Today I was going through the history of slavery in India on wikipedia and the following line caught my attention- " Historical consensus points to an intensification of slavery under India's Islamic period. For instance, K. S. Lal discussed in his work "Muslim Slave System in Medieval India" the import of African slaves to India by Muslims through the Middle East, a trade never undertaken by India's indigenous religions due to limited contact with Africa." But if we have a close look then we will understand that this line is althogh a simple fact but distorted very much, in fact so distorted that whole meaning is lost. It is well established fact that India was having historical contacts, when richest nations of today's world were not even born and did not know that there is something called "Nation", India was trading with Africa as well as Roman empire and developed civilizations of the middle east. Hence real reason of why India did not indulged in the practice of slavery was not absence of contacts with Africa but because of humanity of Indian civilization. India had colonies much before the modern nations of Europe but instead of degrading the culture of our colonies we civilized them Java, Sumatra (Indochina) are examples of that, we did not destroyed the civilizations like Europeans destroyed civilizations and enslaved the people.
Yes there is a dark line in the Indian history as well and we are still paying for that. This dark line is caste system which intensified in later vedic period and attained its present form after we were invaded by Arabs and others from central asia. This caste system handicapped our society and we have to accept the unilateral ideas and had to forgo the freedom of thought that was central to this civilization and "Shashtrarth (constructive debate on Philosophies)" and rigid ideas of religions of single rigid books. It stopped progress of the society and we became weaker and weaker and were conquered by outsiders.
Second part of the quoted line is true, slavery was intensified during the muslim era as they brought this tradition from feudal and tribal society of Arabian region. It was very well established there and was bound to come with barbarians who were united by Mohammad in a good fighting force for the advent of Islam.
While we in India are proud of bravery of our soldiers and leaders these new people are more proud of their jackal like cunningness and their barbarian ways. While reading the "Battle of Trenches (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_the_Trench)" we understand how deeply it was in the foundation of new order. I understand saying this some people may blame me for playing the part of being holier than thou but the fact is bravery and honesty were regarded to be good virtues in all the societies and we practiced them and lost many battles because of not being cunning. In fact many of the developed societies have lost everything being virtuous. I admire our Chinese neighbor in understanding these virtues and having clearcut guidelines as where to use and where not to use cunningness. Developed societies of ancient Americas were destroyed by barbarians from Europe armed with better destruction power.Now when these societies are not there to defend themselves many Europeans blame them of human sacrifices (and these are the same Europeans where in the same period Church burned many innocent people on stakes for being witches).
Sorry I got diverted from original point of slavery........in the end only thing that I have to say is that barbarian practice is sure to follow barbarians thats why slavery got intensified (in fact started) after the invasion of the barbarians from Arabia united by Mohammad.
