On 28th July, 2018, morning, I traveled to the Old city of Malakpet, Barkhas, Badryangutta and finally to AC guards for doing some field work with the Siddis. The Siddis are the African diaspora in India. The forefathers of the Siddis had migrated to India from Africa centuries back and settled here. They do not have a memory of being brought here as slaves and neither do they accept this. They are very proud of the fact that their forefathers were Bodyguards in the Nizam empire. They still retain their African features of a dark skin and curly hair though a lot of mingling with the local Muslim population has occurred. While in Goa, they converted to Christianity, in Maharashtra they are Hindus and in Hyderabad they are Muslims. In Karnataka you have all the three, Hindu, Christian and Muslim Siddis. I had done a lot of field work with this community women in 2005 and 2006.I revisited these people once again. Thanks to Sumanth Reddy who has come from the US to study this community and my two students Rizwan Ahmad and Pabitra S , I could revisit this place. Thanks Rizwan for the pictures. I could not speak to women today and may be from tomorrow onwards we will meet many. I did not find much change since 2005, except that there is now a little more education amongst this group. They are not economically a well off group and exists on the fringes of society. However, they continue their legacy of music and excelling in Sports. They were very proud of the fact that the Cricketer who played for IPL, Muhammad Siraj was a Siddis boy who has made it big and now had to move out. This is a very close knit community and now have become very Indianised. Field work is always fun and brings in a lot of enthusiasm.
No comments:
Post a Comment