By Ganesh Tailor
Walking home in Winnipeg and seeing a park bench graffitied with racist exaggerations of South Asian names. Riding the bus in Toronto and overhearing a conversation about how Indians have “invaded” the country and government institutions. Scrolling social media only to see the same racist, slur-laden insults and caricatures of accents.
These are not isolated incidents – they are the daily reality of a rising tide of hate, and they culminate in a single, vicious message for South Asians: “You are not welcome.”
It is no surprise that the reality of anti-immigrant hate can be seen everywhere – online and offline. For decades, a huge bulk of racist vitriol has been directed towards Muslims and those perceived to be Muslim, a racism spurred on and exploited by finance capital and the state to support the so-called “War on Terror.” However, a new target has recently emerged – this time on the backs of South Asians.
To be clear, this surge has not displaced racism towards Muslims and Arabs, but has rather created a new target of a different quality.
Aside from a few pieces scattered in the media, rising racism against South Asians is an almost unspoken concern, with Statistics Canada reporting a 200-percent increase in reported hate crimes against members of the community.
The lack of attention combatting this racism is not a random, isolated occurrence. Instead, it is a direct result of the deepening crisis of late-stage capitalism in Canada, the US and elsewhere. It is a calculated and inevitable byproduct of a ruling class which is unable to solve the deep-seated contradictions and structural crises facing the system – a worsening lack of affordable housing, runaway inflation, rising unemployment.
Capitalism will always require a scapegoat to fracture the working class and redirect justified anger away from the ruling class. Today, the South Asian diaspora has become a primary scapegoat.
From model minority to surplus population
Vijay Prashad’s The Karma of Brown Folk details the historical construction of the “good” South Asian immigrant: the doctor, engineer, small business owner. The narrative of the “model minority” – the minority others were to look towards to emulate – created a racial wedge that pitted South Asians against other racialized groups, particularly Black and Indigenous communities.
This account chastised the latter groups by pointing to the supposed success of the former, weakening class solidarity. It upheld the lie of the “Canadian Dream,” in which any minority who simply works hard can achieve success, never mind the systemic barriers of racism and colonialism.
Even while this narrative spun, it deliberately ignored the vast majority of South Asian labourers in low-wage, precarious work – the taxi driver in Brampton, the convenience store clerk in Edmonton, and more recently the gig worker. To be sure, this story was not just imposed externally but grew from its embrace and promotion by a segment of South Asian professionals and small businesspeople.
Still, the South Asian “model minority” only ever existed as a myth to exploit.
During the COVID-19 lockdowns, immigrant labour – much of it South Asian – buoyed the economy by stocking shelves and delivering food. Today, the far right rears its head at these same immigrants and blames them for the systemic failures of capitalism.
The Liberal Party of Canada, following the far-right playbook, recently enacted policy shifts aimed at curtailing the immigrant population by reducing application approvals by almost 20 percent and drastically cutting international student visas. The latter measure disproportionately affects Indians – in 2023, students with Indian citizenship accounted for over half of all international student enrolment in Canada, while in 2024 that number dropped by a staggering 32 percent.
The official reasons for this policy of curtailing are to “stabilize the population,” “ease pressure on housing,” and “allow current citizens to work.”
These are smokescreens. The reality is that capitalism is in crisis and the “model minority” is no longer needed – it has become a surplus population. The system which once welcomed South Asian workers as cheap, obedient labour now characterizes them as a burden and threat.
The effects of government austerity and the ruthless prioritization of corporate profits are sold to the Canadian-born working class with textbook national chauvinism which shouts that the South Asian workers and students are taking your jobs and your housing, and overburdening your social services.
Capitalism’s self-inflicted wound
The economies of Canada and the other advanced capitalist countries have been hamstrung by their own contradictions. Systematically financialized and deindustrialized by a capitalist class in the pursuit of ever higher profits through the imperialist plunder of the Global South, the domestic economy has become heavily reliant on a low-wage service sector.
Crucially, many of these necessary but low-wage service jobs – from long-haul trucking, to healthcare, to hospitality – are filled by immigrant workers including huge numbers of South Asians who are forced to accept meagre pay and poor working conditions under constant threat of deportation. This threat, a powerful weapon in the arsenal of the ruling class, allows wages to remain low while guaranteeing obedient labour.
Reducing immigration will then inevitably create significant labour shortages in key areas of the service economy, ultimately impacting service quality and harming the entire working class. This chaos wrought by contradictory policies, however, will not peacefully sort itself out.
Today, the ruling class blames the artificial scarcity of jobs, housing and services on South Asian immigrants among other scapegoats, amid a push to austerity, militarism and privatization. At the altar of capital, competition between workers sharpens, wages for all are driven down, and exploitation ruthlessly intensifies. These are bleak eventualities, but they are in fact avoidable.
Unity and action
We do not want a “model minority” that splits the working class. Racism, xenophobia and chauvinism are strategies the ruling class has historically used and continues to use to break solidarity among workers. Our fight is not with fellow workers from Punjab or Kerala who today are the newest focus of the far right, and whose subcontinent has never ceased being bullied and plundered by Canada, the US and other imperialist powers. Our fight must in fact be hand-in-hand with our working class allies and against those very same imperialists.
Instead of immigration caps, we must put the reins of the economy into the hands of workers and demand public investment in social housing, healthcare and education. We must fight for the nationalization of the banks and key industries.
In the immediate term, stronger labour protections and higher wages must be won for every worker, regardless of their place of birth. Only a multi-ethnic, progressive and united working class, fighting in solidarity against all forms of racism, can defeat the xenophobic agenda of finance capital and build a socialist future of dignity and respect for all.
[Photo: Union and community members celebrate Indo-Canadian union organizer Darshan Singh, 2023]
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