Siddi Dhamal Dance Traditional Siddi Dance of the Saurashtra Region

From the Indian Ocean world to the Gujarat coast

The Siddi are descended primarily from Bantu-speaking peoples of East and Southeast Africa. They reached the subcontinent through Indian Ocean trade and the slave trade, and also as sailors, merchants, indentured labourers and soldiers. The port of Bharuch in Gujarat is traditionally associated with the earliest arrivals, and historians record a much larger movement of Africans into the region between the thirteenth and nineteenth centuries, when captives were brought from present-day Ethiopia, Eritrea, Mozambique, Tanzania, Sudan and Zanzibar by Arab, Gujarati, Portuguese and later British traders.

In Gujarat, Siddi communities are concentrated around the Gir forest and the Junagadh region; the village of Sirvan, on the road to Deva-dungar, is described in reference sources as entirely Siddi. Local tradition holds that Siddi families were brought to serve the Nawab of Junagadh. Others trace descent from escaped slaves who formed forest communities. Both accounts circulate within the community and in written histories, and neither can be reduced to a single date.

How the dance took shape

Published documentation traces the Dhamal known today to nineteenth-century Gujarat, from where it spread to Sindh (where the community is called Sheedi) and to other parts of India. It grew out of the music, movement and ritual practices that diverse African-origin groups had developed as a shared language across differences of origin, language and status — a way of recognising one another and of holding a community together.

The devotional frame came from local Sufism. Bantu spirits and mythical ancestors were refigured as Siddi patron saints, above all Bava Gor (Gori Pir), his brother Bava Habash and their sister Mai Mishra. Shrines to these saints, including dargahs at Bharuch and in the Gir forest, became the spaces where Dhamal was performed and passed on. In the 1980s the Siddi were designated a Scheduled Tribe in Gujarat; since then community performers have increasingly been invited to present Dhamal at public functions, festivals and tourism events, and professional groups have toured in India and abroad.

In shrine-based observance, documentation records that participants wear everyday clothes with no special adornment. Dhamal there is an act of devotion rather than a show: the dress code is ordinary, and the "costume" is the gathering itself — bodies, voices and drums in a circle.

Professional troupes performing for festivals, tourism events and cultural programmes have adopted a very different visual language: face and body paint, feathered headdresses, cowrie-shell straps and fringed skirts. Accounts of where this costume came from differ. Many performers say it was introduced by outside promoters seeking a recognisable image of "Africa", and the costume is strictly excluded from sacred Siddi spaces, where many community members regard it as degrading.

There is no single fixed Siddi Dhamal costume to specify in a booking brief. If you want authenticity for a cultural festival, the more respectful request is a performance in the community's own presentation — and a conversation with the group about what they wear and why.