Greater Noida

the right. The message went out to the ‘Greater Noida Students’, ‘AASI NIU’, ‘Executives 2017’ and the ‘Black Stars’ Whatsappgroups.hethenpastedthemessage as his Facebook status.

An hour before this message went out, Muhammad, Samuel and Brahim had huddled together on the fifth floor of the hospital to discuss strategy. In the evening, they enlisted the services of police to distribute packets of biryani, samosas and bread to students who had written to them. “We will ask them to give us their name and address and let’s see how we can do this,” said one of them.

The three men, all students from Nigeria studying in universities in Noida, are office bearersattheassociationofafricanstudents in India (AASI), and have spent the morning sending out warnings to African students living in Greater Noida: “Remain indoors!”

Much like Nigerian students, Endurance andprecious,whocameunderamobattack earlier this week, these men are part of a steadily increasing African student populationwhohavecometoliveingreaternoida, luredbythesprawling,american-styleduniversitiessellingindiaasadreamdestination for education.

“Back home, I was a student activist and when I came to India, I noticed it was necessary to be involved in some form of association since things were going really wrong,” said Muhammad. “Everyday, we hear or read things that Indians say about us. That we ‘eat humans’ or ‘eat dogs’. We cannot let this happen.” Other students said they faced racial slurs on a daily basis, often called ‘kala’ or ‘Negro’.

Roughestimatesputtheafricanstudent population at 25,000 across the country, about one-fifth of whom live in Greater Noida. Manuel, an economics undergraduatestudentatnoidainternationaluniversity, doesaquickcalculation.“evenifyouassume aminimumtuitionofacoupleoflakh,these universities are earning in crores from us. This is not including the money we spend on transport, food and rent,” he said.

“We are pumping thousands of crores into the Indian economy and we are getting nothing in return. There are more than five million Indians in Nigeria and they are employed and live comfortably there.” Manuel gets cut off mid-sentence by Michael: “An Indian man from Punjab lives in my house in Nigeria. I am his landlord and I look after him well. If this trend of mob violence continues, we will have to retaliate and perhaps it will be through diplomacy. Nigeria is one of the largest exporters of crude oil to India. We will also actively discourage African students from applying to Indian universities.”

The African diaspora within India is uniting and becoming more aware of each other, photographer Mahesh Shantaram told The Indian Express. Shantaram spent the last year photographing members from the African community in different parts of the country, including Muhammad in Greater Noida.

“Eventhougheachplacehasasmallconcentration of Africans, they are becoming enraged with similar incidents across the country. The Whatsapp groups serve as a virtualfamilywheretheycancometogether andgettoknoweachother.thecommunity wasdefinitelynotasunitedevenayearago,” said Shantaram.

The AASI, Muhammad said, has attempted to put together a database of students through an open college registration via their website. “We even used to collaborate with universities so we know the number of African students in any one place,”hesaid.butwhatsappandfacebook groups have made this task easier. “Unless everything calms down, we are not going to tellanyonetoleavetheirhomesorgobackto classes at their universities. This is not the first time such an incident is happening; the Indian government has to fully address the issue so it never happens again.”