Is there a reason why nobody seems to talk about slavery in the British Empire post 1833? Even the English wikipedia article on the “Slavery Abolition Act 1833” doesn’t mention any slavery on-going in the British Empire past 1833, but if you go to the “Slavery in Africa” article it mentions all sorts of British colonies that still had slavery up until the 1950’s.
So my question is, why all the hub-bub about the SAA 1833 act when in reality slavery continued in British Indian and it’s African colonies for a century afterwards? And why exactly was it allowed to continue despite the SAA 1833 act? How exactly could a British Crown Colony continue to have slavery be legal in its country despite the fact the British Empire supposedly eradicated it?
The broad answer to your question is that Britain still has a blind spot with regard to its imperial history and prefers to look on the “nice” bits rather than the ugly bits. This is weak, but as it’s the default human response it will take a considerably stronger political will to e.g. change curriculums, re-evaluate institutional histories etc. than is currently available before it changes. There *is *a growing movement to look more critically at what Empire actually meant both for Britain and for the colonies, but there’s also a lot of pushback. See for example the controversy over theologian Professor Nigel Biggar’s Ethics and Empire project.
In terms of the specific question about slavery continuing in India, this was at first because the 1833 Act did not apply to regions governed by the East India Company* as it was not part of the state. It was nationalised following the Mutiny in 1858, but - somehow! - the anti-slavery legislation was not updated.
*Let’s take a moment to remember how utterly insane the EIC seems now - a private company with its own army ruling a foreign country for profit.
The practical answer is that in order to successfully subjugate people and maintain an empire, you have to allow a modicum of self rule and you do not want to create unnecessary squabbles. As long as the British Empire is getting the financial benefits from a colony, and the people are not in rebellion, whatever else they do there is given a wink and a nod because you have this other part of the empire over here where you are not getting the financial benefit and that takes priority. The Romans were excellent at this.
And remember, this is the 1800s. You didn’t have Twitter, Facebook, or even television broadcasting the horrors of slavery back to London forcing the powers that be to Do Something. You shut up the high minded (although absolutely right thinking) people by de jure banning slavery and you keep the slavers happy by allowing it to continue on the DL.