Abstract
Although primary focus on the African diaspora has been placed on the slave trade, one should remember that Africans traded voluntarily throughout much of the world long before the slave trade existed. In ancient times they traveled as merchants and sailors, many of whom settled in Europe, the Middle East, and Asia. Some came as soldiers and remained permanently.1
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Notes
Joseph Harris, “The Dynamics of the Global African Diaspora,” in The African Diaspora, eds. Alusine Jalloh and Stephen E. Maizlish (College Station, TX: Texas A&M Press, 1996), 9.
Shihan de Silva Jayasuria and Richard Pankhurst, eds., The African Diaspora in the Indian Ocean (Trenton, NJ: Africa World Press, 2003), 7; Richard Pankhurst, “The Ethiopian Diaspora to India: The Role of Habshis and Sidis from Medieval Times to the End of the Eighteenth Century,” in The African Diaspora in the Indian Ocean, eds. Shihan de Silva Jayasuria and Richard Pankhurst (Trenton, NJ: Africa World Press, 2003), 190.
Joseph Harris, “The Dynamics of the Global African Diaspora,” in The African Diaspora, eds. Alusine Jalloh and Stephen E. Maizlish (College Station, TX: Texas A&M Press, 1996), 7–21.
Richard M. Eaton, “Introduction,” in Slavery and South Asian History, eds. Indrani Chatterjee and Richard M. Eaton (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 2006), 6.
Joseph Harris, The African Presence in Asia: Consequences of the East African Slave Trade (Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 1971), xiii.
Michael A. Gomez, Reversing Sail: A History of the African Diaspora (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2005), 35–40; Eve Troutt Powell, A Different Shade of Colonialism: Egypt, Great Britain and the Mastery of the Sudan (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2003), 51–120; John Hunwick and Eve Troutt Powell, The African Diaspora in the Mediterranean Lands of Islam (Princeton, NJ: Markus Wiener, 2002).
R. R. S. Chauhan, Africans in India: From Slavery to Royalty (New Delhi: Asian Publication Services, 1995.).
Eaton, “Rise and Fall,” 128–29; see also Helene Basu, “Africans in India—Past and Present”, Internationales Asienforum 32, nos. 3–4 (2001): 254.
For a survey of studies on the history of Sidis in India, see Amy Catlin-Jairazbhoy and Edward Alpers, eds., Sidis and Scholars: Essays on Africans in India (New Delhi: Rainbow, 2004), 1–25.
Dadi Rustomji Banaji, Bombay and the Sidis (Bombay: Macmillan, 1938). In the 1960s, Richard Pankhurst, a scholar of Ethiopian history, gave some attention to Sidis, and his work needs mention. Richard Pankhurst, “The Habshis of India,” in An Introduction to the Economic History of Ethiopia (London: Lalibela House, 1961), 409–22.
T. C. Palakshappa, The Siddhis of North Kanara (New Delhi: Sterling, 1976).
Shanti Sadiq Ali, The African Dispersal in the Deccan: From Medieval to Modern Times (New Delhi: Orient Longman, 1996).
T. B. Naik and G. P. Pandya, The Sidis of Gujarat: A Socio-Economic Study and a Development Plan (Ahmedabad: Tribal Research and Training Institute Gujarat Vidyapith, 1993); Jayanti K. Patel, “African Settlements in Gujarat,” in Minorities on India’s West Coast: History and Society, ed. Anirudha Gupta (New Delhi: Kalinga, 1991), 17–24; Cyprian Lobo, Siddis in Karnataka (Bangalore: Centre for Non-Formal and Continuing Education, 1984).
Helene Basu, “The Sidi and the Cult of Bava Gor in Gujarat,” Journal of Indian Anthropology 28 (1993): 289–300; “Hierarchy and Emotion: Love, Joy and Sorrow in a Cult of Black Saints in Gujarat, India” in Embodying Charisma: Modernity, Locality and the Performance of Emotion in Sufi Cults, ed. Pnina Werbner and Helene Basu (London: Routledge, 1998), 117–39; “Theatre of Memory: Performances of Ritual Kinship of the African Diaspora in Sind/Pakistan,” in Culture, Creation, and Procreation in South Asia, ed. Aparna Rao and Minika Böeck (Oxford: Berghahn, 2000), 243–70; “Africans in India: Past and Present,” Internationales Asienforum 32, nos. 3–4 (2001): 253–74.
See, for instance, Jayasuria and Pankhurst, African Diaspora; Catlin-Jairazbhoy and Alpers, Sidis and Scholars; Ababu Minda Yimene, African Indian Community in Hyderabad: Siddi Identity, Its Maintenance and Change (Göttingen: Cuvillier Verlag, 2004); Kiran Kamal Prasad, In Search of an Identity: An Ethnographic Study of the Siddis in Karnataka (Bangalore: Jana Jagrati Prakashana, 2005); Pashington Obeng, Shaping Membership, Defining Nation: The Cultural Politics of African Indians in South Asia (Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2007); the special issue on “Invisible Africans,” African and Asian Studies 6, no. 3 (2007), edited by Shihan de Silva Jayasuria; and Helene Basu, ed., Journeys and Dwellings: Indian Ocean Themes in South Asia (New Delhi: Orient Longman, 2008).
Ababu Minda Yimene, “Dynamics of Ethnic Identity Among the Siddis of Hyderabad,” African and Asian Studies 6, no. 3 (2007): 321–45.
Beheroze Shroff, Voices of the Sidis: Ancestral Links (DVD, 2005). See also Shroff, “Sidis in Mumbai: Negotiating Identities between Mumbai and Gujarat,” African and Asian Studies 6, no. 3 (2007): 305–19.
Alistair McMillan, Standing at the Margins: Representation and Electoral Reservation in India (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2005), 112.
Jhon K. Thomas, Human Rights of Tribals (New Delhi: Isha Books, 2005), 1:2–3.
Jaganath Pathy, “Tribe, Region and Nation in the Context of the Indian State,” in Nation and National Identity in South Asia, ed. S. L. Sharma and T. K. Oomen (New Delhi: Orient Longman, 2000), 97–111.
Zelliot Eleanor, From Untouchable to Dalit: Essays on the Ambedkar Movement (New Delhi: Manohar, 2001), 267.
Madhuri Krishnaswamy, “One Step Forward, Two Steps Back,” Economic and Political Weekly 40, no. 47 (November 19, 2005): 4899–4901.
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© 2009 Manning Marable and Leith Mullings
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Shroff, B. (2009). Indians of African Descent. In: Mullings, L. (eds) New Social Movements in the African Diaspora. The Critical Black Studies Series. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230104570_9
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