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The Indian Slavery Act, 1843, also known as Act V of 1843, was an act passed in
British India The provinces of India, earlier presidencies of British India and still earlier, presidency towns, were the administrative divisions of British governance on the Indian subcontinent. Collectively, they have been called British India. In one ...
under East India Company rule, which outlawed many economic transactions associated with slavery. The act states how the sale of any person as a slave was banned, and anyone buying or selling slaves would be booked under the Indian Penal Code with an offence carrying strict punishment.


Implementation and effect

Some East India Company officials opposed the act, citing Hindu and Muslim customs and maintaining the fact that the act would be seen as interference in traditional social structures. Evangelical politicians who had led successful slavery abolition campaigns in the
West Indies The West Indies is a subregion of North America, surrounded by the North Atlantic Ocean and the Caribbean Sea that includes 13 independent island countries and 18 dependencies and other territories in three major archipelagos: the Greate ...
prevailed and the Act was implemented. Historians are divided on whether the Act was able to exclude caste and slavery. The condition of workers in tea plantations in Tamil Nadu and Assam were compared to that of African, West Indian counterparts who worked in sugar plantations. Lack of alternatives meant tea plantation workers had become indentured labourers despite the Act, which historian Amalendu Guha maintained was a new form of slavery. A 1996 Human Rights Watch report refers to Manjari Dingwaney's book, ''Unredeemed Promises: The Law and Servitude'', and states -
Various forms of debt bondage co-existed with formal slavery, and while the British abolished slavery legislatively through the Anti-Slavery Act of 1843, large numbers of former slaves traded their status for that of perpetually bonded servitude. This was in part due to the fact that the British did not abolish debt-bondage; instead, they regulated it.


Text

# No public officer shall in execution of any decree or order of Court, or for the enforcement of any demand of rent or revenue, sell or cause to be sold any person, or the right to the compulsory labour or services of any person on the ground that such person is in a state of slavery. # No rights arising out of an alleged property in the person and services of another as a slave shall be enforced by any Civil or Criminal Court or Magistrate within the territories of the East India Company. # No person who may have acquired property by his own industry, or by the exercise of any art, calling or profession, or by inheritance, assignment, gift or bequest, shall be dispossessed of such property or prevented from taking possession thereof on the ground that such person or that the person from whom the property may have been derived was a slave. # Any act which would be a penal offence if done to a free man shall be equally an offence if done to any person on the pretext of his being in a condition of slavery.


See also

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Abolition of slavery timeline The abolition of slavery occurred at different times in different countries. It frequently occurred sequentially in more than one stage – for example, as abolition of the trade in slaves in a specific country, and then as abolition of slavery ...
*
Indian indenture system The Indian indenture system was a system of indentured servitude, by which more than one million Indians were transported to labour in European colonies, as a substitute for slave labor, following the abolition of the trade in the early 19th c ...
*
Slavery Abolition Act 1833 The Slavery Abolition Act 1833 (3 & 4 Will. IV c. 73) was an Act of the Parliament of the United Kingdom which provided for the gradual abolition of slavery in most parts of the British Empire. It was passed by Earl Grey's reforming administrat ...
*
Slavery in India The early history of slavery in the Indian subcontinent is contested because it depends on the translations of terms such as ''dasa'' and ''dasyu''. Greek writer Megasthenes in his work Indika, while describing the Maurya Empire states that sla ...


References


Further reading

* Allen, Richard B. (2012) "European Slave Trading, Abolitionism, and “New Systems Of Slavery” in the Indian Ocean." ''PORTAL Journal of Multidisciplinary International Studies'' 9.1 (2012
online
* Bric, Maurice J. (2016) "Debating empire and slavery: Ireland and British India, 1820–1845." ''Slavery & Abolition'' 37.3 (2016): 561–577. * Hjejle, Benedicte. (1967) "Slavery and agricultural bondage in South India in the nineteenth century." Scandinavian Economic History Review 15.1-2 (1967): 71–126
online
* Leonard, Zak. (2020) "‘A Blot on English Justice’: India reformism and the rhetoric of virtual slavery." ''Modern Asian Studies'' 1-46
online
* {{cite book , last=Major , first=A. , title=Slavery, Abolitionism and Empire in India, 1772–1843 , publisher=Liverpool University Press , series=Liverpool Studies in International Slavery LUP , year=2012 , isbn=978-1-78138-903-4 , url=https://archive.org/details/slaveryabolition00majo, url-access=registration * Scarr, D. (1998) '' Slaving and Slavery in the Indian Ocean''. Macmillan, London. 1843 in British India 1843 in British law 1843 in India Legislation in British India Slavery in India Slavery in the British Empire Slavery legislation Social history of India