“The Siddis of Uttara Kannada”: How the Portuguese Indian Ocean Slave Trade Produced a Community of Indians of African Descent

The Forgotten Community, “the Siddis of Uttara Kannada”: How the Portuguese Indian Ocean slave trade produced a community of Indians of African descent Mark Sebastian Pinto Independent Researcher Abstract. The African presence in the Indian Ocean has been grossly underestimated in terms of numbers and impact. Not just does it involve a displacement of people from the African continent eastwards, towards Asia, but it has had a significant impact on the development of peculiar communities in the Indian Ocean world. The Siddis of Uttara Kannada are one such community. This article recounts the Portuguese Indian Ocean slave trade from the 16th to the 19th centuries to the erstwhile Portuguese territories of Goa, Daman and Diu and the distinct role of the African in this region before slavery was eventually abolished throughout the Portuguese territories. The focus then shifts to how the African slaves who were transported to India, gradually, over three centuries, established themselves in the southern Indian state of Karnataka, where they now form a distinct community. The Siddis, are an example of a fascinating phenomenon; the assimilation and integration of a people, uprooted from Mozambique, into an alien society, while steadfastly clinging on to preserve and assert their distinct identity, which sets them apart from the rest of the inhabitants of the region. Keywords: Slave-Trade, African, Portuguese, Siddi, Indian In the Western Ghats region of the Uttara Kannada district of Karnataka, in South India, and in some areas bordering that region in Belgaum and Dharwad districts, we find a group of people who look different in physical features from the rest of the people living in the area. They are known as the Siddis. They are people of African descent settled in India for nearly five centuries (Prasad, “Foreword”). Although the Siddis of Uttara Kannada share a common ethnic pool and similar economic conditions, they are subdivided by their belonging to three major religions, Hinduism, Islam, and Christianity.1 165 166 │ InterDISCIPLINARY Journal of Portuguese Diaspora Studies Vol. 8 (2019) The Portuguese Indian Ocean Slave Trade The origins: The Portuguese Slave Trading within the Indian Ocean The African presence in the Indian Ocean world represents one of the most neglected aspects of the global diaspora of African peoples. Yet very significant numbers of people of African descent today inhabit virtually all the countries of the western Indian Ocean (Alpers 84). In an article, titled “Satisfying the ‘Want for Labouring People’: European Slave Trading in the Indian Ocean, 1500-1850,” Richard B. Allen draws upon evidence provided in several studies in suggesting the underestimation (in numbers and impact) of the Indian Ocean slave trade carried out by the Europeans and the tendency to overlook the fact that the slave trade in this part of the world was of far greater antiquity than in the Atlantic world (Allen, “Satisfying the Want” 46–47). In another publication, Allen references Hubert Gerbeau, who discussed the problems that contributed to the “history of silence” surrounding slave trading in the Indian Ocean. While the publication of an expanding body of scholarship since the late 1980s demonstrates that this silence is not as deafening as it once was, our knowledge and understanding of this traffic in chattel labour remains far from complete (Allen, “Ending the History of Silence” 294). Besides Gerbeau, Joseph E. Harris had argued that students of the African diaspora needed to look eastwards toward Asia and not just westwards across the Atlantic as they sought to reconstruct the movement, lives, and legacy of the millions of enslaved men, women, and children exported from sub-Saharan Africa over the centuries (Harris, The African Presence in Asia; Harris, “Expanding the Scope of African Diaspora” 157–168). A review of published scholarship on British, Dutch, French, and Portuguese slave trading in the Indian Ocean indicates that between 1500 and 1850, Europeans shipped a minimum of 431,000 to 547,000 slaves of African, Indian, and Southeast Asian origin to destinations within this oceanic basin (Allen, “Satisfying the Want” “Abstract”). This paper focusses on one of these slave-trade channels; the movement of East African slaves to India, by the Portuguese, to the erstwhile Portuguese territory of Estado da India (Goa, Daman and Diu). At present, the term Siddhi (Siddi) is used overarchingly to refer to all sections of the Indian population who, though considered native to India by virtue of their long history in the subcontinent, ultimately have their origins in Africa. Nonetheless, it would be a mistake to trace the presence of all Siddhis (Siddi) back to just one historical period or channel of migration (Cardoso 101). One must be conscious of the fact that long before the arrival of da Gama, Albuquerque, and other Lusitanian adventurers, Islamized African communities, called Habshi, existed in India, their ancestors either slaves purchased by Arabs from the African Horn or military slave troops from neighbouring Muslim countries. The majority of Africans were probably Abyssinian (Pescatello 27). Mark Sebastian Pinto / The Forgotten Community │ 167 Any discussion of the quantity, the functions, or the status of pre-Portuguese African elements in India is based largely on suppositions drawn from isolated references (Pescatello 28). The limited sources available, make it impossible to ascertain the number of African slave exports to the Middle East and South Asia by Arab, Muslim, and Swahili merchants with any precision. (Allen, “Ending the history of silence” 296). The Portuguese were the first Europeans to purchase and transport slaves to destinations within the Indian Ocean basin. Mozambique supplied slaves to the Estado da India, established during the first two decades of the sixteenth century, and African slaves ultimately reached Portuguese establishments in East Asia. How many Africans were caught up in this traffic is difficult to ascertain, but by most accounts an average of just a couple of hundred slaves were exported from Mozambique to Portugal’s Indian and other possessions each year during the period under consideration (Pearson 161). Rudy Bauss holds that Mozambican exports to Portuguese India averaged 200 to 250 each year from the 1770s to1830 (21), while Pedro Machado indicates that Mozambican exports to Goa, Daman, and Diu may have averaged only about 125 slaves each year during the same period (Machado 20–21) (See Tables 1 & 2). Census data from the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries confirm the generally small scale of this trade; Goa housed 2,153 slaves in 1719, a number that declined to 1,410 by 1810 (Bauss, 21). Table 1 Number of slaves traded by Europeans to destinations within the Indian Ocean, 1500–1850 Exported Europeans* Destination Period AAE** Total from 41,875– Portuguese Mozambique India 1500–1834 125–250 83,750 Source: Allen (“Satisfying the Want” 62) * I have shown only data specific to the Portuguese. ** Annual Average Exports Table 2 Estimated minimum number of slaves traded by Europeans within the Indian Ocean Basin, 1500– 1850 Europeans 1500–1599 1600–1699 1700–1799 1800–1850 Total 12,500– 12,500– 12,500– 41,875– Portuguese* 4,375–8,750 25,000 25,000 25,000 83,750 Source: Allen (“Satisfying the Want” 62) * I have shown only data specific to the Portuguese. A brief comment on the African in Portuguese India; role and status Ann. M. Pescatello, makes a fascinating attempt, through the study of accounts by various well-known travellers and commentators on the Estado da India, to paint an image of the African slave in Portuguese India. Very importantly, she draws our attention to the fact that, as far as she was able to discern, “slavery” as a chattel concept, did not exist in sixteenth century 168 │ InterDISCIPLINARY Journal of Portuguese Diaspora Studies Vol. 8 (2019) India, and that western or African notions of a person as “chattel” seem to have no basis in Indian social thought. This she attributes to the existence of a complex social stratification system that existed in India called “varna,”2 or more commonly referred to as the caste system. Explaining further, she says “those locals who occupied positions of menial responsibilities were socially circumscribed within the context of this complex system consisting of four varna and thousands of jatis”3 (Pescatello 31). The conclusion that she draws is that the Africans who lived and laboured in India, both during the Muslim rule and later in areas specifically subject to Portuguese suzerainty, were a type of “slave” not related in status to the type of chattel labourer we associate with plantation workers on European, African and American plantations after the seventeenth century (Pescatello 31–32). Pescatello’s assertion that slavery did not exist as a chattel concept in India of the sixteenth century needs further supplementary evidence for which Shireen Moosvi, provides us with an enlightening account of the tradition of slavery in India right from Ancient India to the Mughal period. Moosvi, writing in 2003, in her analysis, chooses to focus on three distinct periods in pre-colonial India; Ancient India, Medieval India and Mughal India. For the first period (ancient India), she takes the starting point as the classic text on ancient Indian law, the Manusmriti (first century BC). The Sudra, on the other hand, must “serve meekly” the three of the twice-born castes (I.91; VIII. 410); and he has to be “the servant of his betters” (X.335). The traditional association of domestic service with slavery is here continued: “But a Sudra, whether bought or unbought, he (the Brahman) may compel to do servile work. A Sudra though emancipated by his master is not released from servitude” (VIII. 413-14). And his property can be seized just like that of a slave (VIII.

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