Sayan Dey compels the reader to extend its ‘obvious’ academic understanding of sociological terms such as diaspora, migration, culture and everydayness. While reading the text one could feel the trans-oceanic journey between the Indian subcontinent and Africa but also a sense of socio-temporal rhythms, social practices and everyday life constantly moving between the past and present. The author refers to its research respondents as ‘participant authors’ which justifies the title of the book Performing Memories and Weaving Archives (published by Anthem Press in 2023) and therefore it’s apt to use the terms – the experiential realm of ‘living’ frameworks of cultural epistemologies.
The author has thematically interwoven the book into three major parts of social spaces to discuss the production of creolized cultures spiritual spaces, creative spaces and culinary spaces. This symbolic representation of social spaces primarily discusses the making of the diasporic community and relative creolized cultures of the South African Indians in South Africa and Indian Africans in India – the Siddis.
The book commences with the author taking us to a part of the history which is mostly forgotten i.e. the socio-political existence of Afro-Indian polities and economies much before the arrival of European colonizers in Africa or the Indian sub-continent. He refers to the presence of an African kingdom – The Habshi dynasty in Bengal in the 15th century AD and likewise the presence of a strong Indian diaspora regulating East African markets in the 11th century AD, reminding us about the porosity of political memories leading to erasure of social memories and forgotten historical mindscapes.
In the first chapter, the author provides a beautiful factual bouquet of social history in which he traces not only the movement of goods and services between Africa and India but also the movement of people and the corresponding exchange of sociocultural greetings and linguistic structures, food habits, fashion ethics, musical performances, spiritual practices, and dance patterns leading to a creolized social space. The next chapter discusses the acculturation of Indian African and South African Indian diaspora due to colonization involving the movement of merchants, mercenaries, workers and slaves from diverse African regions to Indian princely states and the resultant formation of African communities in South-Western India. Likewise, Indians travelled to South Africa directly or via Batavia (present-day Jakarta, Indonesia) further accelerating intermixing with the local African population. Both the diasporic communities across the ocean functioned under the complex and “in-between” spaces of caste, class, religion, politics, and economy. The author also discusses how South African Indians maintained caste consciousness and practised it according to religious, linguistic, and ritualistic affiliations.
The third chapter unpacks different spiritual memories that the African Indians in Gujarat and the South African Indians in South Africa engage with on a habitual basis to keep their ancestral roots alive. The creolized spiritual practices in turn have led to the formation of various ‘hybrid identities’. For example the preparation of creole foods as offerings to gods, goddesses, and devotees; the usage of Afro-Indian creole languages in religious songs underlines capability of the diasporic community to adapt locally. The creolized spiritual practices of the Indian indentured labourers in South Africa can be located through the intermingling of traditional Hindu spiritual practices with Muslim, Christian, and local African spiritual practices. Hindu temples in Durban shared the rituals of firewalking and spirit possession which are identical to the fire-walking and spirit possession rituals of the Zulus and Bantus. The Hindu idols are garlanded with lemons instead of flowers. Such a practice is similar to the usage of lemons in Zulu spiritual practices. Further, during various festivals, the deities and the devotees are often offered creolized food including Madumbi curry, Breyani, chocolate etc. The practices of spirit possession and fire-walking is common among the Siddis in Gujarat as well. Creolization of sufi tradition. worshippers at the shrine in Gujarat, where they sing songs, popularly known as zikrs, are sung in the Hindi, Gujarati, and Urdu. Such songs are often punctuated with Swahili creole words.
Chapter four is particularly interesting which discusses the musical and dance engagements of the Siddis and the South African Indians who have intergenerationally passed on, intermingled with local musical and dance cultures, and gave birth to Creole musical and dance practices. The creolized musical spaces of the Siddis and the South African Indians are accommodative by inviting other communities and their cultures into their respective cultural spaces. The author discusses in brief Dhamal dance, Goma dance, Chutney music, band music, orchestra music, Indo-Afro-Jazz, and other forms of creolized music spaces. Historically, for the indentured Indian community in South Africa, the chutney songs which were composed in local Bhojpuri, pidgin English and current slang have functioned as an agency for voicing their pains and concerns against the dehumanizing sociopolitical policies of the European colonizers. The creolized musical practices of the African Indians in Gujarat also function as a tool of effective space for social mobility – feminine empowerment. During the urs of Bava Gor, the women from the African Indian community in Gujarat dance and sing songs for Mai Misra (sister of saint Bava Gor). This repertoire of worship is known as Mai na garba or Garba for Mai Misra. Originally, Garba was performed to worship Goddess Amba Mata in Gujarat and the “Siddi women have adapted garba to honour Mai Mishra.”
Overall, the book is a beautiful attempt to stitch complex sociological issues of ethnicity, identity, history, space, time, culture, polity, greetings, language, food, spirituality, diaspora, travel, caste, race, migration, colonization etc into a single piece of cultural fabric. This book genuinely challenges standardized textbook definitions, traditional epistemologies and methodology.
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Devanjan Khuntia is an Assistant Professor of Sociology at the School of Liberal Arts, Alliance University, Bangalore.