Geographies of death and memory: shrines dedicated to African saints and spectral deities in India

African presence in the western Indian states of Gujarat and Kerala is remembered and revived by different subaltern communities through the palimpsestic spatial layering of sacred landscapes and geographies of death. In the city of Ahmedabad in Gujarat, there are several small mazars (shrines) dedicated to deceased African martyrs and saints. In addition to these small shrines, there are also a few mausoleums from the sixteenth century dedicated to African martyrs. On the other hand, in coastal Kochi in southern India, African memoryscapes survive through shrines dedicated to Kappiris (Africans) in Hindu sacred groves where benevolent African spirits continue to intercede in the lives of their devotees. While African cultural memories in the states of Gujarat and Kerala are fragmented, these dispersed and far-flung sacred edifices constructed to commemorate the lives of deceased Africans serve as active sites of memory. Employing ethnographic methodologies, I demonstrate how multiple narratives of African pasts are constructed by invested stakeholders through ritual transactions and memory-making practices at these spirited topographies in Kerala and Gujarat.