An uprising and its discontents

Azad Nagar: The Story of a 21st-Century Slave Revolt

Author: Laura T Murphy

Publisher: HarperCollins

Pages: 145

Price: Rs 299

Laura T Murphy’s latest book Azad Nagar: The Story of a 21st-Century Slave Revolt justifies the idiom “big things come in small packages”.

Not only does this slim volume help unpack several layers of class and caste conflicts playing for eons in the country but also sheds light on the institutional corruption that has only exacerbated the problem in recent years after the government-backed entry of multimillion rupee mining companies in India’s most mineral-rich regions. 

Dr Murphy is professor of human rights and contemporary slavery at the Helena Kennedy Centre for International Justice at Sheffield Hallam University in the UK.  
 

The book is about the “Azad Nagar Revolt” in the Sonbarsa village in southern Uttar Pradesh. Divided into seven chapters, it introduces parallels between the 19th century abolitionist movements in the United States and Azad Nagar’s uprising—halla bol —in the beginning, to contextualise the dire situation in which a group of “transgenerationally enslaved” people in India’s poorest quarters continue to live before fighting their oppressors.

It’s the sheer depth of understanding of the country, its politics, and in particular its caste politics—and atrocities that go unnoticed every day—and a recognition of the more insidious forms of slavery that exist in India, that enable Dr Murphy to set up a challenging narrative in simple and accessible language.
 

In the introduction, Ms Murphy writes, “Most people have only recently come to realise that slavery still exists.” She then supplies data and names of an array of countries (including India) where slavery persists in multiple ways. (Walk Free Foundation’s 2018 Global Slavery Index “estimates that there are around 8 million people living in modern slavery” in India.)

This is a great segue for her to establish the conflict between the Patel landlords and the Kol tribals, who migrated to several parts of northern and central India from the Chota Nagpur Plateau in Jharkhand, debunking the popular myth that most upper-caste people have come to hold close to their hearts — that the caste system doesn’t exist anymore.

It takes only a tiny chapter for Dr Murphy to explain how the landlord-Kol conflict has existed since colonial times, and how upper-caste people enjoyed brutal control over Adivasi people’s lives by grinding them into a vicious cycle of debt. The cycle starts with slaveholders hijacking tribal people’s lands, depriving them of any source of livelihood, which forces them to ask for loans — from the landlords. The loan often remains unpaid, and interest keeps piling up, the perfect ruse for slave lords to prosper and creating a vicious cycle of slavery.

“India’s independence from the British Empire in 1947 did not mean independence for the Kols,” writes Dr Murphy. She notes that although minor revolts “every few years” have been traced as far back as the 1770s, the fight against landlords peaked in 1831-32. It was known as the “Kol Insurrection,” in which “over the course of [a] bloody four-month rebellion, the Kols killed hundreds of settlers and burned more than a thousand homes.”

But land conflicts are seldom easily solved. When the structure is set to benefit the upper-castes, how can one expect an easy fix? Fast forward to the 21st century. The J P Narayan Movement is at its peak, and one Uday Pratap Singh, nicknamed Kanchuki, to whom the book is dedicated, starts working for a non-profit organisation called Sankalp, thus entering the “Slave Revolt” landscape. Instrumental in “gossip organising” and inviting several influential officers to liaise between the Kol people and Patel landlords, he tries to get Kol people land leases. Naturally, this interference in the power structure disturbs the Patel landlords.

By the early 2000s, the abolitionist movement sees a great shift in the conviction of the Kol people demanding their rights, hundreds, or according to some reports thousands, of Adivasi labourers gather and chant “No more exploitation, no more torture. We now unite to fight; we now unite to be free.” This precipitates a confrontation in which one person (Virendra Pal Singh) dies.

That’s where the story gets interesting. Dr Murphy’s relentless pursuit towards understanding whether this was an actual death or murder signals how difficult it is to maintain objectivity in narratives where the humane impulse encourages bias towards disenfranchised people. But as a researcher and seeker of truth, she continues to dig deeper. This pursuit distinguishes this book from others as it dares to question the narrative-building around a struggle or an ambitious revolt. It asks pertinent questions, which are often pushed aside because they can not only potentially misdirect a revolution but can also feed on to the notions of oversimplifying a fight for rights. Or as Dr Murphy notes, “the revolt—and its consequences—are far more complex” than it seems.

The reviewer is a Delhi-based writer and freelance journalist. @writerly_life