Intimate portraits of Africans in India

Amidst violence and racism, a photographer has given them dignity, beauty and national attention

Photo Credit the economist 

ON A chilly night in January 2016, a 21-year-old Tanzanian student was beaten up and partially stripped by a frenzied mob in Bangalore, which also set her car on fire. The crowd was reacting to the death of a local woman in an accident involving a drunk Sudanese driver earlier in the evening.  The woman did not know the driver, nor did the bunch of strangers on the road who morphed into a violent crowd in minutes.

Many Indians were shocked by the attack and expressed their outrage on social media. Yet this African woman remained nameless and faceless, and the outrage was brief, as though waiting for other news to come along. It was then that Mahesh Shantaram, a documentary photographer from Bangalore, went in search of those Africans in India who were increasingly living under the shadow of racism. Mr Shantaram was disturbed by the idea that Indians complain vehemently about facing racial discrimination in other countries, yet refuse to acknowledge racism at home. “To everyone in their right minds, it was clearly a racist attack, whereas the government was bent upon denying that racism had anything to do with it,” he says.

There are over 50,000 Nigerians living in India, and several thousand more Africans from other countries. Most of them come to the country as students pursuing advanced degrees. When not being totally overlooked, they are insulted to their faces, denied flats and profiled as drug-dealers and prostitutes by police. But this more mundane treatment hardly gets a look in the media between the spectacular instances of violence.

In the last sixteen months or so, Mr Shantaram has done his best to change that, photographing over 60 Africans across the country—Bangalore, Hyderabad, Jaipur, Jalandhar and the capital region that includes New Delhi—for his project “The African Portraits”. Mr Shantaram’s choice of posed portraits over documentary photography (which purports to be more realistic and objective in nature) is important to him. “A portrait can force the viewer to stop and stare—which is anyway a national pastime—and evoke their curiosity about the life and condition of the subject,” he says.

These portraits have been part of a Five city project that opened in Bangalore in August 2016. The idea is to shock the conscience of his Indian viewers: Mr Shantaram says unequivocally that “my interest lies not in studying the Africans as a community but to personify the nature of racism in this country.” His approach is working, bringing attention in the national media. He remembers the Bangalore show as the first time that so many Africans had gathered together in a venue for the arts, “rather than at a police station or hospital.”

The last leg of “The African Portraits”, to open in New Delhi in June, will perhaps be its most significant. Invitations have been sent out to the foreign ministry, ambassadors and influential expats, all of whom have some role to play in the plight of Africans in the country. The hope is this portraits series will turn up the conversation not just on these Africans, but also the deep-rooted legacy of race and colour in Indian society.

“African Portraits” will show at Exhibit 320 in New Delhi from June 1st to June 16th.