With the Black Lives Matter protests and wave of racial and social injustices against the Black community surfacing around the world, most of us Indians see this as a remote issue. But still, many youngsters, intellectuals, artists and loads of people around the country have extended their support to the protests in the US as their duty of being a global citizen. But do you know that our very own country harbours a tribe of African descent?
I too was equally unaware of the presence of Siddi, a tribe of African descent residing in Karnataka, Gujarat, Hyderabad, Maharashtra and parts of Pakistan.
With an estimated population of over 20,000, Siddis are descendants of the Bantu tribe from East Africa. However, their settlement in India is largely contested, and there are two broad theories — some say they were brought as slaves by the Portuguese during 7th century, while others say they travelled to India as independent merchants and sailors.
Having lived in India for centuries, people from the Siddi community represent an amalgamation of Indian culture and African heritage. Clad in saris and bindi, the Siddi women still perform a dance form that originates from primitive African dance forms. They speak in the local Konkani dialect, but still struggle to be acknowledged as Indian citizens due to local prejudice based on their physical features.
In early 1980s, the Sports Authority of India decided to start a Special Area Games Project to train Siddi children to turn their athletic abilities, owing to their African origins, into national achievements. However, the programme was soon cut off and the children were forced to return.
Living in obscurity since centuries, the Siddi people are living a life of hardships and oppression. Due to lack of opportunities, they are majorly forced to work as farmers, leading their lives constantly foreshadowed by poverty. Lack of educational opportunities is yet another hurdle that has added to their troubled position of feeling an outsider in their own country.
As Indians, can we recall a single incident of our encounter with people of colour where our minds were not crossed by the ‘N’ word, or feelings of unsettlement, paranoia and prejudice based on assumptions associated with people of colour passed on to us by society? The problem of racism and the oppression of communities based on the colour of their skin has always been there, but now it has become all the more exigent.
Institutional and individual racism is not just a problem for societies across oceans, but a very deeply-rooted issue in our own nation, and now is the time to work towards fixing it. It is upon us, the youth of the nation, to change the narrative and dismember these stereotypes.
Featured image source: Flickr/Kandukuru Nagarjun