How to tackle the xenophobic attacks on Africans in India

The killing of a young Congolese man, Masonda Ketanda Oliver, and four separate attacks on seven Africans near Chattarpur in south Delhi at the end of May, have blown the lid off the simmering pot of resentment against the treatment of African immigrants in India.

President Pranab Mukherjee condemned the attacks and said: “It would be most unfortunate if the people of India were to dilute our long tradition of friendship with the people of Africa and the welcome we have always extended to them in our country”.

Africans migrate to India mainly for informal trade, higher education and medical tourism.

The foreigners study at Indian universities under capacity building initiatives. They pursue their studies through Government of India scholarships or are self-funded.

Ironically, the Afrophobia in India is in sharp contrast to the bidirectional movement of Africans and Indians across the western Indian Ocean in the pre-globalisation era, and the cosmopolitanism it had engendered.

The most recent occurrence of xenophobia comes at a time when India has been fervently trying to woo African countries and scale up economic and diplomatic relations with them.

At the India-Africa Forum Summit in 2015, Prime Minister Narendra Modi had taken several initiatives to further enhance their partnership to a strategic level. In the aftermath of the recent assaults on their people, African envoys had threatened to boycott Africa Day celebrations hosted by the Indian Council for Cultural Relations, en masse.

After assurances by the External Affairs ministry, they finally attended the event, wherein they expressed their angst and disappointment about the ongoing prejudice and racism faced by Africans and even threatened to dissuade students from coming to India.

The reaction of the African emissaries does not come as a surprise. The writing has been on the wall for quite some time now. In January 2016, Bengaluru witnessed an attack on four Tanzanian students.

Earlier, there were raids in Delhi’s Khirki Extension neighbourhood, targeting mainly female Ugandan residents, the brutal beating of African youth at the Rajiv Chowk metro station in 2014 and other sporadic incidents of unjustified violence in public places against African immigrants in Goa, Hyderabad, Maharashtra and Punjab.

These attacks have been a cause of worry and concern for the Indians and Africans. While these attacks have strained diplomatic relations between India and the African diplomatic corps, economic relations between the two are reconciliatory and buoyant.

The Delhi government has condemned the attacks and ordered “strict action” against perpetrators of the violence. It has, however, denied racism as a plausible cause of Mr Oliver’s death and of the subsequent attacks on immigrants. It explains them in terms of “minor scuffles” that, unfortunately, ended up in violence.

Stereotypical constructions of immigrant Africans as “prostitutes” or “drug dealers, and the racist undertones that sometimes mark the interactions between the hosts and the foreigners have sparked conflicts between the locals and immigrants.

Dealing with crime incidents as a law and order problem rather than typecasting a whole community would be a judicious way to counter xenophobic violence against a foreign group.

Several African leaders, doctors and ambassadors who studied in India are goodwill ambassadors of their host country. India has been a preferred destination for African immigrants and several of them talk about their positive experiences for the affordable costs of living, high quality education and health care, at reasonable costs, and a peaceful environment to live in.

In a country known for syncretism and welcoming guests, the reported cases of Afrophobia can probably be attributed to a larger number of immigrants coming to India who are visible in public places, and poor inter-cultural understanding and tolerance of their distinctive culture and lifestyles by some Indians.

TV programmes about the rich cultural heritage of African countries, museum exhibitions and educative films depicting Indo-African relations over the past centuries, shared music and cultural festivals, and educative films documenting Indo-African connections might go a long way in appreciating our oft quoted ‘‘shared heritage’’.

Renu Modi is a former director and senior lecturer at the Centre for African Studies at the University of Mumbai in India; [email protected]. Rhea D’Silva is a research scholar in the department of sociology at the same university; [email protected].