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Voices of the Sidis: Indians of African Descent

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Knowledge and the Indian Ocean

Part of the book series: Palgrave Series in Indian Ocean World Studies ((IOWS))

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Abstract

As an outcome of late slave trade of the Indian Ocean, displaced Africans living in Gujarat lacked a coherent identity. They gathered around the shrine of Abyssinian saint Bava Gor and forged a new identity as mystics and healers, thus reconstructing their lives as “fakir” in their adopted home. This paper mentions the ethnographic work done at the Bava Gor shrine and presented in my documentary film entitled “Voices of the Sidis: The Tradition of Fakirs” (2011). In the film, two older Sidis “fakirs,” interrogate the significance of this tradition for the younger generation. In this paper, I also discuss my own connection to Sidis through my Parsi family who have been devotees of Sidi saints Bava Gor and Mai Mishra in Bombay since the 1950s.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    The nangas is not played by Sidis today.

  2. 2.

    28-minutes documentary film , produced in 2011 (Shroff 2011a).

  3. 3.

    For more on Africans in positions of power see Oka and Kusimba (2008), Basu (2001).

  4. 4.

    Personal communication with Farida Al Mubrik (Sidi community organizer and founder of Sidi Goma Al Mubrik Charitable Trust), 10 August 2016.

    Though Sidis are not counted separately in the census of India, in some regions of Gujarat and Karnataka, Sidis are counted among Scheduled Tribes.

  5. 5.

    The Sidi fakir organisation was “referred to as a Sufi path (tariqua)” (Basu 2004, p. 63).

  6. 6.

    “dhammal” or “dammal” is derived from dam or breath in the Indo-Islamic Sufi tradition (Basu 2008, p. 310).

  7. 7.

    For African origin of malunga , see Catlin-Jairazbhoy (2004, pp. 187–189).

  8. 8.

    I conducted all interviews with Sidis in the Gujarati or Hindi language. Sometimes, Sidis respond in Gujarati and Hindi. The translations from Gujarati or Hindi to English, are taken from the subtitles of my film Voices of the Sidis: The Tradition of Fakirs.

  9. 9.

    For more on the significance of poetry and music and an uderstanding of the Rifa’I tariqua see Melinda Krokus (2014) and Peter Van Der Veer (1992).

  10. 10.

    Zikr in Islamic practice is chanting the names of God. Sidis in Gujarat use the word jikkar for their special songs devoted to Bava Gor , Mai Mishra and the saints that are sung during the urs celebration of Bava Gor .

  11. 11.

    garba is also a circle dance performed in Gujarat during the Navratri festival .

  12. 12.

    Urs is the annual day to honour Bava Gor in the Islamic calendar month of Rajjab. The death anniversary of Bava Gor is called urs which in Arabic means “marriage.” Basu explains that the saint ’s death is perceived as a “new stage of saintly existence. The relationship between saint and God is often expressed in the idiom of a bride longing for her lover” (Basu 1993, p. 291). For details on the celebrations of the urs, see Basu (1993), Shroff (2004b).

  13. 13.

    In 2004 Ethnomusicologist Amy Catlin-Jairazbhoy hosted a malunga project to revive the playing of the malunga among Sidis of Gujarat. The project is documented in her DVD The Sidi Malunga Project (Apsara Media 2004).

  14. 14.

    Parsis are Indians of Persian descent who migrated from Persia around the seventh or tenth century—the exaact date of migration is contested by historians of the community . For more on Parsis, see Shroff (2004b, 2008). Parsis are also called Zoroastrians defined thus by their religion Zoroastrianism .

  15. 15.

    For a detailed description of the ceremony in honour of Mai Mishra called mai na ghat, see Shroff (2013).

  16. 16.

    I have written in detail about the spirit medium of Bava Gor , Makbul Bava who as mujavar or caretaker of the Parsi chilla of Bava Gor in Mumbai , brought Bava Gor ’s healing legacy into my parents’ lives. See Shroff (2004a, b, 2008).

  17. 17.

    After the urs of Bava Gor and the ghat ceremony of Mai Mishra is held in Ratanpur at the original shrine of Bava Gor in the month of Rajjab, the Parsis celebrate both ceremonies at their chilla in Bombay . Parsis refers to the ceremony of Bava Gor as sandal, which is performed a bit differently than the Sidi celebration of the urs in Ratanpur . However, for both ceremonies, Sidis are invited by Parsis, from Ratanpur to Bombay to perform their ceremonial dance—dhammal. For more on the ghat ceremony, see Shroff (2013).

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Acknowledgements

I wish to thank Hasmukh Shah and Sara Keller for kindly inviting me to the DIN conference on the Sea and Knowledge, in Bharuch, in December 2016, at which a short version of this paper was presented.

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  1. Asian American Studies: Department of Asian American Studies, University of California, Irvine, CA, USA

    Beheroze Shroff

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  1. Orient et Méditerranée, Paris, France

    Sara Keller

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Shroff, B. (2019). Voices of the Sidis: Indians of African Descent. In: Keller, S. (eds) Knowledge and the Indian Ocean. Palgrave Series in Indian Ocean World Studies. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-96839-1_12

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