Abstract
One of the predominant features of pre-capitalist relations in the nineteenth century India was that the existence of servitude came to be regulated by the Workmen’s Breach of Contract Act, 1859. The courts in colonial India interpreted the debt-bondage constituted through money wages in terms of master–servant. Its ramifications were extended beyond agriculture and into small workshops where contracts of service re- placing the pre-capitalist relations of bondage emerged. Though the movement of the ‘workmen’ and the pannials who approached the courts for relief from status to contract was notionally permitted by the courts, the real conditions of the vast majority of the pannials remained unchanged due to the nature of the colonial economy.
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