An African In India

AFTER THE MOST RECENT SPATE OF RACIST ATTACKS, STUDENTS, ENTREPRENEURS AND EVEN YOUNG INTERRACIAL COUPLES ARE TREADING CAREFULLY IN THE CAPITAL. ANINDITA GHOSH GETS A GLIMPSE OF INDIA FROM THEIR POINT OF VIEW.

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At the recent Bingu’s Graduation Day in Delhi, a ceremony organised annually by the Association of African Students in India (AASI) for the year’s graduates, the mood is electric as scores of students dressed in their best gather to celebrate the completion of the degrees and their time in India before they return home. According to the association, there are about 25,000 African students at various private and government institutions across the country. With Indian degrees much in demand and education in their own countries often badly affected by strikes and other disruptions, many Africans prefer to travel to the subcontinent for higher studies, even if they have to pay double the fees and face the racism that India has now acquired a reputation for.

But with this infectious celebratory mood, it is easy to forget that Masonda Ketada Olivier from Congo was stoned to death in Vasant Kunj as recently as May; that a Tanzanian woman had been beaten and stripped by a mob in February; that in 2014, three African students from Burkina Faso and Gabon had cowered atop a police booth in the Rajiv Chowk metro station as a lynch mob bayed for their blood; that in April 2012, Yannick Ntibateganya, a Burundi national studying at Jalandhar’s Lovely Professional University (LPU) was beaten to death by nine local youths.