India in Africa, Africa in India: Indian Ocean Cosmopolitanisms

312 Pages·2008·6.07 MB·English

by  John C. Hawley

Africa
Asia
Cultural Studies HAwLEy
The Indian Ocean world provides many examples of cultural I
n
flows that belie our understanding of globalization as a recent
Contributors
phenomenon. India in Africa, Africa in India traces the long-
d
Gwyn Campbell standing interaction between these two regions, showing that
these connections have deep historical roots. Their dynamics I
Devarakshanam Govinden a
are not attributable solely to the effects of European colonial-
John C. Hawley ism, modernity, or contemporary globalization—although these Ind Ia In
I
Chapurukha M. Kusimba forces have left their mark. This region has had, and continues n
to have, an internal integrity that touches the lives of its citizens

John McLeod
in their commerce, their cultural exchanges, and their concepts Af r icA

Savita Nair of each other and of themselves in the world. A
f
Pashington Obeng
Combining approaches drawn from history, literature, dance,
r
Rahul C. Oka sociology, gender studies, and religious studies, this collection
i
Thangam Ravindranathan is unique in its recreation of an entire world too seldom con- c afrI ca In
sidered as such. Topics covered include the slave trade, both
A
Anjali Gera Roy premodern and later, that linked Africa and Asia; the history and
,
present situation of Indians in sub-Saharan Africa, descended i ndiA
Dana Rush
a
from indentured laborers who migrated during British colonial
Jaspal Singh
rule, and of Siddis, people of African origin who have lived in f
Gwenda Vander Steene communities in India for centuries; contemporary transnational r
cultural forms such as Bollywood films and bhangra music; and
I
other ways in which India/Indians are imagined in Africa, and vice c
Indian Ocean cosmopolitanisms
versa. The contributors present a wealth of material based on
a
archival and ethnographic research, including much that will be
new to scholars of both regions.
EdItEd by
I
n
John C. Hawley is Professor and Chair of English at Santa Clara JOh n c . haw lEy
University. He is author of Amitav Ghosh: An Introduction and

editor of eleven books, including Encyclopedia of Postcolonial Stud- i
n
ies and (with Revathi Krishnaswamy) The Postcolonial and the
Global. d
i
A
INDIANA
Cover illustration: African-Indian
University Press
(Siddi) baby quilt by Flora
Bloomington & Indianapolis Introse, Northern Karnataka,
http://iupress.indiana.edu India, 2004. Photograph by
1-800-842-6796 Henry John Drewal. INDIANA

predominantly absorbed by wealthy h ouseh olds where females, employed
chiefl y in domestic and sexual serv ices and in entertainment (Miller 2004;
Goody1980: 20–21), enjoyed a lifestyle and a respect often superior to that
of both male slaves and female peasants (Goody 1980: 21, 32; Miller:
2004). There are instances of concubines in the Middle East sending for
family members to join t hem—albeit as n on- slaves (Miers 2005). Simi-
larly, most male slaves worked in sectors of indirect economic impact,
such as domestic ser vice, stewardship, bureaucratic ser vice, soldiering,
and diplomacy. In some cases, the costs of maintaining such “status”
slaves exceeded the benefi ts accruing from their ser vices and in excep-
tional circumstances bankrupted the own er (Boomgaard 2004).
Conventional literature also assumes that violence was universally em-
ployed to extract labor from slaves. In the IOW, harsh working conditions
existed in some places at certain times and could provoke revolt, suicide,
and attempts to curtail reproduction; low birth rates, characteristic of the
Mauritian slave plantations, may have marked even milder slave regimes,
as in the Gulf (Sheriff 2005; Boomgaard 2004; Alpers 2004). However, vio-
lence was a consistent feature of slavery only on the relatively few E ur op e an-
managed plantations where economies of scale made higher levels of coer-
cion profi table. It was comparatively rarely used on “status” slaves—the
majority—while even ordinary slaves represented a capital asset the value of
which was worth maintaining or even enhancing. Indeed, maximum slave
productivity could be achieved only through acknowledging the essential
humanity of slaves (Klein 1993: 11–12; Meillassoux 1991: 9–10).
Freedom versus Slavery: The IOW Context
As indicated above, the concept of “slavery” in the IOW often differed
markedly with New World slavery. Fundamental to the Western tradition
is the contrast between enslavement and freedom: whereas a “free” indi-
vidual enjoyed basic rights of citizenship, choice of occupation and life-
style, and security of person and property, the slave was a chattel of heredi-
tary status, permanently segregated and alienated from non-s laves.
Thus the slave- free dichotomy that characterized New World slave soci-
eties was premised on the notion of the absence or possession of liberty.
However, there was little concept of individual liberty in IOW societies
that rather embraced individuals in social hierarchies wherein each per-
son had an allotted status that carried with it a multiplicity of rights and
obligations, and where statuses w ere fl uid and often overlapped. For exam-
ple, in late eigh teenth- and early nineteenth- century Sulu, banyaga slaves
married, owned property, and performed wide- ranging functions, on the
same terms as n on- slaves.4 Overlapping statuses renders it diffi cult to forge
26 Gwyn Campbell
hard and fast distinctions between types of servitude, or to contrast “slave”
with “free” for, as Anthony Reid underlines, the concept of personal free-
dom can only be pitched against that of slavery when all other forms of
servitude are subsumed into a clearly defi ned category of “slaves” (Reid
1983: 21).
The meaning of IOW systems of slavery becomes clearer if Western no-
tions of a division of society into free and slave, of individual liberty, and of
slaves as property are replaced by a vision of society as a hierarchy of de pen-
den cy in which “slaves” constituted one of a number of servile groups that
performed both productive and nominally unproductive serv ices. It was a
reciprocal system in which obligation implied servitude to an individual
with superior status, to a kin group, or to the crown, in return for protec-
tion (Goody 1980). The highest status fell generally in acephelous societ-
ies to a group of elders and in centralized societies to the sovereign who
theoretically “owned” all of inferior status. This was possibly most visible
with corvée labor imposed on subjects who in most IOW countries were
considered crown “property.” In this sense, it could be argued, corvée fi ts
the concept of “property” performing “compulsory labor” used by some
authors as a defi ning characteristic of slavery (see Watson 1980b: 7).
Moreover, in the world- view of pre-i ndustrial societies, there was no di-
vision between the temporal and the spiritual; the supernatural could
bless or curse human activities and so required respect and appeasement
from mortals. Thus, in most communities, the living and the dead w ere
incorporated into a giant hierarchy of overlapping statuses, each with asso-
ciated rights and obligations, in which the concept of bondage transcended
temporal life. Kings were considered to be imbued with sacred power but
were in turn governed by the ancestors or gods. In Islam, for example, all
Muslims were “slaves” of Allah (see, e.g., Reid 1983: 4; Campbell 1992).
Slavery as a Form of Social Security
Eu ro pe ans often characterized slavery in the IOW as “mild” compared
to New World slavery. The British even described types of slavery in
nineteenth-c entury India as a form of poor relief, saving destitute people
from starvation. Judged by Western concepts of slavery and individual lib-
erty, such notions appear curious if not absurd. Historians have sought to
explain them in part by Eu ro pe an ignorance of what constituted slavery,
and in part by the desire by offi cials to conceal aspects of the slave trade in
which they colluded (Klein 2005; Delaye 200442; Chatterjee 2005; Camp-
bell 2005a, Introduction).
Possibly more important in explaining such attitudes, which w ere some-
times shared by indigenous authorities, w ere pre-i ndustrial patterns of
Slave Trades and the Indian Ocean World 27
human and natural disasters—an ever- present threat in the IOW. Mon-
soons and cyclones frequently brought fl ooding to major r ice- producing
areas from China to India and Madagascar. In addition, Southeast and
East Asia formed a center of volcanism that could wreak both immediate
local destruction and, through cloud- veil- induced lower temperatures,
years of depressed agricultural productivity that affected vast areas of the
globe. Volcanism could sharply reduce precipitation, ruin harvests, and
induce famine. For instance, seven major sulfur- rich volcanic eruptions in
the period 1638–43 contributed to the fi ve worst years of continuous
drought in China (1637–41) and to the collapse of the Ming dynasty in
1644 (Atwell 2001: 31–32, 34–35, 42, 62–64; McNeill 1976: 266). Again,
the “El- Niño–Southern Oscillation” (ENSO) effect, produced every seven
to ten years by changes in the pressure gradient across the Pacifi c Ocean,
often provokes severe droughts throughout the IOW. Moreover, it tends to
be followed in consecutive years by “La Niña,” a cold ENSO that causes
unusually heavy rain in affected regions (Atwell 2001: 39–40). When a
strong ENSO effect coincided with sulfur- rich volcanism, as in 1641, the
effect could be catastrophic (Gudmundson 2002).
The famine and disease which frequently accompanied natural disas-
ters could ind ep end ently have catastrophic consequences. A notable ex-
ample was the Black Death or bubonic plague (Pasteurella pestis). Euro-
centric historiography has focused on the devastation wrought in Eur ope
by the Black Death, but its impact was greater in Asia. The plague fi rst
erupted in epidemic form in China in 1331, spreading along the main
commercial caravan routes of Asia before reaching the Crimea and Eu-
rope in 1346. An estimated 90 per cent of those infected died. While it
killed probably one third of Eur op ea ns in 1346–50, it halved the popula-
tion of China (to 65 million) and Egypt (to an estimated 2 million). The
impact was probably as devastating in centers of population in India and
the Middle East (McNeill 1976: 144–49; Ponting 1991: 228–29; Chaud-
huri 1992: 381–82).
This forms the backdrop against which IOW systems of servile labor
should be considered. In hard years, densely populated monocrop regions,
such as Makassar in Indonesia and areas of South India, exported the des-
titute as slaves (Boomgaard 2004). In China, desperate parents sold pre-
pubescent daughters to anyone who could feed or clothe them (Warren
1994: 80). The trade in children, outright, as redeemable “pawns,” or for
adoption, was frequently a mea sure of last resort during disastrous times,
taken because it might ensure survival for both remaining kin members
and the enslaved child. Indeed, in China and India, the sale of young girls
for “adoption” was commonly viewed as a charitable system. Usually very
little money was involved, and parents trusted that the adoptive family
28 Gwyn Campbell
would care for the girl and fi nd her a suitable spouse (see, e.g., Jaschok and
Miers 1994: 11, 18).
In this context, debt bondage, which most people entered voluntarily as a
credit- securing strategy, often overlapped with slavery. Debt bondage em-
braced a vast range of people in the IOW, from farmers mortgaging future
harvests and potential grooms borrowing a bride price to small traders living
off credit from larger merchants, the ubiquitous rural gambler of South-
east and East Asia, and opium addicts in n ineteenth-c entury China
(Boomgaard 2004; Delaye 2004; Schottenhammer 2004; see also Watson
1980c: 228–36). During catastrophes, people often entered debt bondage or
slavery in return for subsistence as a survival strategy, either voluntarily, as
was the case of many dvija caste members in India from about 500 bce, or
propelled by their kin group (Klein 1993: 11; Patnaik 1990: 25–26). Those
subject to debt bondage could outnumber slaves; they formed possibly the
most numerous social category in Majapahit, in Java, and up to 50 percent
of the total population in central Thailand in the eigh teenth and nineteenth
centuries. D ebt-b ondage servitude was generally taken as paying off interest
on the loan that debtors had contracted, to which was added the cost of their
lodging, food, and clothing. Consequently the debt usually increased, and
servitude could become permanent, even hereditary, at which point there
was little to distinguish debt bondage from slavery (Kim 2004; Reid 1983:
12; for debt bondage from another angle, see Miller 2004).
Here, concepts of “slave” and “free” are of limited analytical utility. For
most of the IOW population, security, food, and shelter, rather than an ab-
stract concept of liberty, were the primary aims. Indeed, “liberty” in the
sense of individual freedom from inherited status and responsibilities
would have effectively destroyed the web of obligations that offered pro-
tection from h uman-m ade and natural dangers (Boomgaard 2004; Miers
2005; Salman 2005). This helps explain the remarkable absence of g roup-
consciousness and of revolt among IOW slaves who generally sought to in-
tegrate into the slave- holding society that provided them with basic suste-
nance and sometimes the chance for an enhanced lifestyle. It also explains
why some slaves who were presented with the opportunity to gain “free-
dom” through manumission or redemption preferred to retain their slave
status (see, e.g., Campbell 1988).
An African- Asian Diaspora?
Most scholars of Africa and the African American Diaspora hold that
Asians of African descent form part of the African Diaspora. This is an im-
plicit assumption of several of the contributors to this volume who speak of
“African Asians” and “African Indians” as the counterparts in Asia of “African
Slave Trades and the Indian Ocean World 29
Americans.” However, rarely do they examine if Asians of African descent
meet the generally agreed criteria for that diaspora, summarized as follows:5
a) D isplacement from an original homeland to two or more peripheral
or foreign regions.
b) Non- assimilation resulting in the formation of a “relatively stable
community in exile” (Wilson 1997: 118) characterized by alienation
and insulation from the dominant society.
c) The development of a diasporic “consciousness” comprising contin-
ued awareness and memory (real or imagined) of a common home-
land and its heritage and the injustice of their removal from it, with
conscious efforts to maintain links with, and contribute to the better-
ment of life in, the homeland and a desire to ultimately return to re-
settle the homeland.
Displacement
African slaves exported to IOW markets certainly underwent disloca-
tion and suffering. Malagasy slaves destined for the Mascarenes com-
monly believed that they would be eaten by whites (Griffi ths 1840: 26; El-
lis 1870: 4),6 while it was commented in 1788 that Mozambican slaves
preferred suicide to being exported (Rea 1976: 117–118). Slave mortality
was high. In addition to suicides, slaves often had no immunity to local
diseases, although the reverse was true for Madagascar, a more isolated
disease-f ree environment than mainland Africa, to which in the nine-
teenth century African slaves brought diseases such as cholera (Lewis
1990: 10; for Madagascar see Campbell 1991). For instance, approximately
25 percent of African male slaves imported into Sri Lanka in 1817 died
within the fi rst year (De Silva Jayasuriya 2002). In some regions, such as
Imperial Madagascar (c. 1790–1895), slaves, as low status “foreigners,”
were also the most suspect in witchcraft cases, consequently suffering
high mortality. Some female slaves decided the prospects for their chil-
dren were so dire that they practiced abortion and infanticide (Hunwick
1978: 22; Lovejoy comment in “Slavery and Gender” n.d.).
However, evidence for a specifi cally “African” victim diaspora is diffi -
cult to maintain in the IOW where “slave” was not synonymous with “Afri-
can,” let alone “Black African,” and where, as importantly, Africans played
a central role in enslaving and selling their own kind, from warrior kings
taking captives in military campaigns to Swahili trader s lave- raiders to par-
ents selling their own children in times of extreme dearth. It made little
sense for slaves to cultivate an attachment to “Africa” and “Africans” if the
latter were responsible for their enslavement and “enforced exile.”
30 Gwyn Campbell
Non- Assimilation: The Slave as “Outsider”
Essentialist scholars argue that Asians of African descent constituted a
cohesive community of Africans “in exile.” Rejected by the locally domi-
nant group and thus alienated from it, they w ere “socially dead”
“outsiders.”
Where strong, hierarchical, and centralized societies enslaved mem-
bers of relatively weak, egalitarian, and decentralized communities, the
term “outsider” might be a pplicable—as in Indian Hindu societies that
forced “tribals” into the shudra slave outcaste (see, e.g., Patnaik 1990: 3),
lowland Southeast Asian and Indochinese peoples who raided “barbaric”
mountain groups, and “piratical” Sulu who enslaved members of coastal
communities in the Indonesian Archipelago and South China Seas
(Boomgaard 2004; Warren 2004; Delaye 2004; Turton 2004; Salman
2005). Slavers generally dispatched the newly enslaved to distant regions
in order to reduce the possibility of escape or of kin fi nding them. Again,
most new slaves in the Middle East w ere “outsiders” because the sharia
stipulated that the only legitimate targets of enslavement were non-
Muslims opposed to Islam—which by the ninth century meant anyone liv-
ing in non- Muslim lands (Sheriff 2005; Miers 2005; Klein 2005).
Some authors argue that increased demand for slaves promoted a
marked differentiation between n on- slaves and the enslaved that ensured
for the latter a permanent status as “outsiders.” Igor Kopytoff and Su-
zanne Miers stress that large complex societies were more likely to insti-
tutionalize inter- generational slave status and slave stigma than simpler
decentralized polities (Kopytoff and Miers 1977: 42). James Watson con-
tends that societies where this became entrenched in rigid law codes
were characterized by “closed” slavery systems wherein the enslaved
formed a hereditary category, legally excluded from the dominant slave-
holding society in which they lived and worked (Watson 1980b). Thus in
India, and South China, among the Nyiuba of Tibet, as in Imperial Mad-
agascar, the outsider status of e x-s laves was institutionalized in structures
that, in theory at least, ensured them a permanent and hereditary “out-
caste” status. The essence of this was not occupation but a ritual distinc-
tion between “purity” and “pollution” that was maintained into the post-
abolition era (Eno 2005: 83–93; Evers 1995: 157–88; Watson 1980b: 10,
1980c: 237–38, 246–47; Harris 1971: 116–17, esp. n. 4). In Madagascar,
slaves w ere termed “mainty” (“black”) and “maloto” (“impure”) as op-
posed to the “fotsy” (“white” and “pure”) n on-s lave (Campbell 2005c; see
also Evers 1996). In both India and Madagascar, ritually impure tasks
were conferred on members of the slave caste, with whom much social
contact, including sexual relations, was taboo for n on-s laves (Patnaik
Slave Trades and the Indian Ocean World 31
1990: 4; Klein 1993: 14). Characteristically, it is asserted, slaves in such
“closed” systems were treated worse than non- slaves, and coercion was
applied to all aspects of their work (Kopytoff and Miers 1977: 14–16, 51;
Klein 1993: 4–5, 11; Reid 1983: 12). Caste slavery of this sort, suggests Su-
zanne Miers, should be included in the category of “collective slavery”
(Miers 2005).
Again, in China, not only slaves, but all females, w ere “outsiders” be-
cause they w ere excluded from the patriarchal structure of owne rship,
power, and religion. The Chinese form of marriage could be viewed as in-
stitutionalized servitude for wives, while daughters, concubines, and sec-
ondary wives w ere considered and treated as expendable “outsiders” who
could be sold when times were bad. Certainly, as elsewhere in the IOW,
the slave trade in China was predominantly in young females (Watson
1980c: 227–28; Jaschok and Miers 1994: 10).
Sometimes, however, it was diffi cult to classify the enslaved as “outsid-
ers.” First, not only were many enslaved within their home societies as a
result of indebtedness, but slave raiding and kidnapping were often con-
ducted against neighbors of the same linguistic and cultural community.
This was evident in the Philippines, Indonesia, Madagascar, and even in
Arabia and the Persian Gulf region into the twentieth century (see, e.g.,
Sheriff 2005; Salman 2005), while Eu ro pe ans and frequently neighboring
peoples were unable to differentiate between slaves and owne rs in some
African communities (Klein 1993: 13; Kopytoff and Miers 1977: 5).
Moreover, slaves in the IOW rarely formed a cohesive social group or
slave class. Those exported to IOW markets were usually shipped in small
groups, supplementary to other commodities, and w ere dispersed through-
out a wide variety of both indigenous and Eu ro pe an slave- owning contexts,
from the Middle East and Persian Gulf to South Asia, the Indian Ocean is-
lands, Southeast Asia, and the Far East (Hunwick 1978: 31; Vérin 1999;
Van Goor 1998: 196; Chakravarti 1997: 81, 85; Boomgaard 2004; De Silva
Jayasuriya 2002; Bhargava 1990: 30). In addition, while the enslaved com-
prised between 20 and 30 percent of the population of many IOW societies
(rising to 50 percent and over in Indonesian ports), they performed a large
variety of functions, and as on the few Eu ro pe an plantations which, excep-
tionally in the IOW, possessed large concentrated slave populations, they
were in most cases of many different ethnic and cultural origins and sta-
tuses (Boomgaard 2004; Kim 2004; Kopytoff and Miers 1977: 60–61; Reid
1983: 12, 29; Campbell 1988: 474–75; R. Allen forthcoming).
Again, the “outsider” status of slaves was undermined by the often open
disregard in the IOW for social barriers separating the enslaved and slave
own ers who generally developed close working relations with their slaves.
Non- elite farmers and craftsmen often labored alongside their slaves. Most
32 Gwyn Campbell
slaves, however, were employed in non- agricultural pursuits, many in elite
house holds where some, notably child and young female slaves, had inti-
mate relations with their owne rs forbidden to n on-k insmen. Terms for
slaves were frequently cognates of those used for “children,” “foster chil-
dren,” or “nephews” and “nieces” (Schottenhammer 2004; Kim 2004;
Klein 1993: 8; Reid 1983: 9). In most African societies, it was considered
“unseemly” to sell second- generation slaves as they possessed local kinship
ties, sometimes with non- slave lineage groups (Kopytoff and Miers 1977:
35). In societies with slave castes, rules governing relations between slaves
and non- slaves were sometimes openly ignored. Thus some female slave
owne rs in Imperial Madagascar broke caste rules with impunity and took
male slaves as their sexual partners (Poirier 1942–43: 100, n. 1), while in
Korea it was not exceptional for daughters or wives of slave owne rs to sleep
with male slaves (Kim 2004).
Indeed, forms of slavery and the relationship of the “slave” to the “free”
populations in the IOW were everywhere more complex than the essen-
tialist view permits. The many terms Eu ro pe ans translated as “slave” from
languages indigenous to the IOW have a range of meanings that changed
according to time and locality. They thus refl ected not one but a number
of different servile statuses, most of which enjoyed some rights and prop-
erty (Boomgaard 2004; Worden 2005). In w et- rice economies, for exam-
ple, own ers were often expected to provide their male slaves with a bride,
whereas peasants w ere frequently incapable of raising a bride price or be-
came indebted in doing so (Reid 1983: 8–9). Even in Korea and China,
where the most extreme systems of hereditary slavery w ere practiced,
slaves possessed a legal status and rights. They were immune from state
corvées, and their marriages were in general respected. Such rights, it
could be argued, meant that they w ere not true outsiders, as they had en-
tered into the dominant society’s system of reciprocity (Schottenhammer
2004; Kim 2004; see also Salman 2005).
Moreover, although IOW societies were hierarchically ordered, they
rarely demonstrated a rigid and permanent dichotomy between superior
and servile populations. They w ere characterized by considerable social
mobility in which individuals of servile status could sometimes accede to
a n on-s ervile status, and vice versa. In the Middle East and Muslim India
there are a number of documented examples of slaves acceding to posi-
tions of great pol itic al power and wealth. In Egypt and India, some indi-
vidual slaves transformed themselves into rulers (Harris 1971: 39–40;
Goody 1980: 29; Hunwick 1978: 27, 29–32; Hardy 1999; Bosworth 1999;
Pellat 1999c; Ayalon 1999; Kidwai 1990: 92; Petry 1998; Chauhan 1995).
In exceptional times, such as nineteenth- century Madagascar, there even
occurred complete reversals of hierarchy that permitted of slave status to
Slave Trades and the Indian Ocean World 33