Siddi marriage: re-signifying contract, transactions and identities

ABSTRACT

This article contributes to new pathways towards the socio-cultural significance of Africa – South Asia dynamics, by focusing on Siddi ‘love’ (when two people choose their own partner) and ‘arranged’ marriages (when family members select one’s life partner with their attendant bride price/dowry obligations). Largely, to Siddis, marriage is literally and symbolically aimed at propagating or continuing the life of their families beyond their own generation. The analysis thus draws on Corrine Kratz’s concept of ‘complex agency’ to investigate how Siddi brides and grooms use the discourse of marriage to negotiate their identities, ratify and embody the ideals of society, while at the same time insinuating their own notions on gender relations, zones of influence, responsibilities, and accountability. The discussion focuses on Siddi marriage as a context and process for exploring the multiple ways in which today’s Siddis remember, forget or re-articulate practices and ideas that make them both Africans and Indians in South Asia. This essay hopes to demonstrate that despite changes that have occurred among Siddis over the centuries, there are rituals of words and actions that undergird their marriage that are part of their faiths, rights, and moral obligations (including hiriyaru: ancestral veneration).

KEYWORDS:

• Siddis
• arranged marriage
• love marriage
• complex agency
• patrilocal
• female husband

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1. Kratz, “Forging Unions,” 136.

2. Ali, Malik Ambar.

3. Modi and D’Silva, “Racism against Africans in India,” 18-20.

4. Almeida and Obeng, “Personal Interviews in Ugingeri village” (Karnataka, India. 23 July 2019).

5. Almeida and Obeng, “Personal Interviews in Nagashettikoppa village” (Karnataka, India. 19 July 2019).

6. Almeida and Obeng, “Personal Interviews in Manchikeri village” (Karnataka India. 25 July 2019).

7. Almeida and Obeng, “Personal Interviews in Mainalli village” (Karnataka India. 25 July 2019).

8. Almeida and Obeng, “Personal Interviews in Mainalli village” (Karnataka, India. 15 August 2019).

9. Almeida and Obeng, “Personal Interviews in Mainalli village” (Karnataka India. 18 July 2019).

10. Comaroff and Comaroff, “Occult Economies.”

11. Almeida and Obeng, “Interview conducted by in Telephone communication in Mainalli and Mysore villages” (Karnataka, India. 20 July 2019).

12. Almeida and Obeng, “Personal Interviews in Yellapur village” (Karnataka, India. 3 August 2019).

13. Amadiume, Male Daughters, Female Husbands, 42.

14. Ibid.

15. Mudimbe, Parables and Fables, 139.

16. Ibid.

17. See note 13 above.

18. Kratz, “Forging Unions,” 136–7.

19. Trouillot, Silencing the Past, 24.

20. Ibid.

21. The Citizenship Act, 1955 Act No. 57 Of 1955 [30 December 1955].

22. Almeida and Obeng, “Personal Interviews in Bangalore city” (Karnataka, India. 1 August 2019).

23. Ibid.

24. Ibid.

25. Ibid.

26. Almeida and Obeng, “Personal Interviews in Mavinkoppa village” (Karnataka, India 20 July 2019).

27. See note 18 above.

28. Ibid.

29. See note 19 above.

30. Tajfel, “Experiments in Intergroup Discrimination.”