The history of slavery in India is complicated by the presence of
factors which relate to the definition, ideological and religious perceptions,
difficulties in obtaining and interpreting written sources, and perceptions of
political impact of interpretations of written sources.[1]
If current scholarly interpretations of various literary sources are accepted,
then slavery as forced appropriation of labour, skill or sexual gratification
appears to have existed in various forms from the pre-500 BCE period, though
never as a legitimate and generally acceptable widespread practice. Historical
consensus points to an intensification of slavery under India's Islamic
period.[2][3][4][5][6]
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.
Often, claims about slavery in India, and the sources they are based on, need
to be analyzed with special attention to context. Some modern scholars appear to
treat most claims of slavery by Persian or Arabic chroniclers as propaganda or exaggeration for
military and political glorification, whereas similar arguments are not applied
to the textual claims of the epics, the Smriti, or other pre-Islamic Indian texts (Levi admits
the possibility of exaggeration on the part of Muslim chroniclers but accepts
Basham's claims based on Mahabharata without such doubts.[1])
Susan Bayly of Cambridge University noted in her work "Caste, Society and
Politics" that India was never a monolithic caste society [7]
with noted shifting and fluidity of the caste structures in some parts of India,
and its non-existence in others. Irfan Habib notes in his study of the agrarian system of Mughal
India, that in many parts of the country, caste barriers were fluid, and the working classes formed
a type of vast labour pool, from which specializations were formed as and when
needed without consideration of caste.
