Islam and Slavery — Page 48
48 become rampant. Religious communities in particular needed this kind of defensive practice for they were always bitterly persecuted by the people who ever stood up to exterminate them by means of the sword. This form of slavery was, therefore, found more or less in all the nations of the earth. . . The system was in vogue even among the Israelites who were descended from the chosen Prophets of God and who, as a nation, had been brought up under the care and guidance of a long chain of Divine Messengers. They practised it in compliance with an injunction of their own law (1) and it continued to be practised even among the early Christians who were in fact an offshoot of the. Israelite people. (2) It also continued in the Christian countries of the west right up to the eighteenth or even the nineteenth century, and in the Christian country of. Abyssinia, which still adheres to the early the early Christian traditions, slavery still exists and that perhaps in a worse form than that found in many other countries. . Similarly, slavery was practised by the ancient Aryan people as well. (3) In fact the Sudras and the other untouchables who are still to be found in India in millions are a sad remnant of the system of slavery that was in vogue in ancient India. (1) Deut. XX. , 13, 14. (2) Paul, VI, 5; Peter, II. , 18. In connection with these references it should be noted that modern editions of the New Testament use the word 'servant' instead of 'slave', but the context clearly shows that it is the slaves that are really meant in the passages in question. (3) Rig Veda 1. 126/1 to 3; Mahbharat, Sabha Prab Adhiai 149; Manu 8/415 and Bharat Varash ka Ithas vol. II, p. 51.