Beyond the margins: place, narratives, and maritime circuits in Diu

Abstract

This article explores the traces of maritime connections across the Indian Ocean in the island of Diu, a Portuguese territory on the Gujarat coast until 1961 with historic privileged contacts with Mozambique. An investigation of the existing heritage materialities is intersected with an ethnographic study of life stories from the Vanza community, once dedicated to weaving. Following other local social groups, the Vanza started migrating to Mozambique at the turn of the twentieth century. The ethnographic findings suggest that crossing different layers of heritages and remains that these circulations left in Diu with life narratives draws us to alternative cartographies of the Indian Ocean world and to a constellation of experiences and sensory worlds that constitute this region.