We Americans are intimately familiar with the African diaspora
in our own hemisphere. For 400 years the Afro-Atlantic slave
trade uprooted untold millions of Africans and forcibly
transplanted them to the Americas, permanently altering the very
DNA of two continents. It’s a well-told story that every
educated American, from both hemispheres, knows by heart and
still lives every day. But there’s another African diaspora that
barely registers on cultural radar screens here in the West.
While we naturally focus our attention on our own largely West
African roots, we forget that East Africa, with its long Indian
Ocean coastline, spawned a sea- borne diaspora of its own. One
of the most fascinating chapters in the history of this East
African diaspora is the story of Africans and their descendants
in India. Known as Sidis, Africans have been on the subcontinent
for centuries, but have long been submerged in India’s dense
multicultural masala to the point that many of their countrymen
don’t even know of their exist