Introduction: Transoceanic Roots and Routes

Apart from various types of musical instruments, as discussed in Chapter 4, the African Indians and the South African Indians traveled to India and South Africa, respectively, with seeds and saplings of different traditional plants that are local to their respective geographical areas of origin. For instance, when the Indians arrived in South Africa, they carried saplings and seeds of basil, neem, curry leaf, mango, tamarind, and many others, while the Africans in India arrived with the seeds and saplings of baobab tree, lady finger, coffee beans, tomatoes, and many others. The seeds and the saplings were not just mere objects for these communities but functioned as cultural memories through which they could remain associated with their ancestral roots, even though they were physically displaced.

Today, in the states of Gujarat and Madhya Pradesh in India, the use of Khorasani Imli in vegetables, chutneys, and pickles are quite common. In the late Middle Ages, the Persian word “Khorasan” was used to denote the present-day country of Iran, and Khorasani Imli refers to the seeds of the Baobab tree that were brought to India by the Africans from eastern, northern, and southern Africa (whitehorsepress 2018). The Baobab seeds are referred to as Khorasani because they were brought by the Africans who came through Iran with the Islamic invaders as slaves and are referred to as Imli because they taste sour like tamarinds (known as Imli in the Hindi language). On an identical note, a lot of the houses of the South African Indians in South Africa (especially the Hindus), consists of mango trees, curry leaf plants, tamarind plants, and basil leave plants. It is so because, a majority of the indentured Indians came to South Africa from the southern parts of India, where tamarind and curry leaves are habitually used in cooking. Besides consuming tamarind and curry leaves, mango leaves and basil leaves are widely used in performing various religious, cultural, and spiritual rituals by South African Indian Hindus.

Before discussing further about the culinary practices of the Siddis in Gujarat and the South African Indians in Durban, Pretoria, and Johannesburg, it is crucial to mention that the culinary practices of the Siddis in the contemporary era are no different from the local Indian communities.