Freedomville: Non-Fiction Account of A Rebel Slave Town in Current Day India

 Most people believe that slavery has disappeared from the modern world.  Yet debt slavery, which was common in the ancient world, still exists today.  The slaves are supposedly working off their debt, but they're never successful because the landlords find ways for them to accumulate more debt.  It's also often multi-generational because successive generations inherit the mountain of debt.  Debt slavery can be found in many countries, but Freedomville by anti-slavery activist Laura T. Murphy deals with a community of former slaves in 21st century India who freed themselves. 

                                      

                                      

Laura T. Murphy tells us in  Freedomville that she first encountered slavery in New Orleans where immigrants are currently being forced to rebuild the city after the massive destruction that took place during Hurricane Katrina.

 It was heartbreaking to learn how so many in India had been entrapped into modern slavery, but inspiring to discover a slave revolt that resulted in the formation of a community. In the 18th century the people of Haiti freed themselves from slavery and became a nation.  Azad Nagar, which is what the former slaves called their community, was on a much smaller scale but still represented a victory against oppression. Azad Nagar is in Uttar Pradesh.  Based on what Laura Murphy said, this is the Indian state that has the largest percentage of poor people.  She also tells us that almost a quarter of the world's slaves live in Uttar Pradesh.

Murphy reveals the history of the relationship between the Kols (the enslaved ethnic group in Uttar Pradesh) and the landlord caste in Freedomville, how the Kol revolt came about and the impact of the revolt on  the Kols.  The landlord caste was for the most part extremely ruthless, but that wasn't what was most noteworthy about the revolt.  The rebels also pooled their resources to purchase a mine lease, so they would have a source of income that would allow them to remain free.  Unfortunately, their lease ran out.  Not all of the revolt participants remained free.

I was  particularly impressed with Laura Murphy's comments about non-violence.  She said that non-violence is romanticized.  She adds that if the Kols were non-violent in the face of  the ruthlessness of the landlord that they revolted against, the Kols wouldn't have been able to survive.  So they couldn't remain consistently non-violent.  Murphy also pointed out that conditions in Azad Nagar were by no means ideal.  This caused all those who remained free to leave Azad Nagar eventually.  

I appreciate Laura Murphy's commitment to accuracy and realism.  If she had told us that Azad Nagar was a utopian community, I wouldn't have believed her.  So although Murphy had idealistic beliefs, she remained committed to giving us a genuine history of the revolt.  I respected Freedomville as a work of scholarship.  It gave me insight into the real conditions on the ground in Uttar Pradesh.  I thought that I understood both the Kols and the landlord class after reading it.