An African-origin ethnic tribe of about 20,000 people has been living in near total obscurity in India for centuries.
By Neelima Vallangi 4 August 2016 The past few months in India have been mired in controversy due to a string of racist and fatal incidents targeting African immigrants living in the country. But what few Indians know is that Africans and Indians are no strangers to each other: there are at least 20,000 of an African-origin ethnic tribe who have been living in near total obscurity in India for centuries. Isolated and reclusive, Siddis are mostly confined to small pockets of villages in the Indian states of Karnataka, Maharashtra and Gujarat, and the city of Hyderabad (there’s also a sizable population in Pakistan). Descendants of Bantu people of East Africa, Siddi ancestors were largely brought to India as slaves by Arabs as early as the 7th Century, followed by the Portuguese and the British later on. Others were free people who came to India as merchants, sailors and mercenaries before the Portuguese slave trade went into overdrive. When slavery was abolished in the 16th and 17th Centuries, Siddis fled into the country’s thick jungles, fearing recapture and torture. http://www.bbc.com/travel/story/20160801-indias-forgotten-jungle-dwellers
