitted from one generation to the next, with the heirs being forced to ‘work off’ the debts of their forebears. But one thing is always there: the rate of interest is so high that it makes it impossible for the debtor to pay off the debt.

Simply to fulminate against ‘bondage’ and getting individuals ‘freed’ by the courts does not even touch the tip of the iceberg. Bondage is inherent in dependency relations in the case of agriculture, brick kilns and other forms of petty production. This, in UP, generally takes the form of certain castes such as Chamars, the weavers, and other backward castes dominating in the bonded; even higher castes can today be found among bonded labour although in very small numbers. In all these forms, the crucial element is in the bonded person having taken a loan and then having to pay the ‘interest’ with his and his family’s labour.

The curious thing is that being rooted in tradition, both the debtor and the creditor exhibit shared values. As a result, it is almost impossible to get workers to protest against bondage as they feel they contracted the debt of their own free will and are merely working it off. In a mass struggle against bondage in the Muzaffarnagar brick kilns (Chains of Servitude: Bondage and Slavery in India, ed. by Utsa Patnaik and Manjari Dingwaney), the struggle was successful not because it was one against bondage, but because the workers felt that the rate at which they were working off their debts was too low. So they demanded a higher piece-rate wages per 1000 bricks.

As their struggle gathered momentum, they declared a strike; but when the kiln owners came out with guns to prevent them from leaving the kilns without first paying off their debts, the issue of bondage was articulated. Not only had the bonded labourers not articulated their unwillingness to pay their debts, they also refused to challenge the high rates of interest they paid on them. Their only complaint was that the piece-rate they were being paid was too low.

They never questioned the quality of the relation between themselves and their creditors. They merely felt that the amount they got out of the deal was too low. And indeed, it was the struggle to increase their wages that articulated obstacles to their freedom of movement, the use of force and even physical violence. Once these were unleashed, they found themselves fighting bondage as part and parcel of their wage struggle and not as an entity in itself.

This brings us to an important understanding: bondage is very much part and parcel of the semi-feudal rural value structure. Not only do struggles have to be launched on a purely economic basis but also, during these struggle, the issue of bondage must be inculcated in the minds of the concerned labourers. And they must be urged to carry on their struggle until the relation of creditor and the working debtor is broken and the relation of employer and wage labourer replaces it.

This is easier said than done as the creditors are also members of the rural elite, primarily landlords, who use their traditional control over village resources to impose the iniquitous norms and forms of bondage on those dependent on them even to stay alive. Such a change would require a complete overhaul of relations in the village, which may, in simple terms, be described as the dispossession of the landlords and giving land to the tiller. But this cannot happen without rousing the anti-feudal consciousness of the broad mass of the rural poor.

In UP, the consciousness against bondage could only be roused in the context of the mass upsurge of the poor to seize bhoodan land, notably in Allahabad district, that should have been distributed among the landless but continued to remain in the hands of erstwhile taluqdars and maharajas. When the peasant mass began to challenge their title to this land, they also challenged the relations under which they farmed it. The figures of applications to free them from bondage in the period of struggle bear this out.

The struggle against bondage, especially in those areas with stagnant agriculture and semi-feudal landowners in control of the resources cannot but be linked to a surge of an anti-feudal consciousness based on land struggle or the struggle for a living wage. To expect people to fight in an isolated way for ‘liberation’ without breaking the land monopoly and dependency enforced by feudal relations on the rural masses, especially when the liberated are likely to be forced back into bondage since there is no qualitative change in the distribution of resources, is ridiculous. Legal activism on isolated issues alone is not much use. Informed activism to rouse the masses to change their condition of life is what is needed. Only then land, wage and the struggle to free themselves from bondage are likely to have a persevering impact. Small, well-meaning groups in a populous region cannot do this. It requires mass organisations, capable of rousing the masses, on the basis of a well-thought-out political programme and the capacity of evolving correct tactics to implement it. Only then can the phenomenon of bonded labour be tackled effectively. It must be fought as part and parcel of a total struggle to unleash an agrarian revolution. Mere tinkering will not do.