{UAH} OPINION: WHY ARE INDIANS BATTERING AFRICAN STUDENTS?

News reports are emerging about African students increasingly becoming victims of racism in India. The situation has reached the point where African diplomats in India have had to come together and intervene by filing an official complaint requesting the Indian government to ensure the security of African students.

They have also urged the Indian government to arrest and prosecute those responsible.

One important progressive suggestion made by African officials is that India should simultaneously embark on sensitizing the population on how racism is a despicable crime that infringes on civil rights.

This is a difficult task given the chronic xenophobia and segregation already deeply entrenched in Indian society and maintained as normal behaviour in their caste system.

A system where hundreds of millions of their own citizens, the Dalit (also known as "the untouchables") suffer horrendous discrimination sometimes leading to physical torture or plain senseless murder, simply because of that social status.

Similarly, Indians in the south of the country are darker in skin color (actually comparable or sometimes darker than many black Africans), and reports indicate that they similarly face enormous prejudice and discrimination due to the color of their skin.

If India can have such pre-historic conduct on their own citizens while the state comfortably watches, imagine what Africans risk every single day.

Yet I was shocked to discover that the word Hindi (India) came from the Pashtun language. A language spoken in Afghanistan and nearby countries. India is the name they gave that subcontinent centuries ago as they migrated because of the people they found there.

The word India actually stands for black.

Black is a country that was also on Radio France International today. The comments indicated that Africans are quite disturbed by the reports of these racist attacks on African students.

Those interviewed were suggesting that solutions should be urgently sought to stop this Indian behaviour, while others were suggesting retaliation on Indians on our continent.

Whatever the case, India has a long standing full blown xenophobia problem that they seemingly move with as part of their culture.

There definitely is need for them to start pragmatically facing themselves rather than continuously attempting to hide behind the expulsion from Uganda.

While they are increasingly becoming a major global economic player, a founding partner of BRICS, the new alternative to the World Bank, the great technological strides they are making today, including a space program that is launching rockets with satellites into space, should not blind anyone from the permanent stench of racism and ignorance-based segregation emanating from underneath the bollywood red carpets and the glitter of Mumbai.

Some Indians complain about being deported from our country. Yet the only legitimate grievance they could be making right now (and seeking reparations for), is about being forcefully shipped by Britain to East Africa in the first place.

They were brought here from their true rightful, ancestral, racist motherland, India.

It is also incredible that to this day, none of those deported from Uganda, nor the local or international media, nor the British government, makes any mention of the millions in compensation made to them by Uganda immediately following that deportation.

Meanwhile Indians should first protect African students from endemic Indian xenophobia.

Written by Mr. Hussein Lumumba Amin
Kampala, Uganda

Date: 04/06/2016

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