United Nations : Africans came to India as early as the 13th century as soldiers and there was no prejudice against them at that time. They intermarried with local women, daughters of rulers and notables, and rose to become princes and generals in an era of slavery in America, reports IANS.
Their unique global saga will be on display Wednesday at the UN General Assembly building in an exhibition on Africans in India. The contrast is striking between Africans taken in chains to the Americas to toil in plantations and those who were brought to India to fight as soldiers — opening the way for their rise through the ranks to eventually becoming free and reaching positions of power.
“It is very different from what we see in the Atlantic world,” said Sylviane A. Diouf, the director of the Lapidus Center for the Historical Analysis of Transatlantic Slavery in New York. She is the curator of the exhibition. “At least at that time we cannot see any strong prejudice in India,” she said of the African experience. “When we look at the high positions of some of the Africans, whether as rulers, as prime ministers, as generals etc., you can see that although they were foreign, they were black, they were of a different religion that did not prevent them from obtaining high positions.”
“They also intermarried with local women, daughters of rulers and notables,” she added. “There again we can see the absence of prejudice.” It is also a contrast to contemporary India, where Africans have come under physical and verbal attacks from politicians and thugs.
The exhibition is co-sponsored by the Indian Mission to the UN and the UN’s Department of Public Information in association with the Schomburg Center. Along with Diouf, the exhibition is co-curated by Kenneth X.Robbins, an art collector, expert in the history of Africans in India and co-editor of “Africans Elites in India: Habshi Amarat”. The exhibition features reproductions of paintings of the remarkable Africans who attained positions of power and influence. They were collected from museums and private collections in India, Europe and the United States, and photographs of the monuments, forts and palaces they built.