Racism in India

Mahatma Gandhi’s protesting the racism of a railway ticket checker, who threw him out of a whites-only compartment in South Africa in 1893 despite holding a valid ticket, is related with a lot of righteous pride by most Indians. Yet, time and again, almost daily, there are acts of downright racism committed by Indians in their own country, not only against dark-skinned foreigners, especially those from African countries, but also against their own compatriots from the north-eastern states. The most recent exhibition of this is the brutal assault on three African students in a Delhi Metro station.

Each hate-filled action of the young male attackers shows the depths of depravity – the African students had sought refuge in a police booth but found no protection, even there, from the police personnel. The crowd believed the rumour-mongering that one of the three had “misbehaved” with an Indian woman even though there was absolutely no evidence at hand. The attackers actually screamed Vande Mataram and Bharat Mata ki... to a great chorus of jai. Coming on top of all the attacks on north-eastern students in Delhi in the past couple of years, including killings, and a brutal assault on a Rwandan student in Chandigarh in 2012 that left him in a coma, the present assault is further proof that, by and large, Indians harbour strong racist prejudices.