The Image of The African in Indian Paintings and Photographs
-
|
19 Jan
2026
|
Indian Aesthetics
|
|
Kenneth X. Robbins
|
Image: Portrait of Malik Amber, Ahmednagar, early 17th century, Private Collection
India is the only place outside of Africa where there were African rulers and African court elites. The sultanates of Bijapur and Ahmednagar came under the domination of African strongmen. Africans were also prominent in other sultanates as well as Hindu ruled states like Kutch and Nawanagar. Until 1948, two small states on the west coast of India, Janjira and Sachin, were ruled by African dynasties. Africans were not usually depicted as “the Other” or as members of a poorly regarded minority group in the Muslim and Hindu court miniature and gouache paintings of the sixteenth through nineteenth centuries. Most of the subjects are rulers, queens and concubines, strongmen, nobles, soldiers, eunuchs, maidservants, Sufis and Muslim scholars. Paintings of poor Afro-South Asians are less common. In some paintings, it is difficult to distinguish Africans from other Indians with similar dark skins or physiognomy unless the subject is identified.
Duration -
January 19, 2026
Timing: Tea: 6:00 PM | Lecture: 6:30 - 8:00 PM IST
Register
Kenneth X. Robbins
Dr. Robbins is a collector-archivist specializing in South Asia and international crises in Asia, Africa, and the Ottoman empire. Most of his exhibitions and publications deal with South Asia’s local and regional rulers as well as its minority groups [like Jews and Africans]. He has edited or written eighteen books as well as 160 articles. He is the co-curator of a New York Public Library Schomburg Center traveling exhibition Africans in India, which was shown at dozens of venues worldwide including the Indira Gandhi National Centre for the Arts, the United Nations, and UNESCO. He is the co-editor of the groundbreaking study African Elites in India and other publications that draw heavily on his Afro-South Asian collections for information and illustrations. He has specialized in documenting totally different aspects of Afro-South Asia in the African global diaspora with books like African Rulers and Generals in India, African Diasporan Communities across South Asia, and Black Ambassadors of Politics, Religion, and Jazz in India. His other publications have included articles on subjects ranging from Gujaratis in Africa to Indian Jews in African-ruled Janjira.