Hindu Manners, Customs and Ceremonies - DUBOIS, Abbé Hindu Manners, Customs and Ceremonies, Dubois | Page 98

58
HUMANE TREATMENT OF SLAVES
who are always remarkably submissive to him. Some
land-owners possess over a hundred of them. They treat
them usually in the most humane manner. They give
them only such work as their age or strength permits
feed them on the same rice that they themselves eat give
them in marriage when they come of age and every year
provide them with clothing, four or five yards of cloth for
the women and a coarse woollen blanket for the men.
In Malabar it is only the Pariahs who are thus con-
demned to perpetual slavery but then there are no free
men amongst them. All are born slaves from generation
to generation.
They have not even a right to buy their
own freedom and if they wish to secure their indepen-
dence they can only do so by escaping secretly from the
country. All the same, I have not heard that they often
They are accustomed from father
resort to this extremity.
they are kindly treated
to son to this state of servitude
by their masters they eat the same food as they do
they are never forced to do tasks beyond their strength
and thus they have no notion of what freedom or inde-
pendence means, and are happily resigned to their lot.
They look upon their master as their father, and consider
themselves to belong to his family. As a matter of fact,
their physical condition, which is the only thing that appeals
to their senses, is much better than that of their brethren
who are free. At any rate, the Pariah slave of Malabar is
certain of a living, the supreme requirement of nature,
whereas the free Pariah of other provinces lives for half
his time in actual want of the meanest subsistence, and is
often exposed to death from starvation l
It is indeed a piteous sight, the abject and half-starved
condition in which this wretched caste, the most numerous
It is true that amongst
of all, drags out its existence.
The slaves spoken of here are not Pariahs but Cherumars, who claim
From 1792 the East
to be somewhat superior in rank to the Pariahs.
India Company steadily endeavoured to emancipate the Cherumars. In
;
;
;
;
;
;
;
;
;
.
1
1843 an Emancipation Act was passed, but it was explained to the
Cherumars that it was their interest, as well as their duty, to remain
with their masters if treated kindly.
Sections 370, 371, &c. of the
Indian Penal Code,' writes Mr. Logan in his Malabar Manual, 'which
came into force on Jan. 1, 1862, dealt the real final blow at slavery in
India.'
Ed.
'