गुलाम बनाना, उनका व्यापार करना (खरीद-फरोख्त) एवं उनके साथ पशुओं से भी निकृष्ट व्यवहार करना - शायद मानव इतिहास के सबसे घृणित अध्याय है। भारत भी बहुत लम्बी अवधि तक गुलामी के अभिशाप से ग्रसित रहा है। यद्यपि अब भारत में ऊपरी तौर पर (सौर संवैधानिक रूप से) गुलामी समाप्त हो गयी है, किन्तु गुलामी के दूरगामी प्रभाव अब भी मौजूद हैं। स्वाभिमान की कमी; आत्मविश्वास की कमी; हर बात के लिये दूसरों का मुँह ताकना; अपनी भाषा, वेष, खान-पान आदि के उपयोग में संकोच आदि गुलामी की ही उपज हैं।
यहाँ मैने गुलामी के बारे में कुछ महान चिन्तकों के विचार संकलित करने का प्रयास किया है। शायद इनकी अच्छी समझ से ही इनको जड़-मूल से उखाड़ने में मदद मिलेगी।
( समयपाकर मैं इनका हिन्दी रूपान्तर भी प्रस्तुत करूँगा )
1) The moment the slave resolves that he will no longer be a slave, his fetters fall. Freedom and slavery are mental states.”
-- Mahatma Gandhi quotes (Indian Philosopher, internationally esteemed for his doctrine of nonviolent protest, 1869-1948)
2) Broken bones can set, open wounds can heal, and bruises can fade. But the mental scars of slavery linger far longer.
-- Unknown
3) Slaves lose everything in their chains, even the desire of escaping from them.
-- Jean Jacques Rousseau (1712-1778) Swiss political philosopher and essayist.
4) Corrupted freemen are the worst of slaves.
-- David Garrick, Prologue to Edward Moore's Gamesters
5) The genius of any slave system is found in the dynamics which isolate slaves from each other, obscure the reality of a common condition, and make united rebellion against the oppressor inconceivable.
-- Dworkin, Andrea |
6) There is no slavery but ignorance.
-- Robert G Ingersoll
7) Slavery is the parent of ignorance, and ignorance begets a whole brood of follies and vices; and every one of these is inevitably hostile to literary culture.
-- Hinton Rowan Helper
8) The most fatal blow to progress is slavery of the intellect. The most sacred right of humanity is the right to think, and next to the right to think is the right to express that thought without fear.
-- Helen H. Gardner quotes
9) But this is slavery, not to speak one’s thought.
10) Enslave a man and you destroy his ambition, his enterprise, his capacity. In the constitution of human nature, the desire of bettering one's condition is the mainspring of effort. The first touch of slavery snaps this spring.
-- Horace Mann
11) Talk about slavery! It is not the peculiar institution of the South. It exists wherever men are bought and sold, wherever a man allows himself to be made a mere thing or a tool, and surrenders his inalienable rights of reason and conscience. Indeed, this slavery is more complete than that which enslaves the body alone... I never yet met with, or heard of, a judge who was not a slave of this kind, and so the finest and most unfailing weapon of injustice. He fetches a slightly higher price than the black men only because he is a more valuable slave.
-- Thoreau, Henry David
12) Some slaves are scoured to their work by whips, others by their restlessness and ambition.
-- Ruskin, John
13) Excessive liberty leads both nations and individuals into excessive slavery.
[Lat., Nimia libertas et populis et privatis in nimiam servitutem cadit.]
-- Cicero (Marcus Tullius Cicero) (often called "Tully" for short), De Republica (I, 44)
14) Although volume upon volume is written to prove slavery a very good thing, we never hear of the man who wishes to take the good of it by being a slave himself.
-- Abraham Lincoln
15) Whenever I hear anyone arguing for slavery, I feel a strong impulse to see it tried on him personally.
-- Lincoln, Abraham
16) The art of being a slave is to rule one's master.
-- Diogenes of Sinope
17) Good kings are slaves, and their people are free.
-- Marie Leszczynska (a/k/a Maria Karolina Leszczynska) (Leszcsinski)
18) No pope ever condemned slavery.
-- Joseph McCabe