Our True Colours
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Our true colours
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Her fizzy tangle of dark hair has elicited many a snide remark on campus. But Bethelhem Kelta, the 22-year-old Ethiopian with a mass of locks that defy the discipline of tight braiding, chooses to maintain an icy reserve.
http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/home/stoi/deep-focus/Our-true-colours/articleshow/29383867.cms
"Someone on the Metro said to me, 'Is it fake? How much did it cost to make it?' I laughed it off," she confides, seething with an animosity that has restricted her group of friends to a few international students in her hostel.
Like Kelta, African students who pick India for scholastic pursuits — there are 10,400 students from seven African countries, according to a report compiled by the Ministry of Home Affairs — often find it a lonely sojourn, riddled with hostility. Campus life is charged with racial undercurrents , and bright young students who arrive here for intellectual riches and a bit of friendship frequently find themselves left out in the cold.
Discrimination is rife in hostels, and African students are often dismayed by the relentless staring, whispering and sniggering. Okoronkwo Hyginus Uchenna, also a law student, finds it befuddling when he becomes the target of unprovoked laughter. "I've noticed that when I walk into a room, the Indians will start speaking in Hindi. Or they will laugh. And the African kids never get to hold the remote in the TV room — the Indians decide what to watch," he says.
The all-pervasive belief that black Africans are mischief-mongers and criminals also makes students vulnerable to insult and isolation. Run-ins that culminate in police intervention are common. "If a fight breaks out between an African and an Indian, the entire Indian community gangs up against the black student ," says Ogbe.
A vocabulary rife with racial slurs, jokes and compulsive stereotyping is the alarming norm on university campuses . Professor Nandini Sundar, who teaches sociology at Delhi University, explains this hostility towards the African community: "Racism is encoded into our caste structure. Our gods are light-skinned — never mind that the original Shiva was dark — everybody only wants to marry fair people etc. It's the same reason why the Aam Aadmi Party's Kumar Vishwas would refer to nurses from Kerala as being kaali peeli. And we discriminate the same way against people from the Northeast. This would also explain why we continue to remain insular, mix only with our community, when Indians migrate to, say, Africa or the Caribbean nations."
Sociologist Dipankar Gupta reaffirms the Indian bias towards fair skin. "We've had a colour complex ever since we decided in the late 19th century that we are Aryan. Indians do tend to think along ethnic divides and we have a sense of aesthetics borrowed from old Western notions — that fair is better. We weren't like this before. For example , there doesn't seem to have been racist tendencies in Mughal times. Even in the Rig Veda, there is no mention of colour. Only of varna, and varna means order."
The media too, inadvertently promotes stereotypes, and makes the quest for acceptance an agonizing one. Ghazali Bello Abubakar, a Nigerian PhD scholar at Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU), has studied news headlines of drug-peddling in India. "Whenever there's a Nigerian involved, the headline will point it out: Drug smugglers arrested; two Nigerians among those held. That's why people think all Nigerians peddle drugs," he says. Abubakar, who is married to an Indian, attributes his house-hunting difficulties in Delhi to this bigoted view. "Wherever I went, people thought I was a criminal," says the student, who now lives on campus with his wife.
News reportage is halfhearted when the victim of a crime is African . In 2012, a 24-year-old woman from Rwanda was gang-raped near her residence in Timarpur, north Delhi. An apathetic police swung into action a few days after the assault , which took place on December 3, 2013. And while the rape of India's Nirbhaya, which occurred soon after, led to unrestrained public outcry, the African girl who lay in hospital was a forgotten snippet of news.
The black African's marginalization is intensified by an effort to speak and write lucidly in English. Hala Hasan Mohmed, who is pursuing her PhD in Sociology, reveals her struggle to communicate. "The Europeans are friendlier than the Indians," she says, "In fact a foreigner helped me write my report." She attended seminars, took lessons and watched Hollywood films to improve her English and find the acceptance she yearned for.
Professor Malakar, director of Francophone African Studies at JNU, observes that while several Indian universities have tried to sensitize local students to language and mannerisms that can be interpreted as racist, sometimes there are some cases of teasing and bullying. "There are a few kids who use the word kalu. The black students understand the import of the word and are naturally offended," he says.
Assimilation, then, shouldn't become the African student's lone struggle. The place that Indian universities offer them should also be a place called home.
With additional reporting by Parakram Rautela
Out of Africa
The Sidis, an Indian community of African origin, first came to India in the 9th century. Concentrated mostly in Gujarat and Karnataka, India's over one lakh Sidis are well assimilated into the Indian life. Except for their dance, musical instruments and exorcism practices, the Sidis of Gujarat are Gujarati in language, dress and food. They enjoy khaman dhokla as much as their spicy chicken. The images on the left have been shot by photographer Ketaki Sheth who spent five years capturing the essence of their existence for a book, 'A Certain Grace — The Sidi: Indians of African Descent'
http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/home/stoi/deep-focus/Our-true-colours/articleshow/29383867.cms
"Someone on the Metro said to me, 'Is it fake? How much did it cost to make it?' I laughed it off," she confides, seething with an animosity that has restricted her group of friends to a few international students in her hostel.
Like Kelta, African students who pick India for scholastic pursuits — there are 10,400 students from seven African countries, according to a report compiled by the Ministry of Home Affairs — often find it a lonely sojourn, riddled with hostility. Campus life is charged with racial undercurrents , and bright young students who arrive here for intellectual riches and a bit of friendship frequently find themselves left out in the cold.
Discrimination is rife in hostels, and African students are often dismayed by the relentless staring, whispering and sniggering. Okoronkwo Hyginus Uchenna, also a law student, finds it befuddling when he becomes the target of unprovoked laughter. "I've noticed that when I walk into a room, the Indians will start speaking in Hindi. Or they will laugh. And the African kids never get to hold the remote in the TV room — the Indians decide what to watch," he says.
The all-pervasive belief that black Africans are mischief-mongers and criminals also makes students vulnerable to insult and isolation. Run-ins that culminate in police intervention are common. "If a fight breaks out between an African and an Indian, the entire Indian community gangs up against the black student ," says Ogbe.
A vocabulary rife with racial slurs, jokes and compulsive stereotyping is the alarming norm on university campuses . Professor Nandini Sundar, who teaches sociology at Delhi University, explains this hostility towards the African community: "Racism is encoded into our caste structure. Our gods are light-skinned — never mind that the original Shiva was dark — everybody only wants to marry fair people etc. It's the same reason why the Aam Aadmi Party's Kumar Vishwas would refer to nurses from Kerala as being kaali peeli. And we discriminate the same way against people from the Northeast. This would also explain why we continue to remain insular, mix only with our community, when Indians migrate to, say, Africa or the Caribbean nations."
Sociologist Dipankar Gupta reaffirms the Indian bias towards fair skin. "We've had a colour complex ever since we decided in the late 19th century that we are Aryan. Indians do tend to think along ethnic divides and we have a sense of aesthetics borrowed from old Western notions — that fair is better. We weren't like this before. For example , there doesn't seem to have been racist tendencies in Mughal times. Even in the Rig Veda, there is no mention of colour. Only of varna, and varna means order."
The media too, inadvertently promotes stereotypes, and makes the quest for acceptance an agonizing one. Ghazali Bello Abubakar, a Nigerian PhD scholar at Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU), has studied news headlines of drug-peddling in India. "Whenever there's a Nigerian involved, the headline will point it out: Drug smugglers arrested; two Nigerians among those held. That's why people think all Nigerians peddle drugs," he says. Abubakar, who is married to an Indian, attributes his house-hunting difficulties in Delhi to this bigoted view. "Wherever I went, people thought I was a criminal," says the student, who now lives on campus with his wife.
News reportage is halfhearted when the victim of a crime is African . In 2012, a 24-year-old woman from Rwanda was gang-raped near her residence in Timarpur, north Delhi. An apathetic police swung into action a few days after the assault , which took place on December 3, 2013. And while the rape of India's Nirbhaya, which occurred soon after, led to unrestrained public outcry, the African girl who lay in hospital was a forgotten snippet of news.
The black African's marginalization is intensified by an effort to speak and write lucidly in English. Hala Hasan Mohmed, who is pursuing her PhD in Sociology, reveals her struggle to communicate. "The Europeans are friendlier than the Indians," she says, "In fact a foreigner helped me write my report." She attended seminars, took lessons and watched Hollywood films to improve her English and find the acceptance she yearned for.
Professor Malakar, director of Francophone African Studies at JNU, observes that while several Indian universities have tried to sensitize local students to language and mannerisms that can be interpreted as racist, sometimes there are some cases of teasing and bullying. "There are a few kids who use the word kalu. The black students understand the import of the word and are naturally offended," he says.
Assimilation, then, shouldn't become the African student's lone struggle. The place that Indian universities offer them should also be a place called home.
With additional reporting by Parakram Rautela
Out of Africa
The Sidis, an Indian community of African origin, first came to India in the 9th century. Concentrated mostly in Gujarat and Karnataka, India's over one lakh Sidis are well assimilated into the Indian life. Except for their dance, musical instruments and exorcism practices, the Sidis of Gujarat are Gujarati in language, dress and food. They enjoy khaman dhokla as much as their spicy chicken. The images on the left have been shot by photographer Ketaki Sheth who spent five years capturing the essence of their existence for a book, 'A Certain Grace — The Sidi: Indians of African Descent'
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India is a country full of diversity. Indians should respect all cultures. Any type of prejudices from the Indian side is very disappointing.
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