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ABSTRACT
African presence in the western Indian states of Gujarat and Kerala is remembered and revived by different subaltern communities through the palimpsestic spatial layering of sacred landscapes and geographies of death. In the city of Ahmedabad in Gujarat, there are several small mazars (shrines) dedicated to deceased African martyrs and saints. In addition to these small shrines, there are also a few mausoleums from the sixteenth century dedicated to African martyrs. On the other hand, in coastal Kochi in southern India, African memoryscapes survive through shrines dedicated to Kappiris (Africans) in Hindu sacred groves where benevolent African spirits continue to intercede in the lives of their devotees. While African cultural memories in the states of Gujarat and Kerala are fragmented, these dispersed and far-flung sacred edifices constructed to commemorate the lives of deceased Africans serve as active sites of memory. Employing ethnographic methodologies, I demonstrate how multiple narratives of African pasts are constructed by invested stakeholders through ritual transactions and memory-making practices at these spirited topographies in Kerala and Gujarat.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.
Notes
1. Between 2012–17, I conducted ethnographic studies in Fort Kochi, Mattancherry, Vypin, Azhikode and also in coastal pockets of Thrissur district and spoke with individuals who had knowledge about African spirit worship and were in some capacity connected with the shrines.
2. Alpers, “The African Diaspora in the Indian Ocean,” 22.
3. The expression Kappiri is a dialectical variant of the Arabic word Kaffir. The Portuguese borrowed the term from Arabic sources to address non-Muslim enslaved Africans on the Swahili Coast as Caffer or Cafre.
4. Maddrell and Sidaway, Deathscapes, 2.
5. See Maddrell and Sidaway, Deathscapes.
6. Schramm, “Introduction: Landscapes of Violence,” 5.
7. See Basso, Wisdom Sits in Places.
8. For studies on Indian Ocean relationalities see, Srinivas, Ng’weno and Jeychandran, Reimagining the Indian Ocean Worlds.
9. See Ali, Malik Ambar.
10. Jayasuriya, African Identity in Asia, 72.
11. See Whitehouse, Some Historical Notices of Cochin on the Malabar Coast, 30.
12. See Ali, Malik Ambar; and Robbins and McLeod, African Elites in India.
13. See Catlin-Jairazbhoy and Alpers, Sidis and Scholars; Hawley, India in Africa, Africa in India; Jayasuriya and Pankhurst, The African Diaspora in the Indian Ocean; and Robbins and McLeod, African Elites in India.
14. See Curtis, The Call of Bilal; Basu, “Hierarchy and Emotion”; Basu, “Slave, Soldier, Trader, Faqir”; Obeng, Shaping Membership, Defining Nation; and Shroff, “Goma Is Going On’”.
15. For detailed studies on Black Atlantic spirit world memory and retention through rituals see, Apter and Derby, Activating the Past; Cosentino, ed., Sacred Arts of Haitian Vodou; Montgomery, Shackled Sentiments; Palmié, Wizards and Scientists; and Roach, Cities of the Dead.
16. Apter and Derby, Activating the Past, xv.
17. For details on ancillary shrines for African saints in Gujarat see, Jeychandran, “Navigating African Sacred Geography.”
18. See Sultana, “Ethnicity and Healing Rituals in Gwadar, Balochistan, Pakistan.”
19. These shrines dedicated to deceased African soldiers and mystics are often called as the dargah or shrine for the Sidi Shaheed (Sidi Martyr). The custodians of these shrines as well as the devotees use the term ‘Sidi/Siddi’ to denote Africans. In the Indian subcontinent, Africans and descendants of Africans are usually referred to as Sidi/Siddi, Habshis, Badsha, and Kappiri.
20. Commissariat, A History of Gujarat, 470.
21. In Gujarat Sultanate, the foreigners who were high ranking officials or nobles referred to as amirs were the Turks and Abyssinians who had the power to govern an estate and also collect taxes. See Commissariat, A History of Gujarat, 439.
22. Iktiyar-ul-Mulk was a prominent post in the Gujarat court. See Commissariat, A History of Gujarat, 470.
23. The chronicler was referred to as Ḥajji al-Dabir.
24. Commissariat, A History of Gujarat, 471.
25. Ḥajji al-Dabir, Zafar ul walih bi muzaffar wa alihi, 471.
26. Ibid, 472–473.
27. From interactions with Rumanaben, a scholar in her own right, 2016, 2017, & 2018.
28. The name Cochin is the Anglicized version of Kochi and also the name under which the town was known during the European occupation. Historically, Fort Cochin used to be a fortified European settlement and served as the commercial and admirative hub for the Portuguese and later for the Dutch East India Company.
29. While the story of Portuguese murdering Africans could have been circulated by the Dutch, the question to grapple with is: why are local communities recalling this past in the present through various practices? The case I am making here is that oral histories of Africans being murdered and their deification as benevolent spirits reveal a complex and rooted Afro-Indian connection.
30. Jeychandran, Memory, Heritage, and Cultural Display in the Former Colonial Port Cities, 72.
31. See Roberts and Roberts, Memory.
32. Jeychandran, “Marginalized Narratives and the Production of Memory,” 111, 113.
33. Nora, “Between Memory and History,” 8.
34. Jeychandran, Memory, Heritage, and Cultural Display in the Former Colonial Port Cities, 80.
35. Shaw, Memories of the Slave Trade, 50.
36. For theories on overlapping memories of the slave trade in Sierra Leone see Basu, “Palimpsest Memoryscapes.”
37. See Blair, Dickinson, and Ott, Places of Public Memory.