India Day, an annual event celebrating Ireland’s Indian community has been called off this year following a spate of recent attacks targeting Indian nationals and people of Indian origin.
The special day, held since 2015, was scheduled for Sunday at Farmleigh House in Dublin’s Phoenix Park.
Organised by the Ireland India Council in partnership with Government and civic bodies, the festival draws large crowds for cultural performances, food stalls, and community celebrations.
Prashant Shukla, co-chairman of the Ireland India Council, told The Irish Times the decision was “emotional and difficult,” but under the current climate “it would not be conducive to go ahead with the celebration.”
He stressed the concerns were not about on-site safety but “about the perception on social media.”
“Even if a single attack was caused” due to the “online perception” of the event, “it would not be worth it,” he said.
“The main purpose of India Day is friendship and the celebration of freedom, not only by the Indian community but also the Irish community,” Shukla added. “It is an unfortunate decision, but [members of the Indian community] stand by it because it is the correct decision.”
A new date will only be set when the situation improves, possibly in September or October, he said.
Reports of violence against Indians in Ireland have surged in recent weeks.
Last month, a man who had arrived in Ireland from India three weeks earlier on a critical skills visa was beaten, stabbed, robbed, and partially stripped by a gang in Tallaght, Co Dublin. The incident was filmed and posted online.
In another case, an Indian nurse in Co Waterford said her six-year-old Irish-born daughter was assaulted and called a “dirty Indian” while playing outside their home.
The Ireland India Council has urged authorities to classify such assaults as hate crimes, form a cross-departmental taskforce on hate crime and youth violence, and enact legislative reforms to hold parents more accountable for the actions of their children.
A Mumbai-based journalist whose daughter lives in Dublin told The Telegraph Online on August 7 that “racism is rising” in Ireland.
“It started with two stray incidents but many in Ireland are fed up with the deluge of new arrivals who get houses that the Irish people don’t,” she said.
On August 7, the six-year-old girl from Kottayam, Kerala, was attacked outside her home in Waterford City at around 7:30pm.
She had been playing with friends when a group of boys and one girl approached, hurled slurs such as “dirty Indian” and “go back to India,” and physically assaulted her.
According to her mother, the child was punched in the face, struck in the private parts with a bicycle, punched in the neck, and had her hair twisted. “I told her I would be back in a second after feeding the baby,” the mother told The Irish Mirror. The girl returned home in tears within a minute, unable to speak at first from fear.
“She told me five of them punched her in the face. One of the boys pushed the bicycle wheel onto her private parts and it was really sore. They said the F word and ‘Dirty Indian, go back to India.’ She told me today they punched her neck and twisted her hair,” the mother recounted. She has lived in Ireland for eight years and recently became an Irish citizen.
On August 5, Lakhvir Singh, an Indian-origin taxi driver who has lived in Ireland for more than 23 years, said he was attacked by two passengers in Dublin’s Ballymun suburb. “They opened the door and hit me twice on the head with a bottle,” Singh told Dublin Live, adding the attackers allegedly shouted: “Go back to your own country.”
Dr. Santosh Yadav, a senior data scientist at the WiSAR Lab and Technology Gateway, alleged he was assaulted by a group of teenagers near his Dublin apartment on July 31. In a LinkedIn post, he described it as a “brutal, unprovoked racist attack.”
“After having dinner, I was walking near my apartment when a group of six teenagers attacked me from behind,” he wrote. “They snatched my glasses, breaking them, and then beat me relentlessly across my head, face, neck, chest, hands, and legs leaving me bleeding on the pavement.”
All these prompted the ministry of external affairs to advise Indians in Ireland to be alert regarding personal security.