Slavery in India

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The Early History of slavery in the Indian subcontinent is contested because it depends on the translations of terms such as dasa and dasyu.[1][2] Greek writer Megasthenes, in his 4th century BCE work Indika or Indica, states that slavery was banned within the Maurya Empire,[3] while the multilingual, mid 3rd Century BCE, Edicts of Ashoka independently identify obligations to slaves (Greek: δούλοις) and hired workers (Greek: μισθωτοῖς), within the same Empire.[1][4]

Slavery in India escalated during the Muslim domination of northern India after the 11th century.[1] It became a social institution with the enslavement of Hindus, along with the use of slaves in armies, a practice within Muslim kingdoms of the time.[5][6][7] According to Muslim historians of the Delhi Sultanate and the Mughal Empire era, after the invasions of Hindu kingdoms, other Indians were taken as slaves, with many exported to Central Asia and West Asia.[1][8] Slaves from the Horn of Africa were also imported into the Indian subcontinent to serve in the households of the powerful or the Muslim armies of the Deccan Sultanates and the Mughal Empire.[9][10][11]

The Portuguese imported African slaves into their Indian colonies on the Konkan coast between about 1530 and 1740.[12][13] Under European colonialism, slavery in India continued through the 18th and 19th centuries. During the colonial era, Indians were taken into different parts of the world as slaves by various European merchant companies as part of the Indian Ocean slave trade.[11][14]

Slavery was prohibited in the possessions of the East India Company by the Indian Slavery Act, 1843, in French India in 1848, British India in 1861, and Portuguese India in 1876.[1][15][16][17][18] The abolition of European chattel slavery in the 1830s led to the emergence of a system of indentured Indian labor. Over a century, more than a million Indians, known as girmitiyas, were recruited to serve fixed-term labor contracts (often five years) in European colonies across Africa, the Indian Ocean, Asia, and the Americas, primarily on the previously slave labour dependent plantations and mines.[19][20] While distinct from chattel slavery, the grueling conditions and restricted freedoms experienced by many girmitiyas have led some historians to classify their system of labor as akin to slavery.[21]

  1. ^ a b c d e Scott C. Levi (2002). "Hindus Beyond the Hindu Kush: Indians in the Central Asian Slave Trade". Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society. 12 (3). Cambridge University Press: 277–288. doi:10.1017/S1356186302000329. JSTOR 25188289. S2CID 155047611., Quote: "Sources such as the Arthasastra, the Manusmriti and the Mahabharata demonstrate that institutionalized slavery was well established in India by beginning of the common era. Earlier sources suggest that it was likely to have been equally widespread by the lifetime of the Buddha (sixth century BC), and perhaps even as far back as the Vedic period. [footnote 2: (...) While it is likely that the institution of slavery existed in India during the Vedic period, the association of the Vedic 'Dasa' with 'slaves' is problematic and likely to have been a later development."
  2. ^ Ram Sharan Sharma (1990). Śūdras in Ancient India: A Social History of the Lower Order Down to Circa A.D. 600. Motilal Banarsidass. pp. 25–27. ISBN 978-81-208-0706-8.
  3. ^ McCrindle, John (1877). Ancient India As Described By Megasthenes And Arrian. London. p. 40.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link)
  4. ^ Clarence-Smith, William G. "Religions and the abolition of slavery – a comparative approach" (PDF). LSE – Global Economic History Network (GEHN) – Conferences.
  5. ^ Andre Wink (1991), Al-Hind: the Making of the Indo-Islamic World, vol. 1, Brill Academic (Leiden), ISBN 978-9004095090, pages 14-32, 172-207
  6. ^ Cite error: The named reference many was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  7. ^ Cite error: The named reference Kidwai was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  8. ^ Bernard Lewis (1992). Race and Slavery in the Middle East: An Historical Enquiry. Oxford University Press. p. 11. ISBN 978-0-19-505326-5.
  9. ^ Indrani Chatterjee; Richard M. Eaton (2006). Slavery and South Asian History. Indiana University Press. pp. 122–123. ISBN 978-0-253-11671-0., Quote: "The importation of Ethiopian slaves into the western Deccan profoundly altered the region's society and culture [...]"
  10. ^ [a]Andrea Major (2012). Slavery, Abolitionism and Empire in India, 1772-1843. Liverpool University Press. pp. 42–43. ISBN 978-1-78138-903-4.;
    [b]David Eltis; Stanley L. Engerman (2011). The Cambridge World History of Slavery: Volume 3, AD 1420–AD 1804. Cambridge University Press. pp. 73–74. ISBN 978-1-316-18435-6., Quote: "The war was considered a major reason for the importation of Ethiopian slaves into India during the sixteenth century. Africans of slave origins played a major role in the politics of Mughal India [...]"
  11. ^ a b William Gervase Clarence-Smith (2013). The Economics of the Indian Ocean Slave Trade in the Nineteenth Century. Routledge. pp. 4–5, 64–66 with footnotes on 69. ISBN 978-1-135-18214-4.
  12. ^ Carole Elizabeth Boyce Davies (2008). Encyclopedia of the African Diaspora: Origins, Experiences, and Culture [3 volumes]: Origins, Experiences, and Culture. ABC-CLIO. pp. 553–556. ISBN 978-1-85109-705-0.
  13. ^ Walker, Timothy (2004). "Abolishing the slave trade in Portuguese India: documentary evidence of popular and official resistance to crown policy, 1842–60". Slavery & Abolition. 25 (2). Taylor & Francis: 63–79. doi:10.1080/0144039042000293045. S2CID 142692153.
  14. ^ Cite error: The named reference Andrea Major 2014 p. 43 was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  15. ^ "Slavery :: Britannica Concise Encyclopedia". Encyclopædia Britannica. Retrieved 4 December 2011.
  16. ^ "Historical survey > Slave-owning societies". Encyclopædia Britannica. Retrieved 4 December 2011.
  17. ^ Islamic Law and the Colonial Encounter in British India Archived 29 April 2009 at the Wayback Machine
  18. ^ Walker, Timothy (2004). "Abolishing the slave trade in Portuguese India: documentary evidence of popular and official resistance to crown policy, 1842–60". Slavery & Abolition. 25 (2): 63–79. doi:10.1080/0144039042000293045. ISSN 0144-039X. S2CID 142692153.
  19. ^ Ghoshal, Devjyot (3 November 2014). "The forgotten story of India's colonial slave workers who began leaving home 180 years ago". Quartz India. Retrieved 18 April 2020.
  20. ^ William, Eric (1942). History of the People of Trinidad and Tobago. Buffalo: Effworld Inc. pp. 1–4. ISBN 9781617590108.
  21. ^ Cite error: The named reference :2 was invoked but never defined (see the help page).