18th to 20th centuryEdit
Between 1772 and 1833, the British parliament debates, as recorded in Hansard confirm the existence of extensive slavery in India, primarily for Arabian and European colonial markets under the East India Company.
[72] When Britain abolished slavery in its Empire, through
Slavery Abolition Act 1833, it included a clause that allowed slavery inside India and enslavement of Indians for colonial markets operated by the East India Company.
[73] Andrea Major notes,
[74]
In fact, eighteenth century Europeans, including some Britons, were involved in buying, selling and exporting Indian slaves, transferring them around the subcontinent or to European slave colonies across the globe. Moreover, many eighteenth century European households in India included domestic slaves, with the owners' right of property over them being upheld in law. Thus, although both colonial observers and subsequent historians usually represent South Asian slavery as an indigenous institution, with which the British were only concenred as colonial reforms, until the end of the eighteenth century Europeans were deeply implicated in both slave-holding and slave-trading in the region.
— Slavery, Abolitionism and Empire in India, 1772-1843
[74]
When the abolition did come into play in 1843, the officials that inadvertently used the term "slave" would be reprimanded, but the actual practices of servitude continued unchanged. Scholar Indrani Chatterjee has termed this "abolition by denial." In the rare cases when the anti-slavery legislation was enforced, it addressed the relatively smaller practices of export and import of slaves, but it did little to address the agricultural slavery that was pervasive inland. The officials in the Madras Presidency turned a blind eye to agricultural slavery claiming that it was a benign form of bondage that was in fact preferable to free labour.
[75]
According to Sir
Henry Bartle Frere (who sat on the Viceroy's Council), there were an estimated 8,000,000 or 9,000,000 slaves in India in 1841. In
Malabar, about 15% of the population were slaves. Slavery was officially abolished in India by the Indian Slavery Act V. of 1843. Provisions of the
Indian Penal Codeof 1861 effectively abolished slavery in India by making the enslavement of human beings a criminal offense.
[4][76][77][7]
wow. Welp..
nevermind we'll go enslave elsewhere..."
Please one yourself.
