the culture clash issue

Out of
India
A wave of brutal violence
against visiting college
students from Africa has
forced India to examine
its racism problem.
BY PAMPOSH RAINA
PHOTOGRAPHS BY MAHESH SHANTARAM

FOREIGNPOLICY.COM 63
 THICK WHITE CURTAINS with a colorful
zigzag pattern only partially block
the scorching sun from the living
room of Sandra Adaora Okoyeegbe’s
rented apartment on the outskirts
of New Delhi. An episode of BKChat
LDN streaming on YouTube flashes on
a modest flat-screen TV mounted on a
wall. The 21-year-old African student
calls the recently launched British web
series a “chat show,” each episode fea-
turing a group of mostly black, young
participants who exchange their views
on issues including the racism they
contend with in the U.K. Okoyeegbe
has faced it in India, too.
A Nigerian from the southern state of
Anambra, she left her home to pursue
an undergraduate degree in pharmacy
at one of the private universities that
have mushroomed in recent years in
Greater Noida, a suburb about 25 miles
south of New Delhi’s center. “Indians
have racism in them, even the educated
ones,” she says, with a trace of sarcasm.
“They think because of the color of our
skin, we are lesser than them. We face
racism here every day.”
In March, not far from her neighbor-
hood, a roving mob beat up a number
of African students in multiple attacks.
Some of the violence was captured on a
widely circulated video of Indian men
storming into a local shopping mall,
kicking and punching a black man, and
thrashing him with metal trashcans
and stools. The severely injured vic-
tim, a young Nigerian, survived, but
Okoyeegbe and many other Africans in
the area feared enough for their safety
to remain indoors for several days, in
some cases weeks. Even now, Okoy-
eegbe says, “I cry seeing that video.”
The rampage followed the death of
an Indian teenager. A few days earlier,
when the young man was reported
missing, rumors buzzed that Nige-
rian men had kidnapped him, and lurid
tales of cannibalism ensued—until he
came back home in a dazed state. He
was rushed to a nearby hospital, where
64 JULY | AUGUST 2017
PREVIOUS PAGE:
Photojournalist Mahesh Shantaram
began his project on Africans
and racism in 2016 following an
attack on a Tanzanian woman in
the Indian city of Bangalore. The
incident moved many people,
both Indians and foreigners, to
respond. One of them was Amina
Abubakar (right), from Ghana, a
mass communications student in
Hyderabad. In February 2016, she
posted a video on Facebook in which
she called out Indians for their
racism. “Africans are not beggars, we
are human beings,” she said under
the social media alias “Wumbey
Mina.” The video went viral. Hokar
Ahmed, from Kurdistan, is her fellow
mass communications student. He
and Abubakar have become so close
that they’re nearly inseparable.
he died. Soon unsubstantiated reports
surfaced that he’d overdosed on drugs
provided by some Nigerian men living
in the area. After the teenager’s parents
filed a complaint, the police detained
the alleged culprits, but there wasn’t
sufficient evidence to hold them, and
the men were released. The African link
to the episode refused to die, and anger
toward the community boiled over.
That tension is connected, in part,
to a widespread belief about Nige-
rians in Indian society—that they
all sell drugs or are a social menace.
Respected Indian publications have
indeed reported on Nigerians’ dispro-
portionate involvement in drug traf-
ficking in some Indian cities, and many
Africans, irrespective of their nation-
alities, have been subjected to a pre-
sumption of criminality. And there is
minimal social exchange between the
Indian and African communities to
help dispel these stereotypes.
The past few years have seen sev-
eral clashes between the locals and an
expatriate African population of about
40,000 by some estimates, many of
them students. In 2013, a minister in
the state government of Goa was criti-
cized for referring to Nigerians as a “can-
cer.” The following year, a mob assaulted
a group of young men from Gabon and
Burkina Faso in New Delhi—an attack
posted on YouTube. In January 2016,
Indians and Africans alike were appalled
again when a Tanzanian student was
pulled out of a car, beaten, and partially
stripped in the southern Indian city of
Bangalore. She was allegedly targeted
by an irate mob after an intoxicated
Sudanese student ran his car over a
couple, killing the woman and injur-
ing the man. The Tanzanian student
didn’t even know the Sudanese driver.
She and her friends had only driven
through the accident site and inquired
about the earlier incident. The police
confirmed that she was presumed to
have been involved with the crime, sim-
ply because she was African. (Five men
were arrested for their assault on her.)
The recent violence in Greater Noida
has only driven a deeper wedge between
Africans and their host country.
Whether there has been an actual
escalation in attacks on Africans or sim-
ply more news coverage of such events
is debatable. But the conflict suggests
that street-level Indo-African relations
are dangerously unmoored from dip-
lomatic policy and the historic cama-
raderie that has long existed between
India and Africa.
MANY INDIANS MAY BE UNAWARE that Afri-
cans have long lived among them—
their descendants, known as the Siddis,
inhabit India’s west coast and parts of
its south. Their ancestors are believed
to have been cavalrymen and slaves
who came with Muslim invaders in the
medieval era. Some of them ascended
to powerful military positions and even
became provincial rulers in western
India. The Siddis have retained ele-
ments of their musical and artistic
heritage even as they have assimilated
into Indian society. A smaller wave of
Africans also came to India as slaves
with the European colonizers, and

Mika’ilu Yahaya “Hudu” (left), an
undergraduate business major, and
Abubakar Garba, working toward a
degree as a medical technician, are both
Nigerians studying at NIMS University, in
Jaipur. Like many other African students,
they live in Achrol, a village an hour and a
half from the city center by public transit.
Hudu and Garba were involved in two
separate violent incidents in March 2017
and have been lying low ever since. They
heard of each other’s experiences through
the grapevine and met for the first time
only when this portrait was taken. Hudu
was mugged and beaten with a cricket bat,
and Garba was harassed by a gang of boys
in a market. In both cases, the police acted
swiftly in rounding up the suspects.
some 60,000 people of African origin
live in India today, scholars estimate.
In modern times, a natural affinity
has existed among the once colonized
lands of the global south. India took to
international forums to champion Afri-
ca’s liberation from imperialism and
sought an end to apartheid in South
Africa. Mohandas K. Gandhi once said,
“India’s freedom will remain incom-
plete so long as Africa remains in bond-
age.” That moral solidarity underpinned
India’s decision to extend diplomatic,
financial, and material assistance to
African nations from the time it formed
its first independent government under
the leadership of Jawaharlal Nehru.
It was in South Africa that a young
Gandhi developed satyagraha, the
philosophy of nonviolent resistance
that served as an important tool in
India’s fight against the British. That
ideology deeply influenced the anti-
colonial struggles of South Africa’s
Nelson Mandela, Ghana’s Kwame
Nkrumah, Kenya’s Jomo Kenyatta,
Tanzania’s Julius Nyerere, and Zambia’s
Kenneth Kaunda, among others. The
intercontinental ties, strengthened
during the Cold War, brought scholars
from Africa: Prime Minister Narendra
Modi has noted that many African heads
of state, past and present, have received
some form of education or training
in India.
In 1971, the foundation of the pres-
tigious Symbiosis International Uni-
versity was laid in the western city of
Pune with the aim to accommodate
international students—which it did
with not a fraction of the violence that
has become all too common. Today, the
school enrolls 3,000 foreign students,
primarily from Africa. “The tears of a for-
eign student was the turning point in my
life,” says S.B. Mujumdar, the university’s
octogenarian founder. The plight of
a homesick Mauritian with jaundice
led to Mujumdar’s zealous efforts to
promote dialogue between the local and
foreign students. Even today, reports
FOREIGNPOLICY.COM 65
 of assaults on Africans living there are
rare, perhaps due to early, deliberate
efforts to sensitize Indians.
Indian government agencies provide
little useful data on the African student
population currently in the country as
a whole. But the Association of African
Students in India estimates that some
25,000 Africans are currently studying
in India, a substantial portion of them
in Greater Noida. The area is one of the
newest developments on the outskirts of
the Indian capital, representing a slice of
the new, aspirational India on the cusp of
urbanization. Most of the original inhab-
itants are rural Indians; even those newly
enriched by the real estate boom have
had limited exposure to foreign cultures.
They jostle against a young, upwardly
mobile population, including African
students of engineering, nursing, and
finance, among other specializations.
Private universities have proliferated
in India over the past decade. While
catering to local demand, their
promoters hard sell their instruction
and facilities to international markets.
“The world is here @ Sharda University,”
promises a television ad for a privately
funded school in Greater Noida. Many
of these campuses are located in
areas where rural insularity lingers.
As foreigners, African students have
become a source of revenue, often
paying more in tuition than their
Indian counterparts. Others are drawn disbelief. The 25-year-old Nigerian stu- there are the dietary taboos. “Many
by scholarships to Indian government- dent came to India from the state of Ebo- Hindus don’t eat meat. In Africa, eat-
funded educational institutions—part nyi in 2013. Since arriving, he has been ing meat is considered normal. But here
of a diplomatic platform to promote mocked, stared at, and called racial slurs if you eat meat, they portray that Afri-
regional trade and cooperation. Yet this like kalu, a Hindi word that translates to cans eat human flesh,” Alagba says. “We
show of amity has failed to bridge the “blacky,” and habshi, a derogatory term are not cannibals,” he adds, alluding to
cultural chasm. for people of African origin, which has a racist myth that, incredibly, persists
“When there is a diplomatic connec- its roots in Arabic. among some Indians.
tion between India and Africa, why is Alagba attributes all of this to a He has run through eight houses in
there no connection between the peo- deep cultural misunderstanding—the the last four years. “I pay my bills and
ple?” Tochukwu Alagba asks. On his assumption that all African men are rent on time. I keep my house clean.”
campus in Greater Noida, the lanky, drug peddlers and all the women prosti- When he asked the owner of an apart-
mild-mannered young man with closely tutes. “In Africa, women wear skirts. In ment why he suddenly had to vacate,
cropped hair, a pencil-thin moustache, India, women wear pants. Is wearing a Alagba says the landlord told him that
and a goatee narrates his experiences in skirt wrong?” he asks. “Does wearing a “tenants complained that their culture
India with a measure of amusement and skirt make my sister a prostitute?” Then forbade them from living with blacks.”

66 JULY | AUGUST 2017


Nigerian Abdul-Kareem
Saboabdullahi will graduate this
year from NIMS in Jaipur, with a
degree in computer information
technology. He has taken leave
from his government job in
Nigeria’s Adamawa state to study
in India, but he’s still paid a full
monthly salary. His main regret,
one echoed by other Africans,
is that he has found it virtually
impossible to make friends
with his Indian colleagues.
Indians treat Africans as social
outcasts, almost embarrassed
to be seen with them, he says.
Saboabdullahi’s companions
are his fellow Africans and the
people at the local mosque where
he prays in the evenings.
African students and residents in India
“have always been victims of gawking
and staring,” says Siddharth Varadarajan,
a founding editor of the Wire news
website in New Delhi. “Landlords have
always overcharged them. What is new,
and especially disturbing, is, first, the
level of police harassment, of which
there is anecdotal evidence, on the
pretext of combating drug peddling and
prostitution and, second, the increasing
tendency for some Indians to resort to
violence.” Failures of civil society account
for part of the problem, he believes.
“Our public spaces have become more
brittle, though I am not sure there is data
to suggest India is more prone to mob
violence,” he says.
A veteran newspaper editor and
author, Varadarajan notes that the
Indian government does not statisti-
cally track race-based crimes, even as
they are increasingly being covered by
the domestic and international press.
He believes that the presence of African
students stirs “the usual resentment
that we see in host societies around
the world to migrants and foreigners.”
Even on college grounds, that resent-
ment is sometimes expressed in the
basest terms.
Okoyeegbe, the Nigerian pharmacy
student, was confronted by an Indian
student in a common restroom on
campus. “Monkey! Monkey!” shouted
the Indian freshman, expressing hor-
ror at the very sight of an African. Not
too long after that, the two bumped
into each other in an elevator. The
same words greeted Okoyeegbe, who
reported the incident to the universi-
ty’s disciplinary committee. In a written
apology, the Indian student stated that
she was sorry for her behavior. Okoy-
eegbe says they’ve both put the incident
behind them and are friends now. But
still she often feels belittled off campus.
One evening, she was mistaken for a
prostitute while standing outside her
residential complex. “I am not a sex
slave. I am here for an education,” she
says, with visible exasperation.
Other African students who arrived in
India full of hope are subjected to curious
stares bordering on suspicion. Joseline
Umurerwa, 22, arrived from the Rwan-
dan capital of Kigali in 2016 to study
physiotherapy in Greater Noida. Outside
her campus library, where she has been
preparing for an upcoming exam, she
carefully monitors the time on her black
sports watch. Of the outright violence in
the news, she believes that “the people
behind it are illiterates who don’t know
that there are people of different colors
in the world.” She adds that “there are
good and bad people in every country.”
T.K. Oommen, a prominent Indian
sociologist, says light skin has always
been associated with superiority and
beauty in India. The caste system that
has traditionally dictated social hierar-
chies in the Hindu-majority country has
tried to establish that upper-caste peo-
ple are lighter-skinned than the lower
castes. Notably, varna, the archaic San-
skrit term for the Indian caste system, is
synonymous with “shade” or “color.” It
is no coincidence that India’s “fairness
cream” industry is estimated to be worth
some $467 million and that Fair & Lovely
is perhaps its oldest and most popular
product. If racism is deep-rooted among
Indians, there is denial and defensive-
ness surrounding it—which isn’t sur-
prising given India’s triumphant political
narrative of darker-skinned people lib-
erating themselves from fairer-skinned
oppressors and founding the world’s
most populous democracy. Still, in
northern parts of the country, “wheatish”
skin color is considered more desirable
than the darker tones predominant in
the southern regions. Facial features are
similarly rated: Populations from India’s
northeastern states, despite being light-
skinned, are commonly referred to with
slurs such as “chinky” because of their
distinct features, akin to those of peo-
ple from farther east. Africans, it seems,
are not the spurs for Indian racism, but
they certainly cannot avoid it. They have
FOREIGNPOLICY.COM 67
 stepped into a long and complicated his-
tory of prejudices that run deep and don’t
distinguish among nationalities or indi-
viduals. “What we are showing to Afri-
cans in India is very much an extension
of what we show to our own people in
India,” Oommen says.
Hartman de Souza, 67, is a writer and
third-generation Kenyan of Indian ori-
gin. In the 1960s, he returned with his
family to his ancestral home in the
western state of Goa. As far back as
the 1980s, when racist incidents were
less well covered in the Indian press,
he was reporting on discrimination
against Africans in India. He recalls a
young man from Sierra Leone telling
him that he had the option to study in
Europe but chose India because it was
the land of Mahatma Gandhi. However,
the student’s experiences with the local
68 JULY | AUGUST 2017
population led him to remark on their “Mobs of angry
cruelty: Some Indians asked him to
scrub the dark color off his hands. Yet
young men
despite such insults, de Souza says, vio- mercilessly
lence toward Africans of the kind seen kicking and
today was virtually unheard of. beating African
guests has sent
exactly the wrong
IN RECENT YEARS, intolerance and message about
lawlessness have been on the upswing in Indian solidarity
India, with spasms of brutality erupting
over dietary politics and other cultural
with Africa—in
flash points. The rise of the right wing fact, it totally
globally—not just in India—has eroded undermines it.”
restraint and civility and made minority
populations vulnerable. In many
countries, the idea of the nation-state
is being reassessed, part of a growing
backlash against globalization. In India,
the fault lines of caste and religion are
Takudzwa Averlon Kapfunde (left), who goes by international rights bodies to seek a
Averlon, and Kudzai Petra Phiri, who goes by Petra, were probe into violence against their people
classmates back in Zimbabwe. Both from Harare, they
influenced each other to study dentistry in Jaipur, where that they believe is “[x]enophobic and
they have a busy academic schedule six days a week. racial in nature.” India’s External Affairs
Both women are Christian, and on Sundays they catch a Ministry responded, “The Government
bus to the city center from their campus and spend the
day in church. Sometimes they are invited to a Christian is committed to ensuring safety and
Indian’s home for lunch. When Averlon needed an security of all foreign nationals in India,
operation, an Indian church family helped her through including African nationals, who remain
recovery at no cost. The church community is the only
semblance of family life for them so far from home. But, our valued partners.” Indian institutions,
living on campus, the women have experienced little of it insisted, “are adequate to deal with
the kind of racism faced by those who live off grounds. aberrations that represent act of a few
criminals.”
Yet Indian university students have
becoming more pronounced under a “Mobs of angry young men mercilessly felt compelled to stage protests in soli-
Hindu nationalist government that kicking and beating African guests has darity with the African visitors among
fosters a culture of intolerance. sent exactly the wrong message about them. College administrators have also
“A country like India where ignorance Indian solidarity with Africa—in fact, it intervened: Dr. A.P.J. Abdul Kalam
and prejudice are rampant will always be totally undermines it.” Technical University in Lucknow issued
prone to violence,” says Varadarajan, the In 2016, a Congolese man was blud- a release regarding its partner colleges in
Wire editor. The changing political econ- geoned to death in New Delhi’s south Greater Noida. “We have asked the man-
omy offers, at best, “a partial explanation after getting into a brawl with a group agements of all our affiliated institutes
for mob violence,” such as that against of Indian men, purportedly in a dis- to ensure that these students are safe
Africans. “A failure of political leader- pute over an auto rickshaw. This inci- on campus and outside,” said the vice
ship—evidenced by the refusal of the dent occurred days before the annual chancellor. And on popular TV debate
government to even acknowledge that Africa Day celebrations that the capital shows, such as NDTV’s The Big Fight,
there is a problem—and the absence of hosts every May to mark the formation Indians are emerging from a long phase
effective rule of law, by which I mean of the African Union, a confederation of denial. Segments of that program
professional policing and an efficient created in 2001 to represent the inter- have asked: “Are Indians racist?” and
judicial system, lie at the root of these ests of African nations. “Are we becoming an intolerant nation?”
ugly incidents,” he says. The killing prompted a rare rebuke Based on the experiences of Africans in
Paradoxically, the penetration of from African diplomats in India: The Greater Noida, the answer is yes.
social media both compounds this heads of 42 African missions indicated Today, Okoyeegbe regrets her jour-
problem and helps raise awareness of that they would recommend to their ney eastward. “My dream was to study
it, contributing to the spread of infor- governments back home not to send medicine. In Africa, India is known for
mation—and misinformation. In May, any new students to India’s universities medicine,” she says. “Many Africans
seven men—both Hindu and Muslim— until such time as their safety in the travel abroad for medical treatment.
were killed in vigilante mob attacks in country could be guaranteed. India’s I thought, ‘Why not go to India, get
eastern India over rumors on social external affairs minister, Sushma Swaraj, the knowledge and a correlation with
media that they were child abductors. attempted to allay their fears by assuring Indian doctors so that Nigerians don’t
The month before that, a Muslim man them that the police were working swiftly have to travel to get basic health care?’”
was lynched in the Indian state of Rajas- to apprehend the murderers of the Now, the only thing keeping her in
than by Hindu vigilantes who believed Congolese national. (Police later arrested Greater Noida is her coursework, which
he was transporting cows for slaughter. three suspects.) She emphasized that it she is on schedule to complete by next
(Hindus consider the cow a holy ani- was a criminal act that should not be year, and her tenure abroad is tinged
mal.) But African victims of racial preju- misconstrued as a racist one. But the with bitterness. “I can never let any-
dice are, at last, more visible to India and violence in Greater Noida has yet again one I love take a flight to India and live
the world because of the media. Aside upset African emissaries. In a written here,” she laments. “I wouldn’t even
from human rights, India’s bonds with statement issued on March 31, the advise my enemy to live here.” n
African nations are at stake. As Alyssa heads of African diplomatic missions
Ayres, a South Asia specialist at the in India collectively threatened to PAMPOSH RAINA (@PamposhR) is a
Council on Foreign Relations, puts it, call on the United Nations and other New Delhi-based journalist.

FOREIGNPOLICY.COM 69
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