Africans in Indian history
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I
WHEN BLACK WAS NO BAR
Manimugdha Sharma The Times of India Oct 10 2014
Arab traders brought them as slaves but once in India, Africans did not face racial discrimination. They could rise in military service or the courts of emperors, and some went on to found dynasties.
Behind the high walls of a lost fortress in what is today south Delhi blossomed the love story of Delhi's first woman ruler and her Abyssinian general.Historians are divided if it was love or just a strong bonding, but popular literature has forever paired Razia Sultan with Jamal-ud-din Yaqut. Yet it was this love or bonding that doomed both. The powerful Turkic nobles in Razia's court loathed the meteoric rise of Yakut from a slave to Amir ul Umara (premier noble). We don't know if he was hated for the colour of his skin, but the Turks pejoratively referred to him as “habshi“ (someone from Al Habsh or Abyssinia, the modern-day Ethiopia) and considered him inferior to them.
There is a Mughal paint ing depicting two Africans in a group sharing a light moment. It hints at a more open-minded Indian society in the mediaeval period. “It amazes us to this day how Indian society was so remarkably open in the past. It didn't distinguish between whites and blacks. The idea behind our exhibition was to showcase this multicoloured picture of India and the contribu tion Africans made towards completing it. We chose the title because the Indian masses today do not know much about the Afro-Indian community . Through these stories people will know that Africans did not come to India yesterday and will get an insight into the rich history of the AfroIndians,“ said Dr Sylviane A Diouf, curator. The journey of Africans to India was itself fascinating: captured by Arab slave traders, they were packed into hell ships that came to India via the Indian Ocean and its surrounding seas. They were bought by kings, princes, rich merchants and aristocrats and were referred to as habshis or Siddis. But not all remained slaves. Some like Yakut made their own destiny .
Malik Kafur, for instance, was a transgender slave bought by Sultan Alauddin Khilji's general Nusrat Khan for a thousand dinars. Kafur caught the fancy of the sultan and rose through the ranks, becoming his deputy and entering history books as Nawab Hazar Dinari. In his last days, an enfeebled Khilji was at the mercy of Kafur who effectively ruled Delhi and also played kingmaker after the sultan's death.
In the Deccan, Africans made a deeper impact on the political landscape. One of the architects of the Deccan's resistance to Mughal expansion was Malik Ambar, an African who served as prime minister and general of Ahmadnagar, one of the offshoots of the Bahmani kingdom.
Ambar is said to be the father of guerrilla warfare in India since he used his Maratha cavalry to harass the Mughals with great effect. Frustrated, Emperor Jahangir nursed extreme hatred for Ambar, and one of the paintings at the exhibition shows him firing arrows at the severed head of Ambar--a fancy he could only realize on canvas.
The Bijapur state had a clique of habshi nobles led by Ikhlas Khan, a powerful general. That the title `Khan' (reserved only for people of high birth at that time) was bestowed upon him shows that Africans could break the glass ceiling.
Some Africans, like the Siddis of Janjira, even set up independent kingdoms. The Siddis commanded Mughal navies and were respected by both Marathas and the European powers. The Janjira state and its successor state of Sachin survived until Independence.
An exhibition called `Africans in India: A Rediscovery' has been put together by Schomburg Center of New York Public Library. It traces the extraordinary achievements of Africans in India since the 1300s.
“India has been a long-time meritocracy. Whatever your background, you could move up the ranks. Nowhere else in the world have Africans been able to rule outside Africa,“ said Dr Kenneth X Robins, curator.
II
In the latter half of the third decade of the 13th century , there was a scandalous rumour in Delhi: one that linked India's first Muslim woman ruler, Sultan Raziya, with her Abyssinian general Jamal-ud-din Yaqut.
Nobody could say it for sure if the two were romantically involved, but the rumour helped conspiring nobles in the royal court to kill two birds with one shot -delegitimise the rule of a woman sultan by arraigning her character, and portray a very powerful noble as a perfidious man indulging in amoral dalliances with the ruler of the realm.
This powerful Turkic clique, called the `chahalgani', had another reason for disliking Yaqut--he was a `habshi'.
The recent spate of racial attacks on people of African origin in Greater Noida has brought to focus once again the xenophobia that blacks inspire among Indians.
One just has to pore over news reports, or hear things said on the ground for the last couple of days, to find multiple instances of the use of `habshi' by those treating black Africans with suspicion. Though it's doubtful how many people actually know the historicity of the term or its association with Delhi.
Back in the medieval age, the Horn of Africa was the favourite hunting ground of slave traders, first the Arabs, and then Europeans. A region of the Horn of Africa was referred to as Al-Habash by the Arabs and its people, the Habashis or Abyssinians.
When these people came to India, either as traders or slaves, they were referred to as `habshis', a Persianised version of habashis. And just as it happens with time, the term came to be associated with any black person in India. But while it's unknown what sort of experience African merchants and traders had in India, many of those who came as slaves were destined for greatness.
The Mamluks, who were the first Muslim dynasty to rule from Delhi, were slaves themselves but not in the modern understanding of the word. The egalitarian nature of medieval Islam meant that being a slave didn't lock the fortunes of a man -a slave could rise to nobility and even kingship if he had it in him. And since these sultans promoted meritocracy, it ates promoted meritocracy , it was perfectly possible for a black African slave to rise through the ranks and even become king. And no, they didn't need the help of fairness creams to gain acceptability in Indian society.
The Deccan, in particular, became a land of opportunity for African slaves, who influenced the political landscape. The most famous among them was Malik Ambar, the prime minister of Ahmednagar and Bijapur, the splinter states of the Bahmani Sultanate. It was he who had led the long resistance against Mughal expansion. It was he who frustrated Akbar and his son Jahangir. And it was he who had famously roped in the Marathas in this struggle and taught them the shoot and scoot tactics (ganimi kava) for which they became renowned. Bijapur, in particular, had many high-ranking nobles of African extraction led by another legendary general, Ikhlas Khan (the fact that he got the title Khan is a statement of the open-mindedness of the Indian society of the time). Also in the Deccan rose a full-fledged dynasty of African rulers in the Siddis of Janjira. Originally allies of the Bijapur Sultanate, the Siddis later became Mughal allies. After losing naval power to the British, they managed to retain their state and found another independent state called Sachin in Gujarat. Both continued until India's Independence.
Elsewhere in the east, four African slaves-turnedsultans ruled Bengal in quick succession, between 1487 and 1494. That period is referred to as `Habshi Rule'.
However, it would be wrong to assume that all was hunky dory even when these fascinating and highly talented men held sway . Political opposition to them would often be coloured with racial hatred. For instance, Jahangir got a dream sequence captured in canvas where he shot an arrow on the severed head of Malik Ambar while abusing him for his colour and African descent. In reality, Jahangir could never defeat Ambar. Cut to modern times and there is little or no memory left among Indians of the African association they once had. What has survived, unfortunately , is the racial hatred, now only more pronounced, as the Greater Noida episode has shown.
