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ABSTRACT
The presence of Sidis, Indians of African descent, in India today is concentrated in the states of Gujarat and Karnataka. In this essay, we focus on the Sidis of Gujarat, and their oral narratives, to establish a genealogy, a counter history, by virtue of which space is imagined as a way of belonging and claiming cultural citizenship. Babubhai Sidi’s story of Sidi solider, Sidi Sayyid, of the famous Sidi Sayyid mosque in Ahmedabad, recounts the act of sacrifice by which the Hindu Goddess of Wealth, Lakshmi was detained forever, in the city of Ahmedabad. The tale functions as a moral fable about the syncretic harmony of Muslim and Hindu worship in India. The tale also links Sidis to the historical presence of Habshi soldiers who rose to power and built monuments like the Sidi Sayyid mosque, thus creating an alternative narrative of a nation that is increasingly identified by Hindu religious and cultural narratives. In 2017, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s visit to the Sidi Sayyid mosque with Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe claimed the site of the mosque as a heritage structure, a strategy to distance himself from his Hindutva image, and to promote tourism, trade and commerce in a globalized world. We explore how Sidis resist appropriation of Sidi heritage spaces by maintaining their own historical connections to monuments of Ahmedabad. Farooq Sidi’s narratives reveal hidden historical sites and shrines of Habshi soldiers from the medieval period in Ahmedabad, Gujarat.
Acknowledgments
The authors wish to thank Farooq Sidi and Rumanaben for sparing their time to interact with them on Sidi histories in Ahmedabad. We also thank Mahmood Kooria and Jazmin Graves for their astute suggestions and comments on the article. Finally, we thank the anonymous reviewers for their insightful remarks and recommendations.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.
Notes
1. For more information on early African presence in the Indian Ocean world see Joseph E. Harris’ path-breaking book The African Presence In Asia; Ali, The African Dispersal in the Deccan; de Silva Jayasuriya, and Pankhurst, The African Diaspora in the Indian Ocean; Robbins and McLeod African Elites in India and Omar Ali’s online historiography Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, ‘The African Diaspora in the Indian Ocean World’ exhibit http://exhibitions.nypl.org/africansindianocean/index2.php
2. Clifford, “Traveling Cultures,” 100.
3. Basu, “The Siddi and the Cult,” 294.
4. Shroff, video Sidis of Gujarat.
5. Basu, “The Siddi and the Cult,” 291; and Graves, “Filling the Pot,” 97–98.
6. Babubhai Siddi was a respected elder and mujawer (caretaker) of a shrine in Mumbai. (See Shroff 2007). He passed away in 2010.
7. In our translations, from Gujarati, we have stayed close to the original spoken words.
8. Interview in Ahmedabad 8 July 2019.
9. Sheikh, Forging a Region, 170–175.
10. Irwin, “The Tree of Life,” 9. Historian John Irwin notes that under the Ahmed Shahi rule, indigenous sculptors of Gujarat were employed and created “one of the finest of architecture in India.”
11. https://whc.unesco.org/en/list/1551/accessed 18 August 2019.
12. Shroff, “Indians of African Descent,” 140–145.
13. Shokoohy, “The Sidi Sayyid or Sidi Said,” 159; and Graves, “Filling the Pot,” 96.
14. Basu, “Slave, Soldier, Trader, Faqir,” 232. Basu describes the heterogeneous groups of nobles during the Sultanate, in the 1550s–Turkish, Afghan, Habshi, Persian and Mughal groups. From 1560’s the Gujarat cavalry of 12,000 men was composed of eight distinct racial groups including African soldiers under Habshi leaders and during the reign of Bahadur Shah 1526–1527, a contingent of 5,000 Habshi soldiers were stationed in Ahmedabad.
15. Briggs, The Cities of Gurjarashtra, 231; and Commissariat, M.S., A History of Gujarat, 505.
16. Commissariat, A History of Gujarat, 503.
17. Ibid, 503.
18. Ibid., 504.
19. Ahmedabad or Karnavati? What do Citizens Want. Times of India. 20 April 2016
20. Interview in Ahmedabad 10 July 2019
21. Interview in Ahmedabad 9 July 2019; Graves, Jazmin, “Filling the Pot,” 96.
22. A concept within Hinduism considered a personal, emotional form of worship with a deity.
23. We use the word captured to reference sociologist Mona Mehta who analyses the process by which ‘the middle class colludes with the project of neoliberal urbanism, to physically capture or usurp public space for the ends of middle-class leisure and economic interests.’ Mehta’s discussion of the capture of urban spaces adds another dimension to Modi’s official visit to Sidi Sayyid Mosque.
24. Mukhopadhyay, Firstpost 13 September 2017.
25. Da Costa, The Wire 11 August 2017.
26. Meghdoot, Japan’s Shinzo Abe to have PM Modi as Guide at Ahmedabad’s Sidi Saiyed Mosque. News 18.com 12 September 2017.
27. Economic Times 14 September 2017 https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/politics-and-nation/after-ganga-aarti-in-varanasi-narendra-modi-takes-shinzo-abe-to-heritage-mosque/articleshow/60504235.cms?from=mdr
28. Interview in Ahmedabad, 9 July 2019
29. See note 20 above.
30. Clifford, “Traveling Cultures,” 101.
31. For women mujawer-s in Mumbai see Shroff Sidis in Mumbai 305–19
32. https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/city/ahmedabad/Majestic-makeover-Bhadra-to-regain-glory/articleshow/11,481,355.cms
33. Ramrakhiani, Bhavna, Sarkhej Roza, 9.
34. Chauhan, From Slavery to Royalty, 24–25.
35. Chauhan, Times of India, 17 February 2016; and Ramrakhiani, Bhavna, Sarkhej Roza, 5.
36. See note 20 above.
37. Interview in Ahmedabad 16 August 2019.
38. Multan is a city in Pakistan. Rajput is a Hindu military caste
39. Kumar, “The Mystery of the Shaking Minarets,” 139–143.