ABSTRACT

The Siddis are an ethnic community who are believed to be the descendants of Zulu people from South Africa. Historical records reveal that the Siddis arrived in India with the Portuguese from Cape of Good Hope in the fifteenth century. Though the Siddis have been residing in India for the last 500 years, yet they only came to the limelight during the 1990s through Special Areas Games Scheme project and media stories. Most of the media stories in the forms of photographs and captions were a combination of half-hearted research, historical distortions, over-romanticism, stereotypes and generalisation of society, culture and lifestyles of the Siddis. In this way, they continued to re-manufacture the problematic visual-colonial narratives, which were once manufactured by the Portuguese in India and channelised across the globe. This process of visual colonisation, through different photography projects, government plans and media documentaries, continues even today. Keeping these aspects at the backdrop, the chapter will explore how the governing systems and the media houses, through visual colonisation, continue to kill the Siddi cultures, traditions, lifestyles, mythologies, histories and the economy with kindness.