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I am from India, and I have been following with interest the exchanges on reparations for slave trade. In two of the exchanges, I read about African slaves having been taken to India. Though I am primarily a biologist, I possess more than a casual familiarity with Indian history. Can the contributors give me the references from which they got this information? I have been told of a couple of villages in coastal Konkan (about 300 km south of Mumbai) that are populated predominantly with people having Negroid features. On my inquiry, I was told that they are descendants of African people who had been engaged in trans-Indian Ocean trade, and who had come ashore after ship wrecks. The coastline in some areas of peninsular India is rocky. There has been an active trans-Indian Ocean trade between east Africa and the west coast of peninsular India, Sri Lanka, and Indonesia from prehistoric times (cf. UNESCO's History of Africa Volume II 1981, for instance. There also are more recent references). Can someone give me the the references about African slaves haven been taken to India, so I can possibly pursue the matter? NM Nayar
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