Surge in anti-South Asian hate directed mainly at Indians in Canada: Report
Posts containing anti-South Asian slurs, mainly directed at immigrants of Indian origin, increased by over 1,350% from 2023 to 2024 on X, while police-reported hate crimes against South Asians in Canada went up by over 227% between 2019 and 2023, a report of the think tank Institute for Strategic Dialogue has said. High immigration from India has been blamed for issues like housing affordability and pressure on health and transport infrastructure, and rising crime. (PTI/Representative)
The report released on Thursday said over 2,300 posts containing anti-South Asian rhetoric were shared across platforms and generated over 1.2 million engagements ahead of the federal election in Canada in April. It added the use of keywords such as slurs indicates the scale of hate targeting South Asians. The analysis said pajeet, an invented name which sounds Indian, was among the most common slurs.
'Between May 2023 and April 2025, there were over 26,600 posts which included 'pajeet' and other anti-South Asian slurs in the Canadian context, compared to nearly 1,600 posts containing anti-Muslim slurs,' the report said.
Institute for Strategic Dialogue's data set showed that Indians were commonly targeted with language invoking the Great Replacement, an often at least implicitly antisemitism conspiracy theory alleging that non-white migration to Western countries is part of a plan by elites to deliberately change country demographics.
'Other posts contained wider stereotypes of Indians being dirty, dangerous, and clannish; by contrast to earlier caricatures of Indians being overly educated, they are often portrayed as lacking formal skills or training,' the report said. 'The staggering rise of anti-South Asian hate across Canada both on- and offline represents an urgent threat to these communities and the country's social fabric.'
HT in August last year reported about the rise in xenophobia in Canada, driven by high immigration blamed for issues like housing affordability and pressure on health and transport infrastructure, and rising crime. Antipathy was focused on Indian immigrants, as they comprise the largest and most visible cohort of newcomers to Canada.
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