Thread by @IndicHistory

Since yesterday's thread on Indian slave labour in Samarkand has generated interest, here is a #thread on slavery in India.

Image: slave market in Yemen, 13th century

Slavery was common in Europe since antiquity. At one point in time 25% of the population of ancient Italy was enslaved. Later, slavery was endorsed by Christianity & by Islam too. India OTOH was ignorant of slavery until the Islamic Invasion in 7th century.

Megasthenes wrote that slavery was banned in India. Many historians have tried to establish the existence of slavery in ancient India but failed so because there is no evidence to support that claim. They usually clutch to the word Dasa & translate it as slave. However +

there are conflicting accounts of people identified as Dasas in Vedas & later texts. There is ref of Dasas being wealthy & giving away donations. The attempt by some historians to find evidence of slavery is another kind of slavery we often see in academia. Slavery of the west.

Now coming to the early Medieval times when people of India were, for the first time in their history, exposed to the heinous act of slavery. Andre Wink (Al Hind, V I, 2002) mentions how 1/5 of the slaves were sent to the Caliph after the conquest of Sindh.

The estimates vary between 20,000 - 60,000. These numbers may be exaggerated but there is no denying that slaves were captured after the war. The Arabs not only took men as slaves, but women & children too were not spared.

The women mostly ended up as concubines to the soldiers or sold in the slave market.

Since the earliest Islamic invasion of India, the invaders were not able to establish territories & were pushed back by the frontier rulers of India. This led to large scale export of slaves.

The invaders would take slaves & export them to the markets in West Asia. This continued through centuries, well into the Mughal rule. Indian slaves were marched across the Thar or over the Hindukush to be sold in cities like Baghdad, Damascus, Samarkand...

After the establishment of the Sultanate State, Slaves were also sold within India. The expansion of the Sultanate through war resulted in a large scale slave taking. Such was the extent of slavery that there was an over supply of slaves in the Indian market.

Ziauddin Barani has recorded the prices of slaves in the markets, set by Khilji. A female slave for domestic work costed b/w 5-12 tankas while a third grade war horse costed 60-70 tankas. This shows the brutal extent of slave taking by the invading armies.

Slaves were so cheap in Del, slave traders who followed the invading armies took them outside India to be sold at a premium. Ibn Batuta compares the Hindukush mountain literally as the slayer of Hindus, since so many perished crossing it amidst snow & lack of protective clothing

Indian slaves were at times traded as far away as the Byzantine Empire. It was not just the slave traders who benefitted from selling Hindu slaves in international markets. According to Fawa'idul Fawad: Conversation of Nizamuddin of Delhi, another Sufi, advised a dervish to sell

the infidel slaves in the market of Ghazni for higher profit. Nizamuddin recounts it as an anecdote in the book. By 14th C Lahore, Kabul, Ghazni, Balkh & Bokhara became established markets for Indian slaves. An entire industry of slave evaluators & auctioneers came into being.

At this point a barter of Indian slaves for war horses was common. Hence the slave markets in Central Asian cities. Eventually as the hold of Sultanate & later the Mughals got strong in India, they banned export of slaves.

Some historians credit the Mughals for abolishing slavery. But what they don't tell us is that they abolished only the export/barter of slaves for horses. Slavery within India was still legal. Export of slaves continued to be banned under Aurangzeb.

There was a small import of slaves into India during the Sultanate era. These were from Turkey & Central Asia. These were also the slaves who at times climbed the ladder of success & reached higher positions in the army.

What started in the 7th Century as a brutal campaign of taking men, women & children to be sold off as slaves, sometimes for less than an ox, was finally abolished through The Indian Slavery Act, in 1843.

Thank you all for showing interest in Indian history. If you like to know more about India's ancient history, you might want to check out my book Essays on Indic History on Amazon: tinyurl.com/y5romtne