ABSTRACT The Siddi community came to India mostly as slaves and sailors. In the Princely State of Hyderabad, Siddis were closely linked to the ruling elites of the Asaf Jahi dynasty (1724–1948) as soldiers, guards, riders and stable keepers. They worked in Nizam’s army, police forces and formed the Nizam’s Royal Body Guards, the Siddi Risala, which was exclusively made of people from African descent. As pre-colonial slavery in the Indian Ocean was not race specific, this article argues that in contemporary popular understanding, the stereotypes assigned to Siddis and their self-realization of a black African identity are deeply embedded in a global matrix of knowledge production. For example, Siddis are seen as an exotic presence who are ‘discovered’ every time someone publishes on them. Based on my fieldwork among Siddis in Hyderabad and Gujarat, this article elaborates on the idea of how race is constructed in a non-western location. The meanings immanent in race as a category do not preclude understandings borrowed from western discourse. I further argue that there is no authentic Siddi identity and the history that Siddis have come to internalize cannot be understood without locating it in the matrices of knowledge production.

中文翻译：

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所有权和真实性的跨地方概念：了解古吉拉特邦（Gujarat）和海德拉巴（Sydis）之间的种族

摘要Siddi社区主要以奴隶和水手身份来到印度。在海得拉巴王储州，锡迪斯与阿萨夫·贾希王朝（1724-1948年）的统治精英有密切的联系，他们是士兵，警卫，骑手和马stable。他们在尼扎姆（Nizam）的军队，警察部队中工作，并组建了尼扎姆（Nizam）的皇家卫队Siddi Risala，后者仅由非洲裔后裔组成。由于印度洋的前殖民奴隶制不是特定种族的，因此本文认为，在当代流行的理解中，赋予锡迪斯的刻板印象及其对黑人非洲身份的自我实现已深深植根于全球知识生产矩阵中。例如，Siddis被视为一种异国情调的存在，每次有人在其上发布时都会被“发现”。根据我在海德拉巴和古吉拉特邦（Siddis）的实地考察，本文详细阐述了如何在非西方地区构建种族。种族中固有的意义不排除从西方话语中借来的理解。我进一步指出，没有真实的西迪身份，没有将西迪迪斯融入内部的历史就不能定位在知识生产的矩阵中。