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Columbia Global Reports
Freedomville: The Story of a 21st-Century Slave Revolt
A celebrated revolution brought freedom to a group of enslaved people in northern India. Or did it?
Millions of people around the world today are enslaved; nearly eight million of them live in India, more than anywhere else. This book is the story of a small group of enslaved villagers in the Indian state of Uttar Pradesh, who founded their own town of Azad Nagar—Freedomville—after staging a rebellion against their slaveholders. International organizations championed this as a nonviolent “silent revolution” that inspired other villagers to fight for their own freedom. But Laura T. Murphy, a leading scholar of contemporary global slavery, who spent years researching and teaching about Freedomville, found that whispers and deflections suggested that there was something troubling about Azad Nagar’s success.
Murphy embarks on a Rashomon-like retelling—a complex, constantly changing narrative of a murder that captures better than any sanitized account just why it is that slavery continues to exist in the twenty-first century. Freedomville’s enormous struggle to gain and maintain liberty shows why it is unrealistic to expect radical change without violent protest—and how a global construction boom is deepening and broadening the alienation of impoverished people around the world.
“A powerful, damning account of economic growth, beautifully told through the tragic story of the fight for freedom from slavery of tribals in India. A must-read for anyone wanting to understand modern slavery, the fragility of ideas of freedom, the place of violence in bringing about progressive change, and modern India.” —Alpa Shah, professor of anthropology, London School of Economics, author of Nightmarch: Among India’s Revolutionary Guerrillas
“In Freedomville, Laura Murphy returns to an Indian village known to many as an anti-slavery success story, where she uncovers complex interconnections, unresolved truths, and a community and its former enslavers wrestling with mechanization, globalization, and environmental racism. Drawing on her deep understanding of historical slave resistance and modern human trafficking policy, Murphy echoes Dr. Martin Luther King’s warning that Emancipation cannot become an uncashed promissory note, but must be an ongoing guarantee of liberty and opportunity.” —Ambassador (ret.) Luis C.deBaca, Gilder Lehrman Center for the Study of Slavery, Resistance, and Abolition, Yale University
“A brave and brilliant report on the tyranny of the caste system and continuing feudal practices in India's villages. Freedomville rips apart the cliche of India being the largest democracy in the world and shows us how millions of Indians are deprived of their basic constitutional freedoms and rights.” —Basharat Peer, author of A Question of Order: India, Turkey, and the Return of Strongmen, contributing writer for The New York Times
Millions of people around the world today are enslaved; nearly eight million of them live in India, more than anywhere else. This book is the story of a small group of enslaved villagers in the Indian state of Uttar Pradesh, who founded their own town of Azad Nagar—Freedomville—after staging a rebellion against their slaveholders. International organizations championed this as a nonviolent “silent revolution” that inspired other villagers to fight for their own freedom. But Laura T. Murphy, a leading scholar of contemporary global slavery, who spent years researching and teaching about Freedomville, found that whispers and deflections suggested that there was something troubling about Azad Nagar’s success.
Murphy embarks on a Rashomon-like retelling—a complex, constantly changing narrative of a murder that captures better than any sanitized account just why it is that slavery continues to exist in the twenty-first century. Freedomville’s enormous struggle to gain and maintain liberty shows why it is unrealistic to expect radical change without violent protest—and how a global construction boom is deepening and broadening the alienation of impoverished people around the world.
“A powerful, damning account of economic growth, beautifully told through the tragic story of the fight for freedom from slavery of tribals in India. A must-read for anyone wanting to understand modern slavery, the fragility of ideas of freedom, the place of violence in bringing about progressive change, and modern India.” —Alpa Shah, professor of anthropology, London School of Economics, author of Nightmarch: Among India’s Revolutionary Guerrillas
“In Freedomville, Laura Murphy returns to an Indian village known to many as an anti-slavery success story, where she uncovers complex interconnections, unresolved truths, and a community and its former enslavers wrestling with mechanization, globalization, and environmental racism. Drawing on her deep understanding of historical slave resistance and modern human trafficking policy, Murphy echoes Dr. Martin Luther King’s warning that Emancipation cannot become an uncashed promissory note, but must be an ongoing guarantee of liberty and opportunity.” —Ambassador (ret.) Luis C.deBaca, Gilder Lehrman Center for the Study of Slavery, Resistance, and Abolition, Yale University
“A brave and brilliant report on the tyranny of the caste system and continuing feudal practices in India's villages. Freedomville rips apart the cliche of India being the largest democracy in the world and shows us how millions of Indians are deprived of their basic constitutional freedoms and rights.” —Basharat Peer, author of A Question of Order: India, Turkey, and the Return of Strongmen, contributing writer for The New York Times
123 pages, Kindle Edition
First published September 7, 2021
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Displaying 1 - 11 of 11 reviews
August 17, 2021
I think the UN has made it abundantly clear that human slavery not only still exists but is bigger than it has ever been. Maybe 40 million human slaves globally. There are numerous books and films about child slavery, sexual slavery and racial slavery such as the Uighurs in western China most recently. The USA and China share prison slavery in common. Laura Murphy has written a book that follows a group out of slavery, which makes it different from most. It’s called Freedomville (Azad Nagar), after the village the ex-slaves founded.
It takes place in northern India, where for hundreds of years, the local Patels enslaved the lower caste Kols. They did it through debt and accompanying fraud. If a Kol needed a few rupees for a wedding or a mud brick home, the land-rich Patels would happily oblige. But the contract, not at all understood by the Kols, called for outrageous interest and bonding for default of ever-escalating payments. The loans outstanding soon doubled and tripled in value, making it completely out of reach to be paid back within a lifetime, or ever, as they were designed. The Patels called the loans, taking ownership of the Kols’ homes, their only real possession, and having them live in Patel-built mud huts, in exchange for lifetime work in the rock quarries or the fields. The ever-escalating debt had to be repaid somehow, so the Patels took wives, children and grandchildren into slavery to that end. A few rupees became a forever enslavement.
The slaveowners clothed and fed their slaves, giving them a few grains daily, just enough so they could make it back to the quarries the next day. They berated them, beat them, humiliated them, raped the women, and killed them without a second thought.
The slaves spent their lives breaking rocks and putting them in cloth bags by the truckload, for sale to brick and cement makers. They received no education, had no knowledge of the world just outside their homes, and had no hopes of ever living any other way.
There were revolts, notably in the 1830s, but the owners always came back stronger than ever. They had the police and the justice system behind them in case of complaints. It was sweet for centuries.
When India gained independence from Britain in 1947, there was a brief glimmer of hope that an Indian government would end slavery. But it was not to be. Governments took the side of the slaveowners, to the point of denying there was any such thing, much like in China today.
The story then fairly zooms to this century, when some slaves managed to get access to a quarry, and eventually to obtain a legal lease on it through the government. It took years of work by a couple anti-slavery workers. They met with slaves, befriended them, led them in song, slept in their houses and told them about life on their own. It was “gossip organizing.” They helped scare up some small third party donations, which combined with the pittances the slaves saved to make a downpayment on the quarry lease.
The slaves took the chance. They found they could live better, pay the royalties and still profit from their work. They left their slaveowners. This could not last long, and at a major rally, the owners roared up on their motorcycles, ready to crack skulls among the essentially defenseless slave families. But this time, it didn’t work out well for the owners. The slaves fought back. They had the numbers on their side, as both men and women got involved. On the owners’ side, the most obnoxious, drunken, violent rapist among them was killed. And though the owners had a number of prominent slaves arrested for it (some of whom weren’t even there), a clear end was now in sight.
The slaves moved to an area away from the owners, calling it Freedomville. They began to send their children to school instead of the quarry. They got into local politics. They were becoming normal, despite the barriers and lack of support everywhere.
This Cinderella story does not turn out quite so well, however. The slaves’ lease was not renewable. A change in government in India meant new policies in mining, natural resources, labor and the poor. But worst of all, technology put them out of work. Totally mechanized rock crushers invaded, clearing out an entire quarry in a year. They could undercut even the pathetic prices asked by the former slaves. Plus, the companies hired no locals. Every employee seemed to be a Brahmin, commuting in from elsewhere.
And nobody welcomed the newly freed citizens. The Modi government’s promise to all Indians that they could work at least 100 days a year for the government (mostly building badly needed roads) did not apply in the extremely rural areas like Uttar Pradesh. Electricity stopped short of entering Freedomville. Funding by the region vanished. The former slaveowners barred them crossing over private property and bitterly tried to make their freedom miserable.
It was never going to be easy, but it got pathetic. The former owners bleated about how well they had always treated their bonded workers - for generations, feeding them, clothing them, housing them, paying the medical bills and so on. They wanted reparations for losing their private property – the slaves. They actually screamed “Who will work my quarry now?” The former slaveowners were the real victims, it seems.
Today, the former slaves are free, but still dirt poor. The slaveowners have given up and now deal with their ex-slaves as fellow humans, doing business with them and co-operating.
The book is a straightforward history, a Columbia Global Report. It is short and succinct, with a lot of detail in a compact format. Murphy had been following the story on her own, for years, from her perch at a university in the England. She watched the documentaries and did what research she could (It is her specific area of expertise). When she finally made it onsite, she knew all the players and recognized them even from a distance, though they didn’t know her. She tried to get to the bottom of the murder at the demonstration (why I don’t know), and ended up with a wide variety of different stories, not one of which could be verified. Women took credit for it, witnesses blamed several people and no one in particular. Even the courts gave up, eventually freeing the seven men so accused.
I wanted Murphy to assure me the slaves are better off now, fending for themselves in the real world. That they are satisfied and happy to be on their own. She doesn’t, making this new path to freedom less than the ideal solution. Freedom it seems, can be a two-edged sword.
David Wineberg
If you liked this review, I invite you to read my book on my first thousand reviews and what I learned. Right now it’s FREE for Prime members, otherwise — cheap! Reputed to be a fascinating and superfast read. https://www.amazon.com/Straight-Dope-...
It takes place in northern India, where for hundreds of years, the local Patels enslaved the lower caste Kols. They did it through debt and accompanying fraud. If a Kol needed a few rupees for a wedding or a mud brick home, the land-rich Patels would happily oblige. But the contract, not at all understood by the Kols, called for outrageous interest and bonding for default of ever-escalating payments. The loans outstanding soon doubled and tripled in value, making it completely out of reach to be paid back within a lifetime, or ever, as they were designed. The Patels called the loans, taking ownership of the Kols’ homes, their only real possession, and having them live in Patel-built mud huts, in exchange for lifetime work in the rock quarries or the fields. The ever-escalating debt had to be repaid somehow, so the Patels took wives, children and grandchildren into slavery to that end. A few rupees became a forever enslavement.
The slaveowners clothed and fed their slaves, giving them a few grains daily, just enough so they could make it back to the quarries the next day. They berated them, beat them, humiliated them, raped the women, and killed them without a second thought.
The slaves spent their lives breaking rocks and putting them in cloth bags by the truckload, for sale to brick and cement makers. They received no education, had no knowledge of the world just outside their homes, and had no hopes of ever living any other way.
There were revolts, notably in the 1830s, but the owners always came back stronger than ever. They had the police and the justice system behind them in case of complaints. It was sweet for centuries.
When India gained independence from Britain in 1947, there was a brief glimmer of hope that an Indian government would end slavery. But it was not to be. Governments took the side of the slaveowners, to the point of denying there was any such thing, much like in China today.
The story then fairly zooms to this century, when some slaves managed to get access to a quarry, and eventually to obtain a legal lease on it through the government. It took years of work by a couple anti-slavery workers. They met with slaves, befriended them, led them in song, slept in their houses and told them about life on their own. It was “gossip organizing.” They helped scare up some small third party donations, which combined with the pittances the slaves saved to make a downpayment on the quarry lease.
The slaves took the chance. They found they could live better, pay the royalties and still profit from their work. They left their slaveowners. This could not last long, and at a major rally, the owners roared up on their motorcycles, ready to crack skulls among the essentially defenseless slave families. But this time, it didn’t work out well for the owners. The slaves fought back. They had the numbers on their side, as both men and women got involved. On the owners’ side, the most obnoxious, drunken, violent rapist among them was killed. And though the owners had a number of prominent slaves arrested for it (some of whom weren’t even there), a clear end was now in sight.
The slaves moved to an area away from the owners, calling it Freedomville. They began to send their children to school instead of the quarry. They got into local politics. They were becoming normal, despite the barriers and lack of support everywhere.
This Cinderella story does not turn out quite so well, however. The slaves’ lease was not renewable. A change in government in India meant new policies in mining, natural resources, labor and the poor. But worst of all, technology put them out of work. Totally mechanized rock crushers invaded, clearing out an entire quarry in a year. They could undercut even the pathetic prices asked by the former slaves. Plus, the companies hired no locals. Every employee seemed to be a Brahmin, commuting in from elsewhere.
And nobody welcomed the newly freed citizens. The Modi government’s promise to all Indians that they could work at least 100 days a year for the government (mostly building badly needed roads) did not apply in the extremely rural areas like Uttar Pradesh. Electricity stopped short of entering Freedomville. Funding by the region vanished. The former slaveowners barred them crossing over private property and bitterly tried to make their freedom miserable.
It was never going to be easy, but it got pathetic. The former owners bleated about how well they had always treated their bonded workers - for generations, feeding them, clothing them, housing them, paying the medical bills and so on. They wanted reparations for losing their private property – the slaves. They actually screamed “Who will work my quarry now?” The former slaveowners were the real victims, it seems.
Today, the former slaves are free, but still dirt poor. The slaveowners have given up and now deal with their ex-slaves as fellow humans, doing business with them and co-operating.
The book is a straightforward history, a Columbia Global Report. It is short and succinct, with a lot of detail in a compact format. Murphy had been following the story on her own, for years, from her perch at a university in the England. She watched the documentaries and did what research she could (It is her specific area of expertise). When she finally made it onsite, she knew all the players and recognized them even from a distance, though they didn’t know her. She tried to get to the bottom of the murder at the demonstration (why I don’t know), and ended up with a wide variety of different stories, not one of which could be verified. Women took credit for it, witnesses blamed several people and no one in particular. Even the courts gave up, eventually freeing the seven men so accused.
I wanted Murphy to assure me the slaves are better off now, fending for themselves in the real world. That they are satisfied and happy to be on their own. She doesn’t, making this new path to freedom less than the ideal solution. Freedom it seems, can be a two-edged sword.
David Wineberg
If you liked this review, I invite you to read my book on my first thousand reviews and what I learned. Right now it’s FREE for Prime members, otherwise — cheap! Reputed to be a fascinating and superfast read. https://www.amazon.com/Straight-Dope-...
November 27, 2025
Sometimes I delude myself into thinking that I'm well-informed about the world around me, and then I stumble across a story about a true event that happened during my lifetime that I can't believe I've never heard of. This book, which reads like an extended journalistic deep dive, served as my exercise in humility today.
Slavery is one of those things that we like to pretend rests firmly in the past but we all secretly know is still going on. In India, with their caste system being what it is, it doesn't look the same as the transatlantic slave trade did with mass forced migration and metal chains. Instead it's more like a series of impossible debts that can never be paid off, and an understanding that a lower-caste individual will physically labor for a higher-caste person for the rest of their below average lifespan. Culturally, people in this situation might not even recognize this as slavery the way Westerners do, which presents a further challenge to NGOs trying to combat this.
In 2000, an entire village of slaves in Sonbarsa, Uttar Pradesh rose up in a "peaceful revolution" to overthrow their landlords without violence and renamed the place Azad Nagar or "Freedomville". It was held up as a template for similar communities in different parts of the world, and after years of teaching about it to her students the author decided to visit and meet these revolutionaries in person 15 years after their victory. Instead, she was met with an animated crowd of old timers that basically said, "no, we killed those sons of bitches, and we're proud of it."
Tonally, there's a bit of odd pearl-clutching that follows that initially reads like, "How could these slaves be so violent towards their masters?", but later morphs into a more appropriate, "How did the true story get twisted into this sanitized version?" The villagers of Freedomville don't seem to be economically better off today, but ironically their former masters are also struggling as the landlord caste has all been muscled out of their traditional lands by multinational corporations with more powerful machinery. Apparently the cure for slavery is to make it uneconomical with new technology that's cheaper than human labor. Kinda feels like no one came out on top in this case though.
Slavery is one of those things that we like to pretend rests firmly in the past but we all secretly know is still going on. In India, with their caste system being what it is, it doesn't look the same as the transatlantic slave trade did with mass forced migration and metal chains. Instead it's more like a series of impossible debts that can never be paid off, and an understanding that a lower-caste individual will physically labor for a higher-caste person for the rest of their below average lifespan. Culturally, people in this situation might not even recognize this as slavery the way Westerners do, which presents a further challenge to NGOs trying to combat this.
In 2000, an entire village of slaves in Sonbarsa, Uttar Pradesh rose up in a "peaceful revolution" to overthrow their landlords without violence and renamed the place Azad Nagar or "Freedomville". It was held up as a template for similar communities in different parts of the world, and after years of teaching about it to her students the author decided to visit and meet these revolutionaries in person 15 years after their victory. Instead, she was met with an animated crowd of old timers that basically said, "no, we killed those sons of bitches, and we're proud of it."
Tonally, there's a bit of odd pearl-clutching that follows that initially reads like, "How could these slaves be so violent towards their masters?", but later morphs into a more appropriate, "How did the true story get twisted into this sanitized version?" The villagers of Freedomville don't seem to be economically better off today, but ironically their former masters are also struggling as the landlord caste has all been muscled out of their traditional lands by multinational corporations with more powerful machinery. Apparently the cure for slavery is to make it uneconomical with new technology that's cheaper than human labor. Kinda feels like no one came out on top in this case though.
November 8, 2021
This book presents a fascinating story, one that seemed to have flown under the radar of public recognition. I myself was shocked to hear the story of Azad Nagar (Freedomville), the trials it faced, the torturous history of those who founded it, the deflated promise of liberation born out of general bad luck. This book is sometimes too brief, and I wish it had gone more in depth in its coverage of the functioning life of Azad Nagar. The byline of this book and the abstract introducing it seem to paint it in the light of both global anti racist movements and leftist ideology, but the actual history of Freedomville seems to end with its revolt and establishment. We hear little of the lives of people in the village besides their squalor and misfortune, and this seemed to belie the intention of the author to me.
Laura Murphy writes as an interested outsider, fascinated with the logistics and history leaving up to the slave revolt, but certain aspects of the existence of Azad Nagar seem to give her pause at best and induce horror at worst. In particular, her obsession with the cover-up of the murder that paved the way for the slaves’ libertarian borders on disapproval. She claims to support this revolution and lauds her adherence to the spirit of the slave revolt, but she seems to be internally opposed to the necessary measures that paved the way for it. It just felt as if she was saying one thing in her writing, but holding onto a contradictory set of morals that betrayed the ideals she writes about. She also portrays the people of Azad Nagar as loud, violent, furtive, and untrustworthy. If she wanted to write a laudatory mini-epic of a modern slave revolt, I don’t think she accomplished it here. Perhaps the story of Azad Nagar is more nuanced than she portrays it, but as it stands this book paints revolution and liberation as unnecessarily precarious and even self-destructive. Of course she anticipates this, and talks about the precariousness of freedom in general and that Azad Nagar is emblematic of that precariousness, but it seemed more negative than it did anything.
I appreciate the insight Murphy brings to this topic, perhaps giving new windows onto the plight of the people of this forgotten part of the world. But her book paints them in as favorable a light as the Patel and Singh overlords do.
Laura Murphy writes as an interested outsider, fascinated with the logistics and history leaving up to the slave revolt, but certain aspects of the existence of Azad Nagar seem to give her pause at best and induce horror at worst. In particular, her obsession with the cover-up of the murder that paved the way for the slaves’ libertarian borders on disapproval. She claims to support this revolution and lauds her adherence to the spirit of the slave revolt, but she seems to be internally opposed to the necessary measures that paved the way for it. It just felt as if she was saying one thing in her writing, but holding onto a contradictory set of morals that betrayed the ideals she writes about. She also portrays the people of Azad Nagar as loud, violent, furtive, and untrustworthy. If she wanted to write a laudatory mini-epic of a modern slave revolt, I don’t think she accomplished it here. Perhaps the story of Azad Nagar is more nuanced than she portrays it, but as it stands this book paints revolution and liberation as unnecessarily precarious and even self-destructive. Of course she anticipates this, and talks about the precariousness of freedom in general and that Azad Nagar is emblematic of that precariousness, but it seemed more negative than it did anything.
I appreciate the insight Murphy brings to this topic, perhaps giving new windows onto the plight of the people of this forgotten part of the world. But her book paints them in as favorable a light as the Patel and Singh overlords do.
August 15, 2021
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 which was called Azad Nagar by the Kols, who were the enslaved ethnic group.
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.
For my complete review see https://shomeretmasked.blogspot.com/2...
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.
For my complete review see https://shomeretmasked.blogspot.com/2...
October 2, 2021
Focusing on a little understood or followed topic, Professor Murphy takes the readers and CGR to India in the state of UP to discuss the plight of a community of adivasis (Indian indigenous communities) as they attempt to break out of their centuries long slavery from the landlords that controlled their lives in every aspect.
The story of Azad Nagr (Freedomville) is long and complicated, and one that Murphy (along with the reader) quickly realize is indicative of the nature of modern India and how minority populations are treated by the government at every level. Though the world's largest democracy has protections in place for its indigenous populations, rarely do these populations receive the protections or the assistance from the state.
Finally, I really appreciated the inclusion of narrative mapping that Murphy demonstrated, in how governments, NGOs, and civil society change the narrative of a slave revolt in the 21st century to fit their centric narrative for their agenda.
The story of Azad Nagr (Freedomville) is long and complicated, and one that Murphy (along with the reader) quickly realize is indicative of the nature of modern India and how minority populations are treated by the government at every level. Though the world's largest democracy has protections in place for its indigenous populations, rarely do these populations receive the protections or the assistance from the state.
Finally, I really appreciated the inclusion of narrative mapping that Murphy demonstrated, in how governments, NGOs, and civil society change the narrative of a slave revolt in the 21st century to fit their centric narrative for their agenda.
September 12, 2021
This book was very eye-opening. I knew slavery existed in the modern world, but not the extent of it. I think this book was very-well done. I did grow a little frustrating with the format, but I think that was more due to the ARC and would be fixed for regular issue. I also wished they would have elaborated more on the violence the slaves committed to get free. I think the author made a good point in examining how society views violence, even when it is used to extend liberty and freedom.
January 8, 2022
This isn't a survey of slavery in the modern world or statistics to emphasize its prevalence, as other reviews seem to imply. It's an interesting deep dive on just one very small region in India, with shocks and surprises across a two decade story, that achieves rare and useful nuance. Journalistic in its vibe, essentially a "very long read" magazine piece. For me the writing style, manageable length, and depth of character and story made a very successful piece overall.
April 24, 2022
The reading falls halfway between a personal account and an essay. The narrative feels slightly incoherent and hurried at times, and the flow is disrupted occasionally by delving into current affairs. That said, it was a quick and easy read that I actually finished in a couple of hours.
September 6, 2021
A real eye opener - slavery still exists in this world
Want to read
October 9, 2021As seen in the New Yorker: https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/20....
March 3, 2022
Fascinating. There are so many things in the world we never heard about, but we should.
Displaying 1 - 11 of 11 reviews