In the late 1970s, when I first began my historical research on bonded labor the question of bondage was a live public issue. The Indian government had just passed the Bonded Labour System (Abolition) Act in 1976, and social scientists, in one study after another, were showing the existence of bondage all over the country, documenting the brutal exploitation of the laborers by powerful landlords and rich peasants. The issues seemed clear. Here was a group of laborers for whom, let alone colonial change, even post-independence development did not signify any fundamental transformation: their premodern bondage had survived into the modern period and their exploitation had not ended. Framed in this manner, the issue of bonded labor raised a series of questions for scholarship. What explained this extraordinary longevity of labor servitude? How was it that age-old traditions of servitude withstood the forces of change? How was the innate and inalienable right to freedom denied? I was frequently asked these questions when I mentioned the subject of my research. ‘Are these laborers still bonded?’ people often inquired, as they expressed their horror and indignation at the suppression of freedom.