A video has sparked outrage in Canada and India after it showed a young man making racist comments at a female employee of Indian origin and demanding she return to India, amid reports of repeated attacks on South Asian staff by a group of teenagers.In the video, a boy could be heard saying, “Go back to your damn country, you sting like a *** Indian.”According to multiple reports, the incident took place in Oakville, Ontario.
Video gets backlash
Several social media users have criticized the video, calling the teen’s behavior “disgusting and rude.”One of the users, who shared the post on I live nearby in a city with one of the most diverse high schools in the world. Let’s do better.”Another user said: “Absolutely. Disgusting. People are getting bolder. Make it seem like it’s okay to be racist every day now.” One user claimed that there is an entire echo system of political actors in Canada who are radicalizing these white children to destroy their lives and careers by endorsing racist ideologies.
Rise in anti-Indian hate crimes and online defamation in Canada
The Institute for Strategic Dialogue (ISD), a British think tank and non-profit organization focused on countering extremism, hate and disinformation, found that hate crimes against South Asian communities in Canada increased by a whopping 227% between 2019 and 2023. The ISD said these incidents occurred both online and offline. According to the ISD, the number of posts containing anti-South Asian comments, which mainly targeted immigrants of Indian descent, increased by more than 1,350% during the same period on X. This not only jeopardized the physical and emotional safety of these communities, but also affected their civic engagement and participation in public life. The report alleged that anti-South Asian rhetoric surfaced online ahead of the Canadian election, fueled by domestic extremists. Between March 1, 2025 and April 20, 2025, in the lead-up to Canada’s federal election, more than 2,300 posts containing anti-South Asian rhetoric were shared across platforms, collectively generating more than 1.2 million engagements, said the report, which was released last Thursday. The use of keywords, such as insults, gave an indication of the extent of hatred against South Asians. One of the most common insults was “pajeet,” a made-up name that sounds “Indian” that cropped up among far-right accounts in sectors like 4chan. While ‘pajeet’ and its variants remained popular among far-right users, they were also adopted by a range of groups, according to the report. Between May 2023 and April 2025, there were more than 26,600 posts containing “pajeet” and other anti-South Asian slurs in the Canadian context, compared to nearly 1,600 posts containing anti-Muslim slurs, the report said. Indians in Canada were also often subjected to stereotypes that depicted them as “unclean,” “uneducated,” or “threatening.” “Hateful messages contain broader stereotypes of Indians as dirty, dangerous and clannish; unlike previous caricatures of Indians as over-educated, they are often depicted as lacking formal skills or education,” the report said. The report also noted that Indians were often targeted with language invoking the Great Replacement, an implicitly anti-Semitic conspiracy theory that claims non-white migration to Western countries is part of a plan by elites to deliberately change the demographics of countries, which has influenced a number of terrorist attacks.
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