This exciting collection of essays brings together scholars from a wide range
of disciplines to explore the history and present circumstances of one of India’s
least known minority groups, the African Indians. Following the editors’ introduction which covers the scholarly literature
on Africans in India and an historical overview that looks at the larger history
of Africans in India, the essays focus on two different communities of African
Indians—the Sidis of Gujarat and the Sidis of Uttara Kannada. They illumine
various aspects of the life of Sidis in contemporary India, their worship at
the Sufi shrine of Gori Pir, their music and dance, their liminal existence
and their agonizing dilemmas and predicament in the complex mosaic that is present-day
India. Edward
A. Alpers is Professor of History at the University of California, Los Angeles.
He has also taught at the Universities of Dar es Salaam, Tanzania (1966-1968),
and the Samoli National University, Lafoole (1980). His major publications include
Ivory and Slaves in East Central Africa, Walter Rodney: Revolutionary and Scholar,
co-edited with Pierre-Michel Fonatine, and History, Memory and Identity, co-edited
with Vijayalakshmi Teelock.