Society continues to uphold and normalize imperialistic ideologies in the 21st century
Every day, anti-Indian racism in Ontario seems more normalized and virulent. According to Statistics Canada, in 2023, South Asians were the third most targeted category of racial hate crimes in Canada, behind Africans and Arabs. The casual labelling of Indians as the most hated race, as “dirty” or “stinky,” or the scapegoating of Indian migrants as the cause of the affordable housing and job shortage contributes to the perception of Indians as “the most hated race.”. Much of this narrative stems from centuries-old British imperial propaganda designed to portray Indians as inherently inferior.
Many historians, including Catherine Hall, have documented how the British Empire constructed India and Indians as subjects who needed “managing, civilizing, and controlling.” This racial hierarchy places Europeans at the top, A mindset formalized in Rudyard Kipling’s, The White Man’s Burden, and critically deconstructed by Edward Said and his work on orientalism.
Chris John Fuller a professor and fellow of the British Academy documents in his literature how British officials classified Indians as an inferior race by creating a body of “scientific” knowledge intended to maintain colonial authority. Herbert Hope Risley who was a leading British colonial administrator, relied on anthropometry, the measurement of physical features to tell social status from bodily traits. Risley proposed a “nasal index,” claiming that groups with wider noses were lower in social hierarchies. He argued that caste distinctions were in fact racial, a theory intertwined with the Aryan Invasion Thesis, which positioned the fair-skinned Aryan race as superior to subhuman races with darker skintones. What was once presented as science is now disguised as casual racism, but the effect is still the same: the justification of exclusion.
One of the most persistent and degrading stereotypes is that Indians are stinky. This specific instance of olfactory racism also has deep roots in British colonialism during the 19th century. British travellers and colonial administrators frequently used descriptions of poor smells in India in their records. This was a way to portray the subcontinent and its people as “dirty” or inferior, which helped justify colonial exploitation and the distinction between the colonizer and the colonized.
Canada inherited much of this ideological framing from early immigration laws, including the infamous “continuous journey regulation” amendment to the Immigration Act in 1908, which were explicitly designed to block non-European immigration, as part of a broader imperial effort to keep Canada a white dominion.
In the 21st century, the rising anti-Indian sentiment in Canada is not a demographic problem: it is a systemic governance failure. Our governments shape public sentiment through the ways they pass federal and provincial policies and legislation. The consequence of this inaction is clear: “Police-reported hate crime in Canada, 2023,” from Statistics Canada reported hate crimes against the South Asian population increased by 227% between 2019 and 2023. It is easier to target Indian international students who are often exploited than to confront the reality that their tuition fees are now keeping Canadian post-secondary institutions afloat. For the 2023-2024 academic year, tuition revenue grew to $15.8 billion nationally according to Statistics Canada, with Ontario schools being the most dependent, drawing 40 per cent of their revenue from tuition. Furthermore, it is easier to criticize Indian families for renting shared housing than to address the lack of affordable units created by deregulation and underinvestment. And, it is easier to stereotype Indian workers than to confront labour policies that fuel corporations to either outsource jobs or to exploit temporary foreign workers for profit.
Society has normalized the dehumanization of Indians and celebration of their suffering; these narratives replicate the same logic that justified colonial domination, portraying one group as less disposable and deserving of ridicule or harm. This is no longer the product of individual prejudice, but an enduring residue of imperialistic ideology amplified by policy failures, now clothed in the guise of fun and jokes.
References
Fuller, C. J. (2016). Anthropologists and Viceroys: Colonial knowledge and policy making in
India, 1871–1911. Modern Asian Studies, 50(1), 217–258. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0026749X15000037
Government of Canada, Statistics Canada. (2025, March 25). The Daily — Police-reported hate
crime in Canada, 2023. https://www150.statcan.gc.ca/n1/daily-quotidien/250325/dq250325a-eng.htm
Government of Canada, Statistics Canada. (2025, July 29). The Daily — University revenues increase more than expenditures in 2023/2024. https://www150.statcan.gc.ca/n1/daily-quotidien/250729/dq250729b-eng.htm
Heritage, C. (2025, May 1). Significant events in the history of Asian communities in Canada. Canada.ca. https://www.canada.ca/en/canadian-heritage/campaigns/asian-heritage-month/important-events.html
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