Home History Institutionalized slavery in the Muslim regimes (Part – IV)

Institutionalized slavery in the Muslim regimes (Part – IV)

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Institutionalized slavery in the Muslim regimes (Part – IV)
Representational Image - Courtesy: Scroll

While the trade of slaves was not unknown in India, the scale of slavery in India was extremely small in pre-Islamic times.  

By Shanmukh-Saswati Sarkar-Dikgaj-Aparna-Kirtivardhan

How Indic merchants lacked a sense of nationhood that was widely prevalent in their contemporary India

Worldwide, slavery has been endemic since the ancient times, but the worst of slavers typically provided some protection to their civilizational or co-religionist compatriots from this human atrocity.   Prisoners of war, civilians of enemy lands, defaulting peasants, specific raids in foreign (especially infidel) regions to capture slaves were the principal means by which the slaves were acquired.  For instance, the slaves were usually acquired from foreign nations in almost all big slave holding societies, from the Roman times.  The Arab empire routinely acquired Turkish, Christian, Indian and Caucasian slaves.  Enslavement of locals was far less prevalent.  Further, almost all medieval empires went out of their way to manumit or obtain the release of their co-religionists from slavery.  For instance, Russia usually freed Orthodox slaves and did not extradite them back to the Central Asian Khanates (Nogays, Kalmyks, etc), while they had no such qualms about the Muslims or the Catholics. Similarly, the Ottoman Empire which bought huge numbers of Polish and Russian slaves, did not extend this system in Sunni Arabia or Egypt, which it conquered during the same period.  The Bukharans did not mind selling the Persian Zoroastrians and Shias as slaves, but did not practice the same on the Sunnis.  In general, slaves sold were either a) infidels or b) foreigners or both.  Enslavement of co-religionist compatriots was not usually practiced.

Indic merchants facilitated the enslavement and human trafficking of Indians conducted under the auspices of the Muslim and European rulers.

However, in the case of India, Indic merchants  facilitated  the enslavement and human trafficking  of Indians (mostly Indics, but also a few Muslims, especially tribal prisoners of war) conducted under the auspices of the Muslim and European rulers. This suggests that Indic merchants lacked a sense of shared nationhood with other Indics, barring their narrow caste groups. The question that remains is whether this is manifest of the lack of Indian nationhood in the prevailing Indic society, or of mercantile insularity. We argue that it is the latter, as the sense of nationhood was quite well developed in India from the era before Christ, despite the lack of political union.

We start with the definitions of a nation.  BN Mukherjee has written “The term ‘nation’ may denote a people or groups of ethnic elements tied together by a type of common cultural consciousness or by a linkage of certain cultural features and/or political homogeneity and living (or having its or their major part living) in a given territory (permanently, or at least with a fixed periodicity in case of having the habit of seasonal migration). Thus, unlike a so-called “nation-state”, where political homogeneity (under a central government in a defined or augmenting territory) is a prerequisite, a people or groups of ethnic elements may be considered to have attained the nation-hood if they have cultural links amongst or between them and if their habitat is well-defined.  Here political unity under a central government is not an essential factor.’’ Abhas Chatterjee contends that a nation is but defined by its cultural ethos: “a nation never means a land as such. A nation indicates a group or a community of people which has been traditionally living in a particular land, which has its own distinctive culture, and which has an identity separate from other peoples of the world by virtue of the distinctiveness of its culture. The cultural distinctiveness of a nation may be based on its race, or religion, or language, or a combination of some or all of these factors, but all-in-all there has to be a distinct culture which will mark the nation out from peoples belonging to other lands. Third, there may be internal differences in several respects among the people belonging to this culture, but in spite of these differences there is an overall sense of harmony born out of the fundamental elements of their culture, and a sense of pride which inspires in them a desire to maintain their separate identity from the rest of the world. Finally, as a result of these factors, this group of people has its own outlook towards the history of its traditional homeland; it has its own heroes and villains, its own view of glory and shame, success and failure, victory and defeat.’’ Carlton Hayes defines nationalism as “A nationality receives its impress, its character, its individuality from cultural and historical forces.’’ and “historical tradition means an accumulation of remembered or imagined experiences of the past’’.  Further, Hayes writes that “If we are to grasp what a nationality is, we must avoid confusing it with state or nation.’’ and, “Cultural nationalism may exist with or without political nationalism. For, nationalities can do and exist for fairly long periods without political unity and independence.” Hans Kohn pointed out in his book that Asian nationalism was cultural and points out that even German and Italian nationhood had a vigorous cultural and intellectual movement preceding the actual nations.

BN Mukherjee points out that India (current Indian subcontinent) always had a geographical and cultural unity, despite the lack of a single political entity throughout. He writes that the India is geographically clearly delineated from the rest of the world, pointing out that, “It appears that space, no less than time, is a prerequisite for the development of a nation’s ethos. Well defined boundaries are conducive to the growth of a country’s geo-cultural personality. Here the Indian subcontinent had an initial advantage. It is one of the few continental zones of the world each of which has been formed by nature as a geographical unit. On the north it is bounded by the Himalayas, on the west by inter alia parts of the Hindu-Kush, Safed Koh, Sulaiman, Brahui, Pab, Kirthar and other ranges, on the east by inter alia the Patkai, Naga, Lushai and Chin Hills, and on the south, south-east and south-west by the Indian Ocean, Bay of Bengal and Arabian Sea. In spite of natural barriers in internal communications, the subcontinent is an indivisible geographical entity. L. Dudley Stamp was probably not wrong when he remarked that “there is perhaps no mainland part of the world better marked off by nature as a region or ‘realm’ by itself than the Indian subcontinent.”

Rajputs of Awadh would ostracize those who enslaved Indics and sold them to Islamist conquerors and slave merchants.

The geographical unity of India has been remarked on by many commentators, both Indian and non-Indian. Starting with the foreign chroniclers, Megasthenes mentioned `Indoi’ (India) which included the southern and eastern parts of India, while the geographical unity of India is remarked on by Eratosthenes and Petrocles.  Xuen Xang’s description of India as ranging from `Lanpo’ (Lampaka) to beyond Kamarupa to the boundaries of the south-west barbarians in Yunnan. The geographical and cultural unity of India has been remarked by Abul Fazl, and Babur too, with the boundaries in harmony with those mentioned by Megasthenes and Xuen Xang.

Reverting to Indic literature, starting from the early ADs, the name Bharatavarsha came to signify the whole of the subcontinent.  The Natyasastra, written in the third century AD, or earlier, used this name to denote (almost) the whole of the Indian subcontinent. The Puranic authors described Bharatavarsha as situated to the north of the sea and to the south of the Himalayas.  Puranic verses, (slokas) meant for daily recital, vividly demonstrate cultural unity, by invoking the seven holy rivers which flow through different parts of the country, e.g., Ganga, Yamuna, Godavari, Sarasvati, Narmada, Sindhu and Kaveri, to be present in the water used for a ritualistic practice.  Every Purana text contains a section called Bhuvan Kosh, in which the boundaries of the land called Bharatavarsha are clearly defined and its progeny is denoted by a common name Bharati. A list of all the Janapadas scattered all over the country is provided with the lists of rivers and mountains. A list of “punyasthan” or tirthas, which cover the whole land, are explicitly given in the Puranas as well as Mahabharata.  Vishnupurana asserts that it is only in Bharata that one can attain moksha.  Bhishma Parva gives a long list of kings who loved the land, alongside the description of Bharatavarsha.  The final version of Manusmriti includes the whole of the Bharata in its definition of `Aryavarta’.

Sikhs and Jats made desperate attempts on invaders to free the slaves who were being taken to Persia and Afghanistan.

Thus, it is clear that a sense of nationhood existed among Hindus and India as a whole was considered their nation. This is why during the Muslim rule, the Sikhs, and Jats would, without discriminating about the region of the origin of the slaves within India, make the most desperate attempts on invaders like Nadir Shah and Ahmad Shah Abdali to free the slaves who were being taken to Persia and Afghanistan.  This is also why respectable Rajputs of Awadh would ostracize those who enslaved Indics and sold them to Islamist conquerors and slave merchants. (The Rajput collaborators like the Jaipur royals obviously had a different mindset as pointed out earlier). It has been recorded that in the first quarter of the nineteenth century, the Sikh territories of current North West Pakistan, like Multan and Dera, the  Hindus and Sikhs paid a duty on the import of silk which was half that paid by the Muslim Afghans and the sales tax which was only one fourth.

It was only during the colonial times the concept that India did not exist as a nation before the advent of the British was seeded in accordance with the mission of cultural colonization. Yet, even John Seeley, the English author who wrote that India had no strong nationhood, was forced to concede that, “Now religion seems to me to be the strongest and most important of all the elements which go to constitute nationality, and this element exists in India”.

Thus, the mercantile class, by and large, constituted an exception among the Indics in lacking a sense of nationhood, and many therein collaborated with the British – it is perhaps natural to ponder if the idea of denying India her ancient nationhood occurred to the British after observing the behavior of the mercantile class.

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Courtesy: Myind.net

Click here for Part -I Part-II, Part-III 

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