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Thursday, July 9, 2020
The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com
MICHIGAN IN COLOR

The Siddi people, ‘India’s 
forgotten African tribe’

In harmonious 3/3 time, the feet 
of the Siddi people bounce up and 
down with vigor, excitement and 
passion. They’re dancing in a semi-
circle formation with movements 
slightly organized as a kora —an 
African-style drum — plays briskly, 
complementing their tempo. In 
a mix of song and chant, they let 
out words that are foreign to me, 
seemingly native to Africa — clear-
ly telling some sort of story. And 
according to the crowd, it was a 
captivating one at that. 
Six men dancing are adorned 
in a white shell necklace, a bright 
orange and black skirt and a grass-
covered belt. Their headbands 
matched the bottom — bright 
orange and black with mock horns 
extending from out the top. Deco-
rative face paint juxtaposes their 
skin, and the men move their lean 
bodies gracefully within their pack, 
displaying 
immaculate 
rhythm 
and practice, almost resemblant 
of antelope. Their movements 
are hypnotizing in a sense. Their 
movements exude sincere passion 
and incite a sort of magnetism, for-
bidding you remove your glance, 
and I can’t help but move my own 
body side to side a bit, entrapped by 
the group’s chant and song.
Over the six or seven trips I’ve 
taken to India in my life, I can’t 
recount a time I saw one Black per-
son; as I continue to educate myself 
on the Black Liberation Move-
ment worldwide, I questioned this. 
With a population of over 1.3 bil-
lion people hailing from various 

parts of the word, and in a place 
that shares cultural, geographic 
and religious similarities to several 
African countries, I felt inclined to 
research the history and state of 
Black lives in India today.
The Siddi people, “India’s for-
gotten African tribe,” are the 
notorious African Indians. It is 
estimated that the Siddis settled in 
India around 700 and 900 AD from 
Bantu or other Sub-Saharan tribes, 
enslaved by Indian rulers. How-
ever due to their physical strength, 
many were able to take up roles as 
soldiers in political warfare. An 
extremely famous Siddi, Malik 

Ambar, was known to be a great 
asset to the Maratha kings of India, 
introducing guerrilla warfare — 
previously used in Africa — to help 
defeat Mughals. As time passed, 
some Siddis bought freedom and 
some created their own commu-
nities in forests, often becoming 
entertainers, musicians and seers 
to survive. 
In the modern day, around 
55,000 Siddis live scattered across 
a few Indian states (Karnataka — 
where most are — Maharashtra, 
Andhra Pradesh, Gujarat...

The most forgotten 
humanitarian crisis

The people of Yemen feel like 
the world has forgotten them, and 
with 80 percent of Yemen’s popula-
tion in need of humanitarian assis-
tance, it is a reasonable question to 
ask: “Has the world forgotten about 
Yemen?” However, for most, the 
more pressing question is, “what is 
even going on in Yemen?”
The Arab Spring, a wave of pro-
democracy protests and upris-
ings which spread across the Arab 
world in 2010, catalyzed Yemen’s 
fight for democracy, which pushed 
the former president of Yemen out 
of power and instated his deputy. 
The political transition exacer-
bated the low standard of living 
in Yemen, prompting a civil war 
to begin in 2015. The war quickly 
evolved from a fight for democracy 
to a proxy war, in which Saudi Ara-
bia and Iran are backing opposite 
sides, using Yemen as their play-
ground. Saudi Arabia is at fault for a 
military campaign which launched 
over 21,000 — and counting — air 
strikes on civilians and the creation 
of a coalition that is responsible for 
a land, sea and air barrier around 
Yemen, making it impossible for 
the Yemeni people to receive aid. 
Years of continuous air strikes, 
relentless weaponization of aid and 
innumerable violations of humani-
tarian laws have left Yemen in 
the worst humanitarian crisis the 
world has ever seen. As the war 
continues to destroy Yemen’s infra-
structure, the issues of massive 
unemployment, food insecurity 
and lack of health resources run 

MAYA KADOUH 
MiC Staff Writer

rampant, resulting in over 3 mil-
lion people internally displaced, 
approximately 20 million people 
hungry, 19 million people without 
access to clean drinking water and 
nearly 20 million without access 
to basic health services. For refer-
ence, Yemen’s population is just 
over 28 million; in other words, if 
you were to equate the situation 
in Yemen to the United States, 187 
million Americans would wake up 
hungry each day. As the war con-
tinues, these issues get worse, and 
bearing the brunt are the children, 
who are severely malnourished, 
without education — robbed of 
a bright future. The children of 
Yemen are at devastating odds with 
45 percent of children under the 
age of 5 having permanent mental 
or physical disabilities. 
As COVID-19 devastates devel-
oped countries, it hits Yemen, a 
war-torn country with the larg-
est humanitarian crisis, the hard-
est. With only five labs capable of 
testing for COVID-19, it is impos-
sible to know the true effect of the 
pandemic in Yemen. However, it is 
known that the population is dying 
at a higher rate than the rest of the 
world: 25 percent of people with 
COVID-19 in Yemen die, which is 
5.9 times higher than the global 
average. This should come with no 
surprise that a healthcare system 
destroyed by the war cannot sup-
port its people; there are two hos-
pital beds for every 7,000 people, 
only a few hundred ventilators and 
many hospitals closed in fear of 
contamination. 

Read more at michigandaily.com

SUNITHA PALAT
MiC Staff Writer

Read more at michigandaily.com

Immigrant solidarity with the Black Liberation Movement 

Read more at michigandaily.com

 Design by Hibah Chughtai

SHAY SZABO
MiC Staff Writer

From one immigrant to another, 
We both know the fight for 
migrant rights has been a long bat-
tle against divisive laws and his-
torical injustices over-policing our 
immigrant lives. Our immigrant 
communities have faced injustice 
at the hands of those in power who 
value political rhetoric over the 
well-being of human lives. Ameri-
ca is a nation built on immigrants, 
yet, we immigrants are historically 
disregarded as second-class citi-
zens whose statuses are constantly 
threatened and whose identities 

are commonly exploited in various 
social institutions. 
Racial profiling, police abuse 
and discrimination are not com-
monalities exclusive to the immi-
grant community — they are fiercly 
prominent in the Black commu-
nity as well. The Black Liberation 
Movement and the fight for immi-
grant 
rights 
continuously 
run 
parallel and are currently both 
receiving great attention. From 
Emmett Till to George Floyd, we 
have seen the monstrous violence 
imposed on our Black brothers and 
sisters. This centuries-long racial 
inequity perpetuates all levels of 
social institutions including educa-

tion, the work-force, the criminal 
justice system, healthcare, hous-
ing and even food security. Current 
statistics show that Black Ameri-
can mothers are dying at 12 times 
the rate of white mothers during 
childbirth in NYC. This inequity 
is reflected in our law enforcement 
system where the extrajudicial kill-
ings of Black people at the hands 
of law enforcement has turned to 
American tradition. Police abuse 
extends to the immigration com-
munity through racial profiling. 
Arizona’s Senate Bill 1070 was 
passed in 2010 asserting...

 Design by Hibah Chughtai

