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Shakila moved from Bangalore to Delhi and waiting to join her boyfriend in Canada whenever the paperwork is done. The day I met her, she had just joined Michel’s kitchen as a cook. She said she’ll serve my favourite tilapia and plantain for me next time. Will there be a next time?
She told me her name is Vitu. And that she’s from Malawi. I realised then that I knew nothing of Malawi. When I tried to roughly point it on a world map, I missed it by half a continent. It turns out that India has been welcoming African students for decades now. Back in 1964, a student from Malawi, Bingu wa Mutharika, came to India on a student scholarship. Mutharika founded the Association of African Students in India that year. He also went on to become the third president of Malawi. The AASI celebrates "Bingu’s Graduation Day" every June to bring African graduates together under one roof.
In early 2016, I started a project to inquire into the racism and xenophobia faced by Africans living in India. Hassan (on the top ledge) was the first person I met. His friends know him as Dega, which is also the nickname of his idol, the Brazilian football player Edgar Aldrighi Jünior. Hassan gave me my first lessons in everyday racism. "Before I left Zambia, I thought I would live like a boss in India!" Student life did not turn out quite as expected. "People are so ignorant," he complained in frustration. "They ask us if we wear clothes in Africa. Do you think we started wearing clothes only after coming to India?" We met again on several occasions. I promised that I would invite him home for a meal one day. Finally, that day came, and this picture was made on my terrace to commemorate the occasion. Hassan and his friends Leon (Rwanda) and Davis (Tanzania) had just completed college. In a few days, they would be heading in different directions to start new lives in their respective countries.
Hudu and Abubakar are both students at NIMS University (about 1.5 hours from Jaipur). Both live in Achrol which is the nearest habitable village to NIMS, as do many other African students. They were involved in two separate incidents of violence in March 2017, and have been lying low and indoors since then. They had heard of each others' incidents through the grapevine, but met for the first time only at the time of making this portrait. The incidents happened a couple of weeks apart and almost at the very location where this picture was taken. Hudu was walking back home at night when two persons on a motorcycle struck him at the back of his head with a cricket bat. They stopped to search him for money and valuables. Not finding anything, they repeatedly beat him with the bat, kicked him and left him. Hudu was admitted into the emergency ward at the NIMS hospital. A bill of Rs. 35,000 was supposedly presented, but the NIMS chairman had this waived. Abubakar was at the local market during the day when he got into a fight with a group of Indian boys who called him names. When he didn't respond, they threw a pebble at him to attract his attention. The altercation that ensued got to a point where one of boys got hold of a rope and tried to strangulate him. From what I gauged, it seemed like a minor incident that kicked up some dust. This spiralled into exaggerated versions, including one that got sensationally reported by Un-Fair Web as "Hunting Africans – Achrol Village, Rajasthan, the new battleground of violence". This is a case study of how a story can be told to fit the desired narrative. https://www.facebook.com/unfair.web.1/posts/211043426060272 I visited this village and it did seem as if the locals have accepted the Africans as part of their community, and importantly, their economy. In both cases, the police acted swiftly in rounding up the suspects much to the satisfaction of the victims. This was confirmed to me by both Huda and Abubakar.
In a country where it’s hard to be a black, gay and woman, Helen checks all boxes. She enrolled into Lovely Professional University in Jalandhar as a male upon the insistence of her father (a senior military general back home). It was at university that she discovered the truth about herself and mustered the courage to come out as a transwoman. Within the time allotted by her supportive Economics professor to make an announcement to the class, she went up to the board and wrote “Gender Dysphoria” and went on to speak about it. From the terrace of her rented house, she has a clear view of the boys’ hostel where she used to live previously and contemplated suicide several times.
For Amina, the swimming pool isn't very welcoming even when there is water in it. When she was new in India, her friend warned her against using the pool. He demonstrated a social experiment to drive home his point. On one particularly busy summer's evening, he kneeled down by the side of the pool, stuck his hand into the water, and sloshed it about. Immediately, everyone scrambled out in horror.
Misana studies Computer Applications. He tells me of an incident when he once stopped to ask a man for directions. The man ran away in horror.
"There are only two things you need to fear in India. Corruption and Racism. My very first experience in India, as soon as I landed, was that the immigrations officer confiscated my passport and demanded a bribe to release it..." This is not Kelvin speaking. It is, in fact, the advice of Kelvin's father, who came to Bangalore all those years ago for his B.Sc. Advice that we could all use. As Kelvin now follows in his father's footsteps, we see how some things never change.
Speaking in Hindi in a debate on Rajya Sabha TV, Ahmed held his ground when making a case about the harrassment that Africans face in Delhi.
Ola Jason says he comes from a family of royals. His great grandfather was a king and his grandmother was his daughter. On the day I met him, there was some tension between him and his very pregnant wife. There was no water at home (and the electricity had gone out for hours, as we discovered later). Jason was too involved in matters of the world to have remembered to get water. He is strict with her so that the arguments are manageable and that he can concentrate on his business and activism.
Chileshe from Zambia studies Marketing at Acharaya Institute.
Nana, always the one to make peace, pacified an angry mob and averted a situation that could have turned ugly in Bangalore’s Soladevanahalli area where many colleges have a significant African population. His girlfriend Cynthia thought the best place to call for a cab in posh central Bangalore would be in front of a police station, but she got shooed away by the cops. “Not here! Go find some place else...” they told her rudely assuming she was a prostitute. How do we explain these incidents? Nana’s father, a highly regarded lawyer who also happens to be the high commissioner of Ghana in New Delhi, chooses his words carefully. He maintains that “there is no racism in India.” He means that racism is not a matter of government policy like Apartheid was in South Africa. But this argument neither helps Indians not Africans come to terms with a very real and apparent problem.
Patrick Yodjeu/BBM/Cameroon/Bangalore/2016
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The shocking attack in broad daylight on Wando Timothy made national headlines in 2013. It was only a portent of how vulnerable the African community is to spurts of violent racial attacks. Wando is a popular pastor, easy-going with people in his outer suburb of Bangalore where he has lived for over a decade. On that fateful day, he was on his way to pick up his daughter from school. Repeatedly provoked into responding to a gang of miscreants, the situation quickly turned ugly and invited a gang of rowdies to attack him. What shocked Wando the most was that people of his neighbourhood watched from their balconies but none came to his rescue. In the immortal words of Martin Luther King, “We will remember not the words of our enemies, but the silence of our friends.”
Michael Akpagli from Ghana, lives in his rented room in Bangalore, which he has never left since January, except for the Sunday Church visits.
Vivian Gideon Omobowale/MBA/Nigeria/Hyderabad
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We are at Jimmy Chicken, a characterful place outside Jalandhar. “This arranged marriage system in India is bullshit,” says Yvann. “I have a wife and a son living in my family home, but I don’t tell this to my classmates as they won’t accept it.” And does she know about your Zambian girlfriend? “No, but the Zambian knows about my wife, so...” Of course.
Amer is a predominantly Muslim town just outside Jaipur. It flanks the world-famous Amer palace. As it happens, a vast majority of African students in NIMS University, a good 30 km further away in Achrol village, are Muslims from Northern Nigeria. The elders of the town invited the Africans to move to Amer instead of staying out in the boondocks. Amer is better connected to Jaipur, but more importantly, it has two mosques to cater to everyone's needs. Sometimes, the students are even asked to lead the prayers. In this town, Indians and Africans stay together and pray together.
For a country so obsessed with fairness, how ironical is it that we’re such champions of unfairness? That's the thought that comes to mind when I engage this young man in a conversation about racism. College, classmates, landlord, police, and The System. Prosper has seen it all. He came to Bangalore as a young pre-university student and finished his MBA this year. “I thought it was tough in the beginning but it has only gotten worse.” His father is a governor of a province in Tanzania and his mother is a minister. He could have led the easy life but came to India to escape the spotlight.
I could have been stranded in the middle of nowhere (Greater Noida) had not Zaharaddeen rescued me from that situation.
Aadam from Ghana came to India on a student visa. But Bangalore International College a.k.a. Loyala Business School in which he was enrolled turned out to be a fraudulent establishment.
At an African kitchen in Rajpur Khurd, DjX tells me the story of Congolese music. He plays rhumba, sings Independence Cha-Cha, moves to hip-hop, does a bollywood number too. Blessing is silently listening to all this, and then buys me a beer.
Amer is a predominantly Muslim town just outside Jaipur. It flanks the world-famous Amer palace. As it happens, a vast majority of African students in NIMS University, a good 30 km further away in Achrol village, are Muslims from Northern Nigeria. The elders of the town invited the Africans to move to Amer instead of staying out in the boondocks. Amer is better connected to Jaipur, but more importantly, it has two mosques to cater to everyone's needs. Sometimes, the students are even asked to lead the prayers. In this town, Indians and Africans stay together and pray together.
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Last week, I spent a few days at Manipal University. I had long conversations with some of the great minds in the Life Sciences department about racism and allied topics. Then I spoke to some African students who are living out the daily practicals. I spoke to Charity and her friends, who are a group of 30 scholarship students from South Africa. They understand racism where they come from because it is well-documented. But what they face in oh-so-tolerant India came as a shock to them. When I first spoke to Charity, she told me, "I'm not in an area where we face real racism. If racism is there, I haven't come across it yet." But when I met her, it took only minutes to get a different story. For example, African students are not welcome to sit at the common areas of the hostel lobby. The security guards chase them away in no time. But exchange students from the Netherlands are often seen hanging out there and nobody tells them anything. Sounds like classic Rosa Parks-era racism to me.
I met Averlon (left) and Petra in a noisy canteen inside the NIMS University campus. They were classmates back in school in Harare and influenced each other to study dentistry in Jaipur. For six days a week, these doctors-to-be have a busy schedule. Come Sunday, they catch the bus to Jaipur to spend the day in church. Sometimes a church member invites them home for lunch. When Averlon needed an operation, an Indian church family helped her through recovery at no cost. The church group is the only semblance of family life so far away from home. Living on campus, the women have experienced little of the kind of racism faced by those who live off grounds. In one memorable exchange, I asked how the time of demonetisation was for them. In November 2016, the Indian prime minister announced a shock policy move declaring 86% of currency in circulation invalid. They just burst out laughing and said it was nothing new to them. Of course, how could I forget Zimbabwe and its famously watery currency?
Aminu from Bauchi, Nigeria pursues a B.A. in Economics from NIMS, Jaipur.
Arnold is the Batman of Faridabad. He’s there whenever and wherever the Congolese need him. This year alone, there have been two major incidents of ghastly violence against the Congolese, one in Delhi and another in Hyderabad. The embassy takes Arnold along for mediation.
My project on Africans and Racism started in the early Feb 2016 following the attack on the Tanzanian woman in Bangalore. The incident moved many people, both Indians and foreigners, to respond. One of them was Amina, a mass communications student in Hyderabad. She put out a passionate video in which she called out Indians for their racism. Of course, it went viral. I reached out to Amina immediately on facebook. Although, she took six months to reply, we instantly became friends and kept in touch. We were recent together on a debate on Al-Jazeera. When I first met Amina, she told me about a boy in her class who was just learning to converse in English. A teacher "crushed his spirit" (These words I remember clearly) when he tried to answer a question, saying, "It's not my job to teach you English!" When I met her recently, it seemed Hokar and she had become rather close, almost inseparable. They make such a handsome pair that I couldn't resist putting both of them in the picture.
Abraham from Ghana came to India on a student visa. But Bangalore International College a.k.a. Loyala Business School in which he was enrolled turned out to be a fraudulent establishment.
In the port town of Ocho Rios in faraway Jamaica, Natoya was getting ready to leave for Delhi. She had just been granted admission into the prestigious AIIMS university. At that moment, there was a breaking news alert on TV. Nirbhaya. It took her two years to get over the shock and find another place. That’s how she came to Manipal. Little did she imagine that being a black woman in India would become a matter of daily combats. Today, Natoya’s found her peace and her space. This portrait was made in her new two-bedroom apartment where she lives by herself with only a Bible for company.
Samuel is the president of an association that claims to represent 50,000 African students in India. Fourteen people voted in a controvertial election whose validity is still questioned. I photographed him in his home along with portraits of his father, a well-decorated Nigerian officer working at the Nigerian embassy.
I came to know of the attack on Precious and Endurance from a video clip circulated by my African friends on a whatsapp group. I couldn’t believe what I saw until it became official. The clip recorded secretly by another African student is the only incontestable evidence that exists of that incident. It shows mobs chasing the brothers into a mall and brutally beating them in full public view with snooker sticks, metal chairs, dustbins and whatever they could lay their hands on. When I later met them, the soft-spoken brothers opened up gently. I made their portrait just in time for the opening of ‘The African Portraits’ show in Delhi. Many visitors were curious to strike up conversations with them, offer their apologies, and voice their support. It was a change from the vitiated atmosphere that persisted for weeks in Greater Noida.
Amer is a predominantly Muslim town just outside Jaipur. It is home to the world-famous Amer Fort. The elephants that take tourists up the to the fort by day are ‘parked’ in the vacant lots of the building by night where several African students live. As it so happens, a vast majority of African students in NIMS University, a good 30 km further away in Achrol village, are Muslims from Northern Nigeria. The elders of the town invited the Africans to move to Amer instead. Amer is better connected to Jaipur, but more importantly, it has two mosques to cater to everyone's needs. Sometimes, the students are even asked to lead the prayers. In Amer, Indians and Africans stay together and pray together.
Isa doesn’t like the stares she gets on the metro. She prefers taking the bus instead. She’s still the subject of unwanted attention, but at least she doesn’t have to sit facing them. I never looked at the metro that way.
Hassan and I spoke at length about life in the halli. That was my introduction to everyday racism. “Before I left Zambia, I thought in India I would live like a boss!” Student life didn’t turn out quite as expected. Hassan became my window into the African community in Bangalore and their daily plight. “People are so ignorant,” he complained in frustration. “They ask us if we wear clothes in Africa. Do you think we started wearing clothes only after coming to India?”
Hamza came all the way from Nigeria to study human rights in India. This I found surprising. I didn't know one could study that subject here except perhaps to study its spectacular absence ... When I asked to photograph him in his wallpapered dwelling, he requested that he be joined by his love, Shukura, a student of nursing. He says of this relationship, "Thank you for being patient with me. Together we can prove those bitches wrong."
House party tonight! DJ Ronaldt will keep the music going into the new year. Just ask for the Namibian house. It's the one with the fancy lights.
Lawrence is one of the office bearers at the African Students Association of India (ASAI) which is the main representative body of African students with chapters in all major cities in India. As such, I've known Lawrence since the early days of working on this project. We meet up whenever I go to Delhi. There was one time when I had to meet Lawrence and two of his friends for a discussion. I invited them to hang out with me at the opening of a photography exhibition in Delhi. It was that of a famous photographer and the gallery was packed. Predictably, Lawrence and his friends were the only three Africans in the hall--they stood out! One of my acquaintances later came up to me and said, "Mahesh! I see you've brought your subjects with you!" He never misses a chance to dress up. I'm always amazed by his extensive wardrobe that manages to maintain. He says, "I even dress in Indian clothes to let people know that I’m trying to imbibe the local culture, but all they see is a ‘kallu’." Of his attempts to forge a love life, he says, "The male students mock us and the women are afraid of speaking to us. I have been living a monk’s life for three years. No girl is willing to date me."
For a long time, I imagined that if ever I had the chance to assassinate one person in this world, that person would be Robert Gabriel Mugabe. Naturally, when I met Simba, a brother from another murder (sorry!) from Zimbabwe, I bet a zillion zimzim dollars (my 2 cents worth) that we'd connect over this fantasy at once. It wasn't quite so. Simba looks up to the man who has been president for longer than he can remember, whose circle of life has been a wheel of fortune. "He's the most educated president in the world! Look it up on google..." And so I did. Sigh. What about that infamous inflation? What's that like? In a manner of speaking, Simba's course fees is hiked by 98 per cent. Every day. Well, hakuna matata to that! Coming from a political family in Harare, it means no worries for the rest of our days...
I met Mouna and her reticent roommate Halouma, both from Djibouti. They share a room in Amer, which is a town outside of Jaipur city. Many African students of NIMS live in Amer which is well-connected to Jaipur. Mouna is a self-confessed foodie. It was over food talk that we connected. A slow conversation picked up speed when I remarked how Halouma's name reminds me of 'haleem', a Ramadan delicacy. Mouna's face lit up with joy at the mention of haleem. It reminded her of holidays in Hyderabad, where haleem is famous in the days leading into Eid. But the greatest food trip of all was Delhi. She spent two months there for an internship that she managed to get with a little help from her uncle, the Ambassador. Where else but at the World Food Prize!
Photogallery

The African Portraits

Anywhere in the world, it takes a black person to tell us what racism really feels like.