Siddi People

The prophet Mohammad, near the end of his life, entrusted the Abyssinian military commander Bava Gor with a mission to slay a female demon in Hindustan. Accompanied by his brother, sister, and his best soldiers Bava Gor defeated the demon, and introduced agate beadwork to India. His descendants are now the Siddi people of India. About 100,000 Siddi people live in India today. Most live in Gujarat, with smaller communities in Hyderabad. Before the Islamic invasions, slavery played a minor role in Indian society. However, tens of thousands of slaves came to India with the Muslim armies. All myths aside, the Siddi people are mostly the descendants of slaves brought to India by the Muslim conquerors.

It is important to remember that slavery in the Islamic world is fundementally different from slavery in the western world. The majority of the slaves in most places were female. However, India never lacked for cheap domestic servants and India had similar numbers of male and female slaves. The major problem the Muslim armies faced was finding loyal soldiers. Any soldiers recruited from India would have split loyalties to those they served and their homeland. As a result, many armies brought slave soldiers, trained from a young age to be loyal soldiers. Military slaves had tremendous opportunities to advance in these armies and many Siddi rose to prominence.

The middle ages were something of a golden age for the Sidi soldiers. Like the Turkish military slaves, many rose to positions of power and founded their own dynasties. The great main mosque (the building really is a work of art) of Ahmedabad was engineered by Bilal Jhajar Khan, and Abyssinian general of the last Shah of the Gujarat Sultanate. The fort at Janjira, ruled by a Sidi Nawab, was the only coastal fort never to fall to European powers on the western coast of India. Jamal Ud-Din Yaqut was said to be the lover of Razia Sultana, the first female monarch of India. During the Mamluk dynasty, a Siddi became the ruler of most of India, though for only a few weeks before he was assasinated. Habshi kings ruled bengal for over a decade during the 15th century and African military commanders served as Jagirdars (feudal lords) throughout all of India.

The feudal elite always made up a small percentage of the African population. Most were soldiers. Many turned swords into ploughs, or became succresful in trade. Although most people of African descent in India are slves, there was a substantial number of merchants, traders, mercenaries and adventurers as well who immigrated to India.

Today, Siddis are famous for their spiritual and healing powers. Many of the Dargahs, shrines of Sufi saints, are maintained by Sufi families in Mumbai. These Shrines are visited by peoples of all religions, hoping to be cured of disease, win the lottery, fix a marriage or become succesful in business. Healing, is said to be the Jammat of many Sidi. However, most Siddi live more modestly. After Indian independence, the community saw a decline in its relative status. Soldiers of the princely states were laid off, and jagirdars fobbed off with small pensions. The aristocracy has retains middle class status, but many lower level soldiers had no careers to look forward to. Many became servants, watchmen and laborers.

The Siddi people, like all those who have come, have been incorporated into Indian society. Their own origin myths remind me quite a bit of the stories I have heard from other communities. The African language have been completely been forgotten, and most speak Gujarati or some other vernacular. While the Siddi people have mostly been absorbed into Indian culture, tey retain a few cultural elements brought back from Africa. In the Dhamal dance, (also called Goma, from the Swahili word Ngoma), dancers are said to be possesed by the spirits of Siddi saints.

The Siddi people almost certainly face discrimination. Indian society sees light skin as beautiful and dark skin as ugly. Moreover, as muslims they suffer double discrimination. However, to the best of my knowledge, they have never explicitly been the targets of violence. While they struggle in the education sector, and face discrimination by government officials, I am of the understanding that this is little different than the tribulations of the Muslim community as a whole. The Siddi people suffer from the institutional barriers that keep so many poor Indians from rising up in society.