4 - Freedom found and lost

Summary

The great author of creation, matter, motion, and existence made all men equally free. By what act then can that freedom be forfeited or given up?

J. Richardson, Joint Magistrate, Bundelkhand, 1808.

… voluntary contracts of hire and service… whether the contract be for a limited period or for life, and whether the stipulated hire for service be wages or maintenance, such contracts are not deemed incompatible with the principles of justice and the laws of England…and by sanctioning them, it may be expected that the Hindoo practice of voluntary subjection to slavery, in times of famine and scarcity, will be converted into a condition more favourable to the servant and his family.

J. H. Harington, Judge, Sudder Dewanny and Nizamut Adawlut, 1818.

As agrarian relations were objectified in land, the kamias were subjected to a variety of practices that defined and documented them as persons who had lost their natural rights to freedom because of the innate power of money, grain, and land that they received from the maliks. Through the juridical representation of debt-bondage, the power of things enveloped the kamias into an economy of suspended rights, and turned them into bonded laborers. This development was emblematic of a profound historical transformation that first established freedom as the essence of humanity and then denied it to the kamias. The violence done to the kamias in this process did not originate in the translation of an indigenous term into English.