RESEARCH ABOUT SIDDIS PEOPLE
•The Siddis of western India and southern Pakistan are descendants of early African immigrants and of enslaved Africans brought to western India by the Portuguese and other groups from the sixteenth century onwards.
•Based on DNA information it would appear that about 50% of the Indian Siddi population are descendants of Bantus from East Africa, while many others are descendants of Ethiopians.
•Africans have traveled and lived as merchants and sailors in South Asia for at least 1500 years. Others came as soldiers with the spread of Islam since about the 11th century. The Siddis living today in Karnataka-India are mostly the descendants of enslaved Africans brought to Goa on India’s west coast by the Portuguese between the 16th – 19th centuries. These people gradually escaped bondage and moved southward into the remote Western Ghatt mountains of Northern Karnataka where they created independent, African Diaspora communities not unlike the cimarron (maroon) communities of the Caribbean or the quilombos of Brazil. Today, the Siddi descendants of those Africans live in small villages scattered in the forests and high plains and number about 20,000 to 25,000.
•Although the Siddis have adopted many Indian characteristics, there are still some cultural elements that are regarded as their own and of African origin. These include the making and use of patchwork quilts, known locally as kawandi. These are made by women and used as covers, mattresses and quilts.
ABOUT KAWANDI QUILTS
•Kawandi are often called patchwork quilts, but technically they are made in an appliqué technique.
•Starting at one corner of the sari, the women begin to work their way around, fixing the patches in place with lines of back stitch or running stitch, until the entire sari is covered. The stitches are seen as important, as they add a distinctive ‘rhythm’ that is regarded as the part of the ‘visual signature’ of the maker, along with the colours, designs, shapes and sizes of the cloth patches that individuals choose to use.
•The final step is to sew at each corner of the quilt one or more folded square patches, which form a multi-layered triangle called a phula, or ‘flower.’ These serve no specific function, but they are regarded as essential to a properly finished or ‘dressed’ Siddi quilt.
•A kawandi would be regarded as ‘naked’ without the phula.
•Kawandi Patchwork quilts, built on cotton sari bases by the Siddi (Africans) of India. The quilts come in sizes that are measured in a way that intimately connects the user to the maker. The sizes generally fall into several categories and are measured by a ‘hand’—the length between the elbow and fingertips of the quilter.
• The size categories are large/ family (6 by 6 hands), double (5 by 6 hands), single (3 by 5 hands) and baby/crib (2 by 3 hands).
MET WITH SIDDIS PEOPLE
LOOKS
