In Sasan Gir in Gujarat, we saw this ‘Peacock Dance’. We were astonished at the style and the beat of the dance,Pop art oil painting, which felt completely African. The body structure of the men performing the dance did not feel Indian either. It felt like a troop of dancers that flew in from a country in Africa. I was told that the dancers came from the ‘Negro Village’. And when went there the next day, we found a village (and then many more) where everyone looked completely African but spoke and were culturally completely Gujarati. They told me they were descended from the people that were brought in by the Nawab of Junagargh, but some said that they had descended from fr earlier times,handmade oil paintings, when the Arab traders brought Abbisynian slaves many many generations ago. The term ‘Negro Village’ is the local term,Decorative painting, not mine.
