Is Indian Society Racist?

The Indian media is quite sensitive to the phenomenon of racism; specifically, racism against Indians in the West. Because there is such a large and influential Indian population in Western countries, especially the United States, racially tinged attacks and incidents against the diaspora in the West have received a lot of attention in the Indian media, as well as in films. In short, Indians seem to be aware of and active against racism.

But this obscures the fact that this awareness is the result of the concerns of a small, fairly affluent community, with an international audience driving the narrative. Racism within India is another matter in itself. India must grapple with a serious racism issue. This includes racism by Indians against other Indians with different skin tones or ethnic characteristics, as well as racism by Indians against non-Indians of other races who live in India. According to the World Values Survey, India is one of the most racist countries in the world. In India, 43.5 percent of respondents said they would not want a neighbor of a different race. Only Jordan had a higher percentage of responders who felt this way.

According to genetic studies conducted by the Harvard Medical School, the majority of Indians are descended from the genetic mixture of two ancestral groups: “Ancestral North Indians (ANI), who are related to Central Asians, Middle Easterners, Caucasians, and Europeans; and Ancestral South Indians (ASI), who are primarily from the subcontinent.” These two groups, which merged about 4,000 years ago, are so thoroughly mixed that for all practical purposes they do not exist as separate populations anymore: it is this mixture that gives the majority of Indians the typical “Indian” look. The study goes on to note that “no groups in India are free of such mixture.”

Nonetheless, groups in North India, and among higher castes, seem to have a greater proportion of the ANI genetic component than groups further east and south, and among lower castes. This, along with the later political dominance in India of Persianized Muslim dynasties and then the British, may be the origin of a preference in India toward people with lighter skin tones and Caucasian-like features. The prevalence of skin-lightening creams, now controversial because of their racial undertones, is evidence of this. Additionally, matrimonial ads in Indian newspapers frequently use the word “fair” to describe prospective brides and grooms. Despite the efforts of activists, and some Bollywood stars, to convince people to accept that being darker-skinned or “dusky” is just as good as being fair, India has a long way to go.

Within India, this had led to a climate of racism against people who do not share these features: a sharp face and lighter skin. Among populations in India, it is people from the northeast (who were not part of the admixture going on in the rest of India between the other two populations), who are genetically closer to people from East and Southeast Asia, that have suffered the most from racism. The term “chinkie” is a common racial slur used against people from this region, who suffer discrimination and harassment throughout the rest of India. Moreover, women from northeast India suffer higher than usual rates of sexual harassment because of the (false) notion that they are more promiscuous than “mainland” Indians. In a survey taken in Delhi, India’s capital, over half of all people from the northeast reported being victims of discrimination, with most agreeing that it was because of their race.

By far the worst discrimination in India, though, is against people of African-origin; many African students study in Indian colleges. Anecdotal evidence also suggests that Indian communities in general are racist toward people of African origin. Many Indian immigrants in the West are open to their children marrying white individuals, but recoil in shock at the notion of marrying a person of African origin. A racist attack against African students in March 2017 in Greater Noida, near Delhi, brought this problem to light again. According to reports, after a local teenager died of a drug overdose five Nigerian students were attacked by crowds, while another was beaten by a mob inside a shopping mall. The teenager’s parents blamed the Nigerian students for giving him the drugs – a common charge against the African community in India.

The attack was not the only one against Africans in recent times. According to a report from BBC News, “In May 2016 a Congolese man was beaten to death in Delhi after an argument over an auto-rickshaw. Three months before that, a Tanzanian student was assaulted and partially stripped by a mob in the southern city of Bangalore. A Nigerian man living in Goa was stabbed to death in 2013.”

The Indian government, because of its own struggle with racial discrimination and colonialism during the British Raj, seems unwilling to admit that Indians themselves can be the perpetrators of racism. Because of India’s ideology of Third World solidarity with African countries, India prefers to deny that Indians could themselves be xenophobic toward Africans. Nonetheless, after the March attack in Greater Noida, several African envoys described the attack as “xenophobic and racial in nature.” They were particularly critical of the Indian government's reluctance to describe the incident as a racially motivated crime and wanted strong condemnation from the “highest political level.”

Yet the Indian government has not been forthcoming with this condemnation. Instead, officials described the incident as a crime, without specifying its racial aspect. External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj insisted that no further classification of the incident would be forthcoming until a police investigation was complete. This seemed to have further angered the African envoys, who then said that the attack had not been “sufficiently condemned” by Indian authorities. Moreover, the Indian government attempted to characterize the African complaints as the vaguely malicious product of just a few African countries, especially Eritrea, rather than reflecting the broader concerns of all African states.

India seeks to remain on good terms with African countries as its global influence grows. It has traditionally been on positive terms with numerous post-colonial African countries, hosting several India-Africa summits. While India has given aid to several African countries, its influence on the continent is still dwarfed by China’s. Ultimately, it is in India’s benefit to maintain goodwill with African countries, with those relationships strengthened by a shared colonial history that China cannot identify with as strongly. India has very little to lose by admitting to the racist nature of many attacks against Africans in its own country and much to gain in terms of trust and bonhomie by better policing against those who would harm Africans.

However, more broadly, India must come to terms with the inherent problem of racism and bias against people with certain features. As India is exposed more and more to global trends and media, it is to be hoped that this will foster greater acceptance of people of different races and skin tones in India. After all, Indians themselves are often aghast at racism toward them in the West, but the same conversations about race and racism are overlooked in the context of incidents within the country.