ABSTRACT
This introductory article to the special issue “Narrating Africa in South Asia” situates the African diaspora in the subcontinent against the broader backdrop of global mobilizations against systemic racism, economic inequality, inaccessible justice, and colonial educational system. The historical and contemporary experiences of Afro-descendants in South Asia are different from their North American and European counterparts on several fronts, even though they all experienced similar trials of obligatory migration and forced labour, slavery, marginalization, etc. In South Asia, racism is a constricted debating point among scholars and activists while its existence is largely rejected or downplayed in the public sphere. The Afro-descendants have been at the receiving end of various racist and racialist discriminations and their experiences resonate with many other systemic conundrums in the region. Here I lay out five key trends in the current state of research, and I argue that the narratives about them still need to be given a critical focus, with analyses of their forms, structures, contexts and histories. The present issue contributes to this attempt and fills important lacunae, especially with regard to the narrativization of racialism and racism as expressed in various genres. The contributors compose powerful narratives to reveal nuanced layers of reflective, rhetorical, stereotypical, populist, racialist, racist, or caste frameworks. These narratives horizontally and vertically command an appeal to the long historical and contemporary realities in the subcontinent, as well as to the struggles of African communities now gaining prominence all over the world.
