Dalit
Elite Member
Graffiti calling for violence against Indians out the front of Papatoetoe Central School in Auckland. (Supplied: Shaneel Lal)
Warning: This article includes racist language some readers may find distressing.
Indian communities across New Zealand say they are feeling "hounded" after a surge in racist incidents.
Graffiti targeting Indians has cropped up across Auckland, with racist and violent calls spray painted at three public spaces last month.
After New Zealand signed a free trade agreement with India last month, New Zealand First deputy leader Shane Jones, whose party opposes the agreement, said he would not agree with a "butter chicken tsunami".
His comment came on the heels of Auckland Mayor Wayne Brown calling an Indian staff member at the public broadcaster RNZ a "Muslim terrorist".
The mayor apologised a short time later.
Controversial haka sparks backlash
But the incident that triggered the most complicated response was a performance by former Te Pāti Māori (Māori Party) president Che Wilson during a haka competition, which was directed at Parmjeet Parmar, an ACT party MP who was born in India.
The haka mocked Indian culture and called on Dr Parmar to "return to your own home, to vast land, to great poverty, to many problems".
Dr Parmar has supported policies attacking Māori scholarships, study spaces, and entrance pathways for Māori students, as well as compulsory Treaty of Waitangi courses for first-year university students.
Former Young New Zealander of the Year Shaneel Lal, who has Fijian and Indian heritage, said there was clearly a mismatch of intention and impact in the haka performance.
"Criticisms of Parmjeet Parmar and the ACT Party, and what they stand for and what they've been advocating for, are completely valid and justified," they said.
"In fact, I am one of those people who have very actively criticised the anti-Māori actions of the ACT Party."
While the haka has historically been used as an instrument of political expression and resistance in Māori culture, many took issue with the derogatory references to Indian culture, especially given the two communities' shared experience of British colonisation.
Shaneel Lal says there was a mismatch of intention and impact in the haka performance. (Supplied: Steve Montgomery)
"So it escalated from criticising her individual ideas to criticising her entire identity, which is shared by more than a billion people in this world," Shaneel Lal said.
They said it came at a heightened time, as the Indian community was reeling from a rising tide of anti-Indian sentiment.
New Zealand police's latest hate crime data showed people of South Asian descent copped the most hate as victims of reported abuse in New Zealand between January 2022 and October 2025.
"The Indian community is being hounded from all ends," Shaneel Lal said.
"There's a clear escalation and a real pathway to catastrophe if this isn't stopped by the government."
Rise in racial discrimination
Last year, the United Nations Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination sounded the alarm about the state of racial discrimination in New Zealand.
It warned that the country was at serious risk of weakening Māori rights, and expressed concern about the persistence of racist hate speech by some politicians and public figures.
Māori party MP Hana-Rāwhiti Maipi-Clarke went viral last year when she performed a haka in New Zealand's parliament, symbolically ripping up a piece of legislation aimed at redefining the Treaty of Waitangi.
In response, Dr Parmar made comments suggesting that imprisonment should be considered for utilising the haka.
Anti-racism advocate Tina Ngata said the cultural temperature was particularly high in New Zealand with an election looming later this year.
"What we see every election year is that race is a particular topic that gets weaponised between communities," she said.
She said both Indian and Māori communities were harmed by an atmosphere of racism and xenophobia.
"Anti-Indian sentiment is not new in New Zealand's colonial history. It goes back to the early 1900s, so it's a part of our colonial legacy," Ms Ngata said.
"And like all nations that have been colonised, those colonial legacies become absorbed even by indigenous groups."
Shared history
Indians were among the first non-Polynesian peoples to arrive in New Zealand, accompanying Europeans on early exploration voyages.
Steadier migration from India took place in the 1890s, and at the last census the Indian population in New Zealand numbered more than 292,000.
By 1926 the "White New Zealand League" was established with the stated intention of protecting citizens from Chinese and Indian migrants who were accused of posing a threat to the racial integrity of white New Zealand.
Ms Ngata pointed to the long history of connection between Māori and Indian communities as a source of shared solidarity that should be remembered in the face of attempts to set the groups at odds.
Mohan Dutta, Massey University dean's chair professor of communication, who was born in India and migrated to New Zealand, echoed that sentiment.
"The underlying ideology that drives the anti-Indian racism, as well as the anti-Māori racism, is actually white supremacy, and we lose sight of it often when we are pitted against each other — migrants pitted against Māori," he said.
The Council of Sikh Affairs said Che Wilson had apologised for the controversial haka, and a traditional Māori harm resolution process of Hohou te Rongo was underway.
Ms Nagata said the long history of Indian migration to New Zealand was reflected in place names across the country, from Wellington's Khandallah to Christchurch's Cashmere to the Bombay Hills that famously straddle the Auckland-Waikato border.
She said it was a legacy embedded in the country's social fabric.
"It's much easier to punch across and punch down than it is to punch up at your mutual colonial oppressor," she said.
"We are much stronger together as communities united against colonialism, which harms all communities."
Controversial haka sees debate around anti-Indian racism come to a head in NZ
Indian communities across New Zealand say they are feeling "hounded" after a surge in racist incidents.
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