Meet Africa’s Lost Tribe in India
Deep in the heart of India is an African tribe who still retain their African features and African roots… although their nationality and way of life is now Indian. The Siddi Tribe in Gujarat originally came from South East Africa, taken to India as slaves by the Portuguese about 750 years ago. They’re now fluent […]
Deep in the heart of India is an African tribe who still retain their African features and African roots… although their nationality and way of life is now Indian.
The Siddi Tribe in Gujarat originally came from South East Africa, taken to India as slaves by the Portuguese about 750 years ago.
They’re now fluent in Hindi and Gujarati and seldom use their native Swahili language, although a group of them did visit Tanzania’s Zanzibar. “We conducted a program and met people there. They asked us to relocate back. It is our ancestral land, it is good and beautiful, but the brotherhood and kinship is in India. India is better than everywhere else.”
While most of the people in the tribe are Sufi Muslims, some of them now practice Hinduism and Christianity.
Though they’ve chosen to remain far from their roots, the tribe has preserved their African culture – which can be heard in their ‘Goma’ music and seen in the ‘Dhamaal’ dance – and since they mostly marry within the community, they’ve also retained their African features.