“See, we really have no problem as long as they behave themselves,” says Faizan Khurshid, the landlord of a few apartment complexes in Khirki Extension, south Delhi. “It is only when they start wearing dresses with cuts this low (he points to his navel) and walk around late at night doing harami things, that’s when we have a problem. And that’s why, they must all leave,” he adds.

In the past few weeks, much of the Indian media has been in ferment over what is widely seen as racist vigilantism by the newly appointed law minister of Delhi, Somnath Bharti, against African residents in his constituency. While the January 15 manhandling of the Ugandan women returning home at night is now under the angry glare of the media, the area’s Black community is no stranger to racist abuse. Michelle’s, a popular local hangout for the African community at Khirki, was shut down a good month before the incident. African students with proper papers were routinely asked to move out both by the police and landlords.

Such racism is not an exclusive transgression by this particular neighbourhood, or the Capital even. Sample this: “The Nigerians are like cancer. We are worried what would be the image of Goa for the outside world when the images of Nigerians creating ruckus on the road are showed through television to the world,” Dayanand Mandrekar, Goa’s minister for art and culture, said a few months earlier, after a standoff between Goa police and Nigerian nationals over the murder of their countryman Obodo Uzomo Simon at Porvorim in north Goa on October 30 last year. In Delhi’s south-western suburb Dwarka, a Congolese man was gunned down on September 1. In Bangalore, long-time resident Wandoh Timothy Junior, a pastor from Chad, was attacked by a faceless mob on July 9.

Not guilty? We are not racist. Or that’s what we would like to believe. We experience racism in Europe, Australia, the US… We are never the perpetrators of crimes of colour. Are we?

When the Indian diplomat, Devyani Khobargade was arrested by the US authorities for underpaying her maid, the powers-that-be back home railed against this ill-treatment of an Indian on American soil. As for any racist tendencies in us, you would be hard put to come across any statistical records. Even the National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB) couldn’t produce any data on incidents of racism in India when BLink contacted them.

Blacks — from America, from the Caribbean, and from various African countries — living in India, however, share a completely different, darker reality. Unable to rent a house because of their skin colour, systematically denied a visa renewal form for no apparent reason, routinely harassed in college... these are all too familiar to every Indian who set out to study abroad a few decades ago. The similarities don’t end there. “When I went and sat next to an Indian girl in the classroom, she instinctively got up and moved away,” says Ornella Mosibo, a 24-year-old Congolese in Delhi, who is pursuing a course in software technology. “It didn’t stop at the classroom,” she adds. “My landlord in Arjun Nagar, a south Delhi neighbourhood, started clearing out all the stuff from my flat, and asked me to find a new place within a day. I had to pay ₹1,000 a day until I found a new place to stay.”

“The scariest was the first time it happened,” says Dr Diepiriye Kuku, an African-American academic, who was enrolled in a doctorate course in Delhi University. “I was at the FRRO to renew my visa, and instructions were non-existent, so as I began addressing the only attendant in the room, others gathered around to listen — they had the same questions. The attendant promptly snatched my application and walked away. As he marched back into the waiting room, he held my application above his head and shouted, ‘your case is rejected!’ My partner, who is white, followed him into the office area, pleading with him. All he got by way of a reply was, ‘It’s their race’.”

In 2013 alone, there were at least three major incidents of violence against Blacks in India and countless ‘mundane’ cases. Pastor Wandoh Timothy, according to reports, was cornered and violently beaten up by nearly a dozen men en route to church. One of the attackers was about to fatally throw a large stone on his head when passers-by forced them to retreat. Timothy Junior’s right eye was bleeding, ribs were broken, and he was hospitalised for over a month.

“After the attack, I met the home minister of Karnataka to personally file a complaint. While the complaint was lodged, nothing else has been done till date,” he rues. The Chad national, who is married to an Indian, says the attack was only an extreme manifestation of the racism Africans suffer every day in India. “We are fed up of the way we are treated here. Racism is everywhere — when renting a house, at the immigration office, at the police station. Whenever an African and an Indian are involved in an altercation or an accident, the police inevitably takes the latter’s side. I have seen many Africans beaten to pulp at Indian police stations.”

Christoffer Okito, a 29-year-old Congolese, studying information technology in Delhi, and the president of the Association of African Students in India (AASI), shares Timothy Junior’s opinion. “We are looking for a place where we can study well without any problems,” he says when we meet him at Vasant Kunj, an affluent neighbourhood in the city. “But going by what I have seen here, most Indians don’t understand that African students are here to study and not set up illegal businesses.”

AASI was formed in the ’60s by the late Malawian president Bingu Wa Mutharika when he was a student at the Sri Ram College of Commerce, Delhi. It remains one of the few umbrella organisations that assist Africans facing racism and other problems here. Okito says there are dozens of serious cases of racism every year, but few make it to the newsrooms. “It becomes a diplomatic issue too, you know. It’s difficult for African bureaucrats to raise their voice against India. But they all know the problems exist.” The association, when consulted by students, now warns of the potential ‘harassment’ in India. “Abuses like kalu and habshi are hurled at us every day. But what is the point of reacting with anger? I prefer to let it pass. Besides, not all Indians are alike,” he adds, almost as an afterthought.

Cause and effect A professor of social sciences at Delhi’s Centre for African Studies in Jawaharlal Nehru University, Ajith Dubey perceives it as an intrinsic flaw. “The fact is, our society is highly endogamous and exclusivist — ordered on the basis of linguistic, ethnic, religious and regional roots. Africans sometimes bear the brunt of discrimination that Indians also reserve for fellow Indians, based on the colour of their skin, for instance.”

Arvind Narrain of the Alternative Law Forum, Bangalore, who accompanied other civil society activists on a fact-finding team after Timothy Junior was attacked, also points out how “Africans suffer the kind of treatment that white people are never subjected to. It is an inherent bias in the Indian society”. His co-crusader, Ramdas Rao of People’s Union of Civil Liberties (PUCL) offers an additional opinion. “It’s ingrained in our casteist Hindu society. Discrimination based on caste easily assumes the form of prejudice based on race,” he says. “Often, basic civil rights are denied to the Black people. From a human rights perspective, we talk about caste and prejudice in the Indian context all the time, but when it comes to Africans, somehow the issue gets ignored or glossed over. They are denied movement, freedom of expression... something that we want to look at more closely. Also, because they are vulnerable, they don’t talk about it openly.” Regardless of the reasons for the racist behaviour, the lack of acknowledgement of the problem remains the larger issue here. Even in progressive institutions across the country, little or no research is carried out on the racist violence against Black people.

The colour coda “It is this craziness for white skin — I feel like I’m living in the Victorian era sometimes,” says Quincy Kendell Charles, a Trinidadian Kathak dancer who has lived in Delhi for five years now. Speaking to us at his tiny one-bedroom flat in Amar Colony, his “safe zone”, he adds, “I feel this thing runs really deep here. On TV, there are all kinds of ads encouraging people to look fair. It is a direct kind of manipulation of people’s thinking, training the mind to view beauty in a certain way.” Kendall says he has been a victim of racist attacks and verbal abuse in Delhi. “Once when I had an accident on my two-wheeler, instead of helping me, the onlookers helped the driver of the car that banged into my vehicle get away. When I asked if this was how they treated guests in their country, they said, ‘yes, because you are a dog’.” Like several others in his community, Kendall chose to cocoon himself in his own world. “I don’t step out unless I have classes or other pressing work. My room is my castle.”

Other African students and professionals too, have adopted similar methods. As filing a complaint usually doesn’t spur authorities into action, and often, has an adverse effect on the case, ignoring the everyday incidents of racism has become their first line of defence. As Nigerian footballer Uga Okpara, playing for East Bengal, says, “When I came to India four years ago, I was surprised that people stared at me, or called me names while I was out in the city. But I’m here to play football, and I have to concentrate on my game. So I choose to keep to myself and don’t really go out of my way to question all of this.”

Currently the Khirki incident is in the news, but airtime otherwise is dominated largely by negative news about the African community. Headlines like “The Nigerian cash scam” or the “Congolese drug dealers” are commonplace. News about the Eritrean boy brutally assaulted in Jalandhar or the footballer from Lesotho rotting in a jail in Kolkata are harder to come by. Official apathy, lazy reporting and a voiceless community are the deadly ingredients in this simmering bitter brew.

Related Topics