The Rahul Mahajan drug episode must have been a driving-home the-point-again type of situation for African students in India, that peception bites almost as hard as reality. CNN-IBN tonight was showing how India was supposedly becoming a racist country and how the general people and police look at African students, even in JNU and other universities, with suspecting eyes.

CNN-IBN had the JNU Foreign Students’ Union president came over to its studio who was saying that in the past 10 years that he stayed in India, he felt the discrimination is getting worse. Many Indians are not even aware of the different countries in African continent and think of Africa as one big country from where they have all come, said another student.

Since the arrest of the Nigerian drug traffickers, African students have been on the spotlight. It is undeniable that only a few rotten apples are spoiling the taste of the whole sack, but considering that to a layman Indian on the street, who will just say -they all look alike types- it is no wonder. That’s what perception does to the image. The truth sometimes hardly matters.

Again suppose, now one day if this layman Indian comes to know of some African students excelling in sports or topping universities in India , will his biased perception get neutralised to an extent? We all will say yes. So then, it doesn’t take the whole community or entity to be good. There can still be a lot of bad Africans who peddle drugs, but if he keeps on seeing only those who are doing great things here, there will certainly be a mindshift.

So at the end of this, I was wondering if image management is only about highlighting the positive points, and hiding the negative ones from view.

And on the issue of Indians looking at African students with suspicious eyes, like one of the JNU student said on TV - let’s Just Stop It. I have African student friends and they all are great hardworking people, leave alone being druggists. But that’s for another blog- just wanted to discuss the PR relevance here.

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