Siddis of Karnataka
Members are descended from Bantu peoples from Southeast Africa that were brought to the Indian subcontinent as slaves by Portuguese merchants.
In Karnataka, they are concentrated around Yellapur, Haliyal, Ankola, Joida, Mundgod and Sirsi taluks of Uttara Kannada and in Khanapur of Belgaum and Kalghatgi of Dharwad district.
[2] The term seems to have found currency following a description in a letter written by one William aboard the S.S. Nepal, a ship that sailed from England to South India and Ceylon.
[5] While some Siddis were victims of the Portuguese slave trade, most were imported by the rajas in the 15th-16th centuries as military mercenaries.
[6] In 2013, the New York Public Library held an artistic exhibition entitled Africans In India: From Slaves to Generals and Rulers, which retraced the lives and accomplishments of prominent Siddis from the past.
[9] Almost all Siddis today subsist as agricultural and casual labourers, contractual or in some cases bonded, some also work as domestic help.
The process involves taking recycled fabric scraps and arranging them in stylistic geometric patterns, sometimes embedded with religious symbols.
[12] A feature common to the Siddis of Karnataka, as also of those of Maharashtra and Goa, is that they exhibit a remarkable level of assimilation with local culture.
There are references to Siddhi palace guards in Kodagu during the reign of Dodda Veerarajendra (1763–1809) in the Kannada book Kodagina Itihasa.
[13] A Siddhi called Gajaveera is noted to have joined hands with Sangolli Rayanna in his revolt against the British in 1829–30 near Kittur.
A Y-chromosome study by Shah et al. (2011) tested Siddi individuals in India for paternal lineages.
The remainder possessed Indian-specific subclades of the Eurasian haplogroups M and N, which points to recent admixture with autochthonous Indian groups.
The remainder is associated with local Indo-European-speaking North and Northwest Indian populations, due to recent admixture events.
The remaining autosomal DNA components in the studied Siddi were mainly associated with local South Asian populations.
According to the authors, gene flow between the Siddis' Bantu ancestors and local Indian populations was also largely unidirectional.
On 8 January 2003, the Union government brought the Siddis under the list of Scheduled Tribes with a view to empowering them constitutionally.
It is hoped that proper implementation of these policies would go a long way in helping the Siddhi community enhance their social and economic status.
[17] In 2006, however, 'The African Diaspora in Asia' (TADIA), a UNESCO backed initiative[17] has also increased interest in the rehabilitation of this tribe.
Headed by Prof Angenot of Brazil, it has become the academic link between the Siddis of Karnataka, Gujarat and Andhra Pradesh and other research scholars.
It aims at involving academic research, promoting cultural exchanges and raising funds for education and employment generation programmes for the Siddis.
