Nowhere else in the world did Sub-Saharan Africans wield power over non-Africans for as long as they did on the Indian subcontinent. Migrant Africans rose to prominence in India as rulers, nobles, statesmen, soldiers, and merchants, or who came as servants, slaves, eunuchs, or concubines in the courts of Indian monarchs. They were known as Habshis and Siddis. Karnataka has the largest concentration of Indian Siddis, but African elites were found elsewhere in the Deccan, Gujarat, Hyderabad, Lucknow, Delhi and Bengal. ‘African Elites in India’ edited by Kenneth Robbins and John McLeod released by Mapin Publishing, is a profound study of the Siddi community, its origins and migration to the Indian subcontinent and its historical legacy. Here, Kenneth Robbins shares some of his reflections on the book.
Over a period of years, I became aware of the prominent role that Africans [known as Siddis or Habshis] played in Indian history, politics, and the arts. More and more evidence emerged as I studied items in my own collections and research archives, travelled in India and identified many Africans in Deccani, Mughal, and Rajput paintings in museums and private collections.
The Mughal Emperors were once the most powerful rulers in the entire subcontinent, but they were unable to defeat an African strongman, Malik Ambar of Ahmadnagar, who excelled in guerilla warfare. In his memoirs for the years 1612-1621, the Mughal Emperor Jahangir repeatedly bad mouths “the crafty” Malik Ambar as “black-faced” and “ill starred”, and calls Malik Ambar’s army “the rebels of black-fortune”. Jahangir’s obsession with this hated opponent is immortalised in a painting of the Emperor Jahangir standing on a globe and achieving his never-achieved fantasy of shooting an arrow through Malik Ambar’s head. The painting is graced with vituperative inscriptions condemning the African as a “night-coloured usurper” and the “owl which fled the light”. Naturally, this was not how Malik Ambar saw himself; an inscription that he erected at Antur credits him with resounding titles like “Benefactor of Humanity, Defender of the Devoted Servant of the Lord of Earth and Sea, and Pillar of the Kingdom”.
This story is from the Volume 19 No.1, 2016, MIGRATION edition of International Gallerie.
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This story is from the Volume 19 No.1, 2016, MIGRATION edition of International Gallerie.
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