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Sidi voices and the Sidi Sayyid mosque: narratives of space and belonging

ABSTRACT The presence of Sidis, Indians of African descent, in India today is concentrated in the states of Gujarat and Karnataka. In this essay, we focus on the Sidis of Gujarat, and their oral narratives, to establish a genealogy, a counter history, by virtue of which space is imagined as a way of belonging and claiming cultural citizenship. Babubhai Sidi’s story of Sidi solider, Sidi Sayyid, of the famous Sidi Sayyid mosque in Ahmedabad, recounts the act of sacrifice by which the Hindu Goddess of Wealth, Lakshmi was detained forever, in the city of Ahmedabad. The tale functions as a moral fable about the syncretic harmony of Muslim and Hindu worship in India. The tale also links Sidis to the historical presence of Habshi soldiers who rose to power and built monuments like the Sidi Sayyid mosque, thus creating an alternative narrative of a nation that is increasingly identified by Hindu religious and cultural narratives. In 2017, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s visit to the Sidi Sayyid mosque with Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe claimed the site of the mosque as a heritage structure, a strategy to distance himself from his Hindutva image, and to promote tourism, trade and commerce in a globalized world. We explore how Sidis resist appropriation of Sidi heritage spaces by maintaining their own historical connections to monuments of Ahmedabad. Farooq Sidi’s narratives reveal hidden historical sites and shrines of Habshi soldiers from the medieval period in Ahmedabad, Gujarat.