INTRODUCTION: The Indian Slavery Act of 1843, also known as Act V of 1843, was enacted in British India during the administration of the East India Company. economic activities related to slavery are illegal.
The statute specifies that the sale of any individual as a slave is prohibited and that anyone who buys or sells slaves would be charged with a serious crime under the Indian Penal Code.
An act proclaiming and modifying the law concerning the state of slavery within the East India Company’s possessions. The governor-general of India, Lord Ellen Borough, enacted it in the council. On April 7th, 1843, the legislation was passed. In 1952, the Repealing and Amending Act was passed.
DEFINITION OF ‘SLAVERY‘: A slave is a person who is owned by someone, and slavery is the state of being under someone’s control and forced to labor for someone else. A slave is someone else’s property that they control, buy, or own from the moment they are born.
TEXT OF THE ACT:
1.) No public officer shall in the 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 labor or services of any person on the ground that such person is in a state of slavery.
2.) 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.
3.) No person who may have acquired the 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.
4.) 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.
IMPLEMENTATION AND EFFECT OF THE ACT: Some East India Company officials were against the ordinance, citing Hindu and Muslim customs and claiming that it would be perceived as interfering with established social structures. The Act was passed thanks to evangelical politicians who had led successful abolition movements in the West Indies.
Historians disagree over whether the Act was successful in excluding caste and slavery. The working conditions of tea plantation employees in Tamil Nadu and Assam were compared to those of African and West Indian sugar plantation workers. Despite the Act, tea plantation workers became indentured laborers due to a lack of options, which historian Amalendu Guha described as a new type of slavery.
WHAT IS MODERN SLAVERY?:
- Sex trafficking
- Child sex trafficking
- Forced labour
- Bonded labour or debt bondage
- Domestic servitude
- Forced child labour
- Unlawful recruitment and use of child soldiers.
ENDNOTES: https://artsandculture.google.com/entity/indian-slavery-act-1843/m0h56k96?hl=en
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