Dining with the Siddis in Bengaluru
Ruth Dsouza Prabhu eats a meal cooked by the Siddis from Yellapur, and through their food, gets a glimpse of their history, their reliance on the forest, and how this much-maligned community is slowly coming out into the world.
There is very little that can motivate me to sit through Bengaluru’s notorious traffic. A recent exception was for a curated Siddi (an African-origin ethnic community in India) food pop-up, anchored by the women of the community. The group came from Yellapur Taluk of the Idagundi Gram Panchayat, Beeragatti, around 435 kilometres from Bengaluru.
The women cooking this meal are the backbone of Damami (named after a traditional percussion instrument), a Siddi community-run stay in Yellapur. “This is India’s first Siddi women-led, community-based tourism programme,” says Sumesh Mangalassery of Suyatri Community Tourism, a Bengaluru-based social enterprise, adding that the initiative was developed by the Uttara Kannada Zilla Panchayat and Sanjeevini (NRLM) of the Government of Karnataka.
Before the meal was a casual chat, with all those who helped bring the pop-up to life, and 43-year-old Manjunath Ganapa Siddi aka Manjanna, a farmer, expert forager and “a doer of all things to uplift my Siddi community”.
He tells us the origins of the Siddis (also called Habshis), with the caveat that everything he says is oral history passed down from his elders. Though his knowledge does tally broadly with what is documented of the community, some parts needed a bit of additional research for a clearer perspective.
The Origin Story
The Siddis trace their origins to two groups — the Sidhamus and the Bantus, who lived on either side of a large lake called Nyasa (another name for Lake Malawi in eastern Africa). While the Bantus are a broad cultural group spread across eastern and southern Africa, the name Sidhamus does not appear in written records and could be a colloquial interpretation of the Sidama people of southern Ethiopia. That they were on either side of the river is geographically a stretch.
During the Portuguese colonial period (preceded by the Arabs, who began the practice and then later the British too), these people were forcibly taken, put onto ships under brutal conditions, and brought to India, first arriving in Goa. Many did not survive the journey, dying of starvation and disease at sea.
Those who survived faced different fates. Some escaped soon after arrival and fled into the forests of the Western Ghats. Others were sold in slave markets and put to work. Many were also recruited in the local kings’ armies. The forest groups lived in relative isolation for generations, gradually forming settlements near water sources and establishing relationships with nearby villages. Till about three decades ago, many Siddi families, from Karwar to Belgaum, still relied on barter, exchanging forest produce for rice and grains.
The Evolving Life of the Siddis
The Siddis’ lives, Manjanna tells me, have shifted in phases, shaped by displacement, labour, and slow recognition.
Those who had been enslaved, he says, gained freedom at the time of Indian independence and gradually merged with forest-dwelling Siddi communities. Over time, religious identities evolved depending on where families settled and whom they lived among. Siddis in Yellapur, Sirsi, and Ankola became largely Hindu, while those around Halliyala, Mundgod, and parts of Dharwad include Muslim and Christian communities. Formal recognition, however, came unevenly. Only some Siddi groups were granted Scheduled Tribe status, which allowed access to welfare schemes and opened the door for NGOs to work with the community. Voting rights came during Indira Gandhi’s tenure, followed by land allocation. In his own family, Manjanna says, this meant his grandfather received ten acres of land.
But daily life, especially during his childhood, remained difficult. People looked down on Siddis as untouchable and impure, he says, partly because of their African features and hair, and partly because of poverty and lack of exposure to the outside world. There was also inherited fear. His grandfather would warn against letting people wearing trousers come too close, a belief Manjanna links to memories of Portuguese slavery and later experiences of being judged by those who appeared more powerful or Westernised. In regions dominated by upper castes, Siddis moved largely as agricultural labourers, doing the hardest physical work, breaking soil, hoeing land, and climbing trees, work that continues even now.
Money, he explains, was never something they truly understood. The logic was simple: if you worked, you ate. Families tried to grow small amounts of food on the land around their homes, but even that land was often taken away. He recalls repeated evictions, land lost without compensation, and moments of desperation “when acres were given up for a few laddoos to fill an empty stomach”.
Change has come slowly to the community. By the time he was twelve, he realised that education could offer another path, though ill health kept him from pursuing it well. Now, many in the community are gradually gaining degrees, finding jobs, and learning to question authority. Forest produce remains central to life, even as memories of harassment by law enforcement, false cases, and hardship, especially for women, remain fresh. Yet, he says, there is a growing awareness. In his own family, that shift is visible; his younger brother is now a government teacher, and his sister is a civil engineer.
Sharing the wealth of forest knowledge is one way the Siddis are connecting with the world at large.
A Siddi Feast
The pop-up in Bangalore, called Salt of the Leaves, was curated by Chef Goku in collaboration with Suyatri and Forest Post. Read: Chef Goku’s visit to the forests in Yellapur.
The ingredients: all foraged from the community’s forests in Yellapur. Savitha, one of the cooks of the feast, who also handles the accounting at the Damami venture, says that in their daily food, at least one thing will always come from the forest. “What we cannot carry from the aranya (forest), we grow around our homes,” she adds. She learned how to forage from her mother and elders, and is passing this wisdom to her children.
The meal began with a copper tumbler of urli juice – a blend of cooked horse gram, black jaggery and cardamom. Mildly grainy in texture, the juice was like a fragrant, watered-down payasam without the trimmings. It is said to be an immunity booster and certainly whets the appetite.
Since it was a buffet, we started with the souli (red ant) soup, a mix of red ants, coconut, spices and several forest herbs. Savitha tells me that the red ants are an integral part of the Siddi diet. When harvesting, only a part of the ants are removed from the leafy nest, and the rest are left to rebuild and re-populate. Manjanna adds, quite proudly, that the soup saved his people from the Coronavirus. The community created a medicinal concoction of it with spices, herbs and leaves from the forest, like ram patre (wild mace). Each time, ten litres of the mix were boiled down to a litre – almost syrup-like and every member of the community was given a cup, once a week. Manjanna vouches that no one contracted the illness.
By way of appetisers, we had a range of sukkas like kokkra (mackerel), ona (mutton) and anabe (mushroom) sukka – some dry-fried, others a semi-gravy, with onions and chillies in the mix – all with coconut as the central ingredient.
Besides souli, the condiments included soppina (mixed greens) chutney was a dense mix of Brahmi (water hyssop), wild coriander, Ondelaga (Indian Pennywort), Sagude (Ceylon Oak tree leaves) and Murgulu (Kokum leaves).
Souli is a red ant soup.
Konge or snails are turned into a sukka.
For the main course, we started with the konge sukka, freshwater snails boiled first and then tossed with coconut, chillies and spices. There was kalalee (bamboo shoot) palya – the earthy shoots shredded along with the ubiquitous fresh coconut, quite reminiscent of a Coorg-style preparation. The baine gadde (fishtail palm) saaru is a thick curry of chunks of wild palm stem. Manjanna explains that the tree is only cut down when it is about to die (state laws prohibit it otherwise). “Inside is a soft pith, which we treat like grain, similar to ragi. The pith is pounded and soaked in water, which turns white. The heavier grains settle at the bottom. This is collected and sun-dried. One tree can give us close to a quintal (approximately 100 kilograms), and it is used regularly in making rotis, among other dishes,” he says.
Lajje mullu thambuli was a cooling, mildly spicy buttermilk with touch-me-not and Pennywort leaves. A mix of wild ferns, similar-looking to fiddlehead ferns, were given a modern twist, tossed in kokum butter and mustard seeds.
Mains included naati koli saaru (country chicken curry), a yedi curry (roasted mud crabs), mackerel, marinated with spices, peppers and vaate huli (monkey jack). Accompaniments included the kauili — a mix of sweet and savoury steamed cucumber mixed with rice rava, jaggery and cumin.
Kauili is a sweet and savoury steamed cucumber mixed with rice rava, jaggery and cumin.
For desserts, there was the beele obbattu (jackfruit seed flatbread), and menthe payasa, a milk payasam, with fenugreek, poppy seeds and cardamom, with a ghee tempering of cashew nuts.
Festive Celebrations
I spoke to Savitha much after this pop-up - she was basking in the joy of a community wedding that had just taken place. Earlier, weddings were a community affair - family and relatives would come and divide the work. Now, everything is outsourced. “But, the Akki (rice) payasa always was and continues to be made in the bride’s house. We bring fresh paddy from the fields and use jaggery from the sugarcane we grow at home.”
Manjanna speaks of another celebratory community congregation called Siddinyasa, which takes place in summer in Satanabailu near Ankola. The deity (comprising two black stones) is believed to have been brought by the original African community to India.“It is a secular celebration. One person from every Siddi household has to compulsorily attend. We have to take whatever we can afford to bring - rice, poultry, grains, etc and nothing is brought back. The festival runs for two days. Work is divided into three categories of food, worship, and cultural activities, and the groups take responsibility, discuss, and execute them together. There are Damami songs and dances, and now nearly 15,000 people gather, including people from other communities who come to see and participate,” explains Manjanna.
Through conversations with Manjanna and the Siddi women, I learn that these the Siddi community, while still rooted in the forest is steadily redefining its future.
Ruth Dsouza Prabhu is an independent features journalist based in Bengaluru, India. She has been writing on food for almost two decades. Her work has appeared in New York Times, Al Jazeera, Mint Lounge, and Conde Nast Traveller, among others.
Images credit: Terrence Manne.
ALSO ON GOYA
