New Delhi: From the heights of excitement to the depths of depression and despair, this is how dreams of many students from African countries crash when they start living in India. That is what photographer Mahesh Shantaram found when he travelled to meet and photograph African students in different Indian cities.
Shantaram's work, The African Portraits started a year ago, after a mob in Bengaluru attacked a Tanzanian woman and her friends, after a Sudanese man ran over and killed a local woman.
"We lack the education to understand the idea of race," he said, "but we are united in our racism." No city, he found, could claim to be innocent of racism and hostility to anyone who is the other, who doesn't conform.
The residents, for a long time remained grateful to Bharti, saying he had made their area safer. Janu recalls an incident where an Indian man in Khirki told her that he knew only a few Nigerians were bad but since they all looked the same, he treated them all the same. When Janu tried to point out how wrong this statement was, the man laughed it off.
"People don't realise they're being racist in everyday life," she said, "that's why dialogue is more important than confrontation. To create empathy and show people that they're not so different from each other.”
Comments
0 comment