Why footballing Africans have the best chance of escaping racism in India

As the world erupted in protest, we stayed silent. Ritwik Sharma speaks to footballing Africans in India about their experience of racism in the country

Football is life...everything else is mere detail.” That’s a line from a movie (Offside, 2009). But for a bunch of African students at Sharda University in Greater Noida, it is a motto for living.

Murtala Mohammad and his friends train every day in the lawns of the sprawling campus. Not even a long, bleak, sport-less summer has interrupted their drill.
 

The Nigerian, a 29-year-old student of pharmacology, has always lived and dreamt football. For half his life, he’s also been a mentor and teacher. He has earned the moniker “Coach”. He looks professorial, too, dressed in a checked shirt and jeans and frequently gesturing with spindly fingers when we meet.

A world-class footballer is a rare creature in India. And in a country obsessed with fair skin and beset by deeply ingrained racism, the black footballer arguably has the best shot at finding admiration, affection and acceptance. Particularly when India, with problems of its own, has watched silently as the world erupted in protests after the killing of George Floyd in the US last month.

Mohammad excelled as a footballing kid growing up in Kano. It also took him to Niger and Cameroon, and he was called for screening ahead of the 2007 Under-17 World Cup in South Korea. But playing for the Super Eagles, Nigeria’s football team, remained a dream, as his zoologist father wanted him to focus on academics.

"If there is any (racism in south india), it is more systemic than direct," says Samuel Abiola Robinson, Actor

He enrolled in an MBBS programme, but did not complete the course. Instead, he came to India on a Nigerian government scholarship — a country made familiar by Hindi films starring Amitabh Bachchan, Dharmendra and Hema Malini — in 2013. In Allahabad, he soon became a star player for his university football team. On request, he also began to train the children of some staffers.

Football allowed him to travel across states and showcase his skills. Once, in Hisar, the organisers refused to allow him to play. Barring the odd such experience, Indians haven’t treated him badly, he says. 

As of last year, some 25,000 Africans were studying in India. A strong economy, affordable education and health care are some of the major attractions for Africans. But the low numbers betray a lack of trust that is unsurprising. Three years ago, a string of incidents compelled African envoys to complain about India not doing enough to contain racist violence.

For African students, educational opportunities in India opened up in the 1970s when the government began exchange programmes, points out senior sports journalist Jaydeep Basu. Many of the students also brought with them superior football skills.
 

David Williams, a Nigerian student at Madras University, represented Tamil Nadu in the Santosh Trophy in the 1970s. That was the start of African footballers in India. Then came another Nigerian, Chima Okorie, Indian football’s best-known import. He came to India to study architecture and blazed a trail for a succession of African stars over the last three decades.

Loveday Enyinnaya of Real Kashmire FC

However, professional footballers vying for glory in India are often led down the garden path.

Lancine Touré, a defender from the Ivory Coast, came to Kolkata in 2015 after an agent promised him a contract with a club. But when he arrived the players had already been signed for the season. “I was lied to. I couldn’t afford to go back home. So I decided to stay and see what I could do,” he says. A Nigerian agent advised him to go to Kerala’s Malappuram district to play the popular seven-a-side football competition there. He took a train with two other Africans, including an Ivorian who had been similarly cheated.

Touré, 25, got picked in a side and was paid well by the manager, but his eyes were set on the bigger clubs in Kolkata. In 2016, he got a break in Mohammedan Sporting to play the I-League 2nd division. He went on to represent Lonestar Kashmir, Langsning and Minerva Punjab.

He says most people in India are good to Africans and believes racism is borne out of a lack of education and awareness. Once, in a village in Kashmir, people came to look at him closely and touch his skin, he laughs, reasoning they may have never seen a black person before. Also, the world of football is strictly commercial. “When you play for a club, they are good to you. After you leave, they may never call you again.”

Loveday Enyinnaya, the captain of Real Kashmir FC, has spent a decade in India. He, too, had a raw deal when he landed in Mumbai and had to head to Kozhikode instead. There, he was prevented from talking to footballers from overseas and given a return ticket at the end of the season without being told of the date in advance. “Another African player and I realised that the locals got monthly salaries. They would tell us we shouldn’t allow the owner to treat us the way he did. But we had little choice.”

The 30-year-old then moved to Shillong, where he played six seasons with two clubs, Goa and Chandigarh, before joining Real Kashmir two years ago. He has had the best time in Srinagar and Goa. “In Goa, they are good to foreigners. Even the players treat us like brothers and we get invited to weddings and celebrations.”

With no sport in sight, some professional footballers have returned to their countries. Those who have stayed on feel secure, but point out that the pandemic has crippled the lives of amateurs and players who take part in Sevens or who informally coach children. Enyinnaya misses his daughter, who recently turned one. “The pandemic is killing us. We are not doing anything, apart from going to the gym and coming back to the hotel,” he says.

The 2018 Malayalam movie, Sudani from Nigeria, poignantly captured the life of an African footballer who finds himself on the wrong side of the law but wins the hearts of Indians. Samuel Abiola Robinson, the Nigerian actor who played the protagonist, says black people have to be careful in India because they can be accused wrongly of crimes.

In Kerala and most of South India, there isn’t much racism, he says, “If there is any, it is more systemic than direct.” He fears that the pandemic will strain racial relations more. But a bit of magic on the field, when games resume, may help mend matters.