Slavery: A History Of Our Inhumanity!
By Talha Masood
The world we live in is an interdependent place. As such, each and every one of us is the owner of its lands and its oceans, its mountains and its deserts. As a result, every person who breathes the same air as we do is not only a brother and a sister inhumanity, but also shares this ownership, and deserves to enjoy the freedom of thought and action, the Liberty to be treated with kindness and courtesy, to be accorded with respect and dignity as worthy men and women of our own kind. However, not so long ago, some of us whose hearts had iced into unfeeling stones, and whose blood had blackened to an ashen cruelty, would practice the buying and selling of our brothers and sisters in the name of slavery. It is to commemorate the loss of life and dignity, of pride and honour which sustained slave trade and it’s despicable realities, and to celebrate its abolishment, that every 23rd of August is globally acknowledged as the International Day for the remembrance of slave trade and how it came to an end.
It is important for us to own the fact that people like ourselves were enslaved merely because of their poverty, there races, casts and creeds, or even simply due to the colour of their skins. For recurrent patterns of a similar kind of enslavement can also be witnessed today in our modern societies. For instance, before the abolishment of slavery the rich and powerful would consider it their right to augment their socio-economic status by purchasing as many slaves as they could. They would treat their human merchandise as it suited their own whims and wishes. Physical and emotional abuse was a norm amongst slave owners while relative treatments of kindness were considered a generosity. Nevertheless, where such an attitude is now frowned upon by all, not to mention that it is illegal and socially unacceptable in most of the societies around the world, there are those amongst us who still belittle human existence by withholding and exploiting the rights of their inferiors.
According to Dawn News, Just this year an eight years old girl Zara, employed as a maid servant, was beaten to death merely because she was guilty of setting free precious parrots. Earlier in 2019, a 10 years old girl experienced severe burn injuries owing to the hot boiling water thrown upon her by her employers. Still before that incident, an additional judge and his wife were arrested for torturing a 10 years old girl Tayiba who lost her life to their brutality. All such cases and many other which remain unreported for one reason or another illustrate that though slavery in form has indeed been abolished, its inhumane attitudes have survived and still plague our societies.
Sadly, if education or grooming were to be considered a solution, we might not have seen this inhumaneness exuding from well-educated and socially respected families. The problem is not a lack of education or awareness. The problem dear reader, is the same pride and arrogance which festered within the hearts of those who had wealth and power in ancient societies and still infect the self-obsessed of today. Indeed it would not be falling short of Mark to believe that today one of the bases of such apathetic and unyielding arrogance is possessing many academic degrees and qualifications without imbibing even a shred of their truest essence, humility.
In essence, humility is the fundamental expression of one’s humanity. Let us safeguard our hearts against an all-consuming pride and arrogance by being humble! Let us realise that if we do not do so, we are crueler than the slave owners of the past! For they followed a social norm while we would be guilty of hypocrisy too!