The American Confederate Statues and Parallels to India

One country defends monuments of slavery and one is presently trying to tear them down.

Who are the Confederates?

The American civil war was fought between the North and the South over differences between whether or not the national government has the power to prohibit slavery in terroritories that had not yet become states. When Abraham Lincoln became the President in 1860, he had pledged to keep slavery out of the territories, seven “slave states” seceded and formed a new nation, the Confederate States of America. The Lincoln administration and the majority of the Northern people did not consider this secession to be legitimate – and hence, the war occurred.

So in short, the Confederacy stood for slavery and the continued oppression of African-Americans as well as other African people brought over by slave traders. The Confederates were hence those who supported slavery, and many of them were slave traders or slave owners. Scores of statues of confederates as well slave owners of the past had been built predominantly in the Southern states but now, Americans are tearing them down in a symbolic move. Streets and other institutions containing the names of Confederates’ are also being renamed.

Many Indians have taken to social media to express their support for Americans doing this. But there is irony to this, since so many protest when similar moves are made in India.

A slave is defined as a person who is the legal property of another and is forced to obey them. Here’s a fact sheet on slavery in India:

Slavery Count

Muhammad Bin Qasim

Took many captives in Debal (the total number is unrecorded), including 700 women. 75 were sent to Hajjaj while the rest were “distributed amongst his soldiers”
In the attack of Rawar, approximately 100,000 women and children were enslaved.
From 712 to 715, it is estimated that Qasim took 300,000 more slaves.

Caliph Al Mamun

After a war expedition, approximately 27,000 of the remaining men, women and children were enslaved.

Sultan Mahmud

In his attack of King Jaipal in 1001-1002, al-Utbi recorded that 500,000 men, women, and children were taken as slaves.
The next year, another war expedition was launched in Haryana, and 200,000 captives were brought back as slaves to Ghazni. Ferishtah noted that there were so many slaves that Ghazni looked like an Indian city.
Another war expedition in 1019 led to 53,000 being enslaved.

Sultan Ibrahim

Attacks on districts in Punjab in 1079 led to 100,000 slaves being captured and taken back to Ghazni.

Sultan Ghauri

In an attack on Raja Bhim of Gujarat in 1195, 20,000 people were captured as slaves.
In his attack of Kalinjar in 1202, 50,000 men were captured as slaves.

Sultan Nasiruddin Mahmud

In an attack on Multan, ‘several thousand Gukkars of all ages and of each sex’ were taken away as slaves.

Alauddin Khilji

In an attack on Somnath, 20,000 maidens as well as children were taken as slaves
In Chittor in 1303, 30,000 men were massacred and their women enslaved (however, some committed Jauhar)
Khilji was also known to have kept 50,000 slave boys and 70,000 slaves working on buildings.

Firoz Shah Tughlaq

Acquired 180,000 young slave boys for his court

Amir Timur

Timur attacked India and by the time he reached Delhi, he had accumulated over 100,000 slaves.
Timur recorded that during his assault on Delhi, the spoils were so great that every man took 50 to a 100 prisoners. This would put the total number of slaves taken at 1 million.
When Timur later attacked the fortress of Trisarta, each man reportedly took 10 to 20 slaves. This means that the assault yielded 200,000 to 300,000 slaves.
On his way back to Delhi, Timur attacked 4 to 5 other places – however the number of slaves taken is unclear. If it compares to the number taken at Trisarta, that would put the total number of slaves taken during this expedition at approximately 1.2 million.

Akbar

Akbar’s General Abdulla Khan Uzbeg boasted of enslaving and selling 500,000 men and women.
Even Akbar, despite a decree against enslavement, ordered for the women of the slain Rajputs in Chittor (1568) to be enslaved. Some of the women ended up committing jauhar.
It is acknowledged that during Akbar’s reign, “servants and slaves were so numerous that ‘everybody, even of mean fortune, keeps a great family, and is splendidly attended’ ”

Jahangir

In his memoir, Jahangir discusses how helpless parents castrated their children to give to the governor as slaves in place of revenue. He added that ‘this practice has become common’.
Jahangir had sent 200,000 Indian captives to Iran for sale in 1619-1620 itself.
Said Khan Chagtai, a noble of Jangir, had 1200 eunuch slaves alone.

Shah Jahan

During Shah Jahan’s reign, there are multiple accounts of peasants and impoverished citizens selling off their children as slaves in markets as a replacement of tax revenue.

Aurangzeb

In 1659 itself, 22,000 young boys from the city of Golkunda (Hyderabad) were given to rulers and governors, or sold in slave-markets.

Ahmad Shah Abdali of Afghanistan

In the Third Battle of Panipat, some 22,000 women and children of slain Maratha soldiers were driven away as slaves.

Tipu Sultan

Enslaved approximately 7000 people in Travancore

These figures leave out a lot of rulers and the slaves taken by them since the exact number of slaves taken by them is unknown. Even accounting for overlaps in the number of slaves due to overlaps in the time periods, the total number of slaves taken still comes to a whopping 3.4 million people in total. Bear in mind, this is a severe underestimate.

Architecture

The Taj Mahal

The Taj Mahal isn’t nearly as romantic as it is made out to be. It was built over 22 years by over 22,000 slaves.

Construction cost about 71 billion INR (in 2020 terms) and much of this money was extracted from impoverished villagers and shopkeepers in the form of oppressive taxation.

Taj Mahal

The Qutub Minar Complex

The Qutub minar was built in the 12th Century by kings of the Slave Dynasty of Turkish origin. Thousands of slaves were employed in building it, but estimates vary greatly. Alauddin Khilji, who built on the Qutub Minar Complex later also used slaves – with some estimates putting it at 70,000 slaves.

Not to forget that the Qutub Minar complex is also problematic in other ways. At the foot of the Minar lies the Quwaat-ul-Islam Mosque, the first mosque to be built in India. An inscription over its eastern gate reads that it was built with material obtained from demolishing ‘27 Hindu-Jain temples’. Much of the material from these temples was used to build the rectangular open courtyard of the complex, the pillared cloisters, the colonnades as well as the qibla wall.

Qutub Minar

The Red Fort

Shah Jahan struck again. The Red Fort was built by unnumbered slaves over a period of ten years at a cost of 10 million rupees.

Red Fort

Modern Slavery

India also faces modern slavery, whereby 8 million people are involved in bonded labour, child labour, forced marriages, human trafficking, forced begging and others (The Minderoo Foundation). This is a stark decline from the 18.3 million in 2016, but there is still a long way to go.

The British

This entire post doesn’t even account for the millions of people who were made slaves by the British. I’ll write about it in another post.

Conclusion

704 cities, towns and villages in India are still named after the first 6 Mughal emperors – Babur, Humayun, Akbar, Jahangir, Shah Jahan and Aurangzeb. All of them either were slave owners themselves or had close advisors that had taken thousands of slaves. This, in America, is enough to get statues removed and streets and other institutions renamed. Then why is it that in the Indian context, instead of getting cities, towns and villages named after slave-owners renamed, and British relics removed, people defend them?

Bibliography

Confederates

https://www.historynet.com/confederacy

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/magazine/wp/2018/11/28/feature/the-confederacy-was-built-on-slavery-how-can-so-many-southern-whites-still-believe-otherwise/

https://www.battlefields.org/learn/articles/brief-overview-american-civil-war

Slavery Figures

https://archive.org/details/IslamicJihadLegacyOfForcedConversionImperialismSlavery/page/n225/mode/1up?q=slave

https://indianexpress.com/article/explained/the-mughal-legacy-lives-on-251-towns-villages-named-after-akbar-63-aurangabads-2807738/

Taj Mahal

https://www.huffingtonpost.in/rita-banerji/the-awfully-unromantic-ta_b_6589586.html

https://books.google.com.sg/books?id=uMnBDwAAQBAJ&pg=PT30&lpg=PT30&dq=taj+mahal+built+by+slaves&source=bl&ots=bmCeoXd596&sig=ACfU3U2UFTIPhlmbO4FCXjdBVDus9DLTIA&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwic5fKcobjqAhUHQH0KHU9tCRo4FBDoATABegQICRAB#v=onepage&q=taj%20mahal%20built%20by%20slaves&f=false

http://southasia.ucla.edu/culture/architecture/taj-mahal/