Racism can shatter India-Africa ties

Racism hangs heavy in the air Indians breathe — a fact demonstrated yet again by the vicious attack on a female Tanzanian college student in Bengaluru.
The 21-year-old was stripped and assaulted by an Indian mob after a Sudanese student’s car crushed to death a local woman sleeping on the roadside. The Tanzanian and her three African friends, who had nothing to do with the fatal accident, were targeted when they were passing by the accident site.
Five policemen have since been suspended for not saving the Tanzanian from what was clearly a racist attack. Tanzanian and Indian diplomats decried the savagery in Bengaluru even as the media highlighted the deep-rooted hostility against dark-skinned Africans who are ridiculed as kallus (blacks) even by educated Indians, making a mockery of the nation’s claim that it values diversity and is tolerant to a fault.
The Indian Express noted that as Africans are visibly different — just like many Muslims, Dalits (low-caste Hindus who are deemed untouchable by upper castes), Indians from the northeast who have Mongoloid features and other ethnic minorities — they are viewed as the “other” by mainstream society. It wrote: “Our racism is vintage; only the targeting of black people is new. They weren’t so readily available earlier.” An aghast columnist writing in The Hindu demanded that Prime Minister Narendra Modi invite the battered Tanzanian to New Delhi and get photographed with her to send the right message across to his flock.
That, of course, would be too much to expect from Modi. Last year, Giriraj Singh, a BJP Member of Parliament and a minister in the Modi government to boot, was caught on camera saying that had the late Rajiv Gandhi married a “Nigerian” woman instead of the “fair-skinned” Sonia Gandhi, the Congress Party would not have accepted her as its leader. The Nigerian High Commission lodged a complaint with the Ministry of External Affairs while the Congress condemned the racist remarks. But what did Modi do? He promptly gave Singh a promotion!
Other parties too have shown their true colors when it comes to Africans. Somnath Bharti, the Law Minister of Delhi belonging to Aam Aadmi Party (AAP), which claims to be morally superior to the BJP or the Congress, recently branded Nigerian and Ugandan women as “prostitutes” and “drug peddlers” during a midnight raid he illegally conducted accompanied by TV cameras. His remarks, sadly, mirrored the average Indian’s mindset.
But the majority’s violent dislike for people who don’t look like them, eat, dress and behave differently, and come from faraway places, is bound to cost India dearly. If the country, particularly Bengaluru, which claims to be heart of digital India, is seriously interested in becoming a global investment destination, it just can’t afford to be labeled an unsafe place where the law of the jungle prevails. Capital and anarchy never go hand in hand.
Prisoners of their own prejudice, Indians love to stereotype Africans as violent and dirty. But this embedded racism flies in the face of New Delhi’s all-out bid to woo Africa for meeting India’s energy and mineral requirements. In October, the Modi government hosted the India-Africa Forum Summit, or IAFS, on a grand scale. Attended by 54 African nations, it was the largest diplomatic assembly in India since the 1983 Non-Aligned Summit.
India is still far behind China in Africa but it’s trying its best to catch up. Ahead of IAFS, Sanjay Baru, a close aide of former Premier Manmohan Singh, wrote: “Authorities in China have invested in a systematic, institutionalized campaign to purge at least the educated urban Chinese of their racial prejudice against ‘black’ Africans. Enough has not been done in India, as is evident from the sporadic incidents of racist abuse against African students and tourists. Without a change of attitude at the people-to-people level, mere summitry at the top and government-sponsored events are unlikely to bring India and Africa closer to each other.”
Moreover, India should purge itself of notions of superiority. Africa is not as poor or backward as Indians like to think. As many as 21 African nations have a higher per capita income than India. Citizens of eight African countries have incomes, which are four times higher than the income of Indians. Between 2008 and 2013, nine African countries grew faster than India.
The barbarism in Bengaluru is a wakeup call for India. It must accord African visitors the love and respect they deserve so that India and the so-called Dark Continent can march together toward peace and prosperity.