The Schomburg Center's exhibition Africans in India: A Rediscovery recently opened in New Delhi, India's capital, against a backdrop of racist attacks against Africans. The contrast between the African experience of yesterday and that of today could not have been greater and the exhibition could not have come at a more appropriate time.

September 28, Rajiv Chowk metro station. In a violent, ugly scene that went viral on YouTube, three African students are beaten with iron bars, sticks, and glass shards by a mob. “We were travelling in metro, and a few guys started clicking our pictures," the students from Gabon and Burkina Faso recounted, "on asking them about why they were doing that, they started misbehaving and that ultimately led the metro staff to take us and those guys to the police officer’s cabin. Even there, they kept passing racist comments which made us furious too. From there, the heat kept building upon and ultimately led to a fight. We were beaten up badly by a majority of people around us at that time.” A few feet away from the large crowd that can be seen laughing, snapping pictures, and yelling "Bharat Mata ki Jai," "Victory to Mother India," two policemen are looking on.

Writing in The Times of India, Siddarth Varadarajan noted, "The flash mob that appeared and disappeared at the metro station that day was summoned to the spot by the triumphalism and crassness that India's rise on the world stage is generating amongst the urban middle class. As the middle class prospers, it is becoming more insular, more intolerant, more anxious. No one ever told them that as we strive for—and insist on—a bigger share of global power for ourselves, we need to learn how to accommodate the world, to grow less small."

October 8, Indira Gandhi National Center for the Arts, a five minute drive from Rajiv Chowk. As the sun sets, I light a wick to open the exhibition Africans in India. Just a few weeks earlier, I was in Paris at the headquarters of the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) inaugurating the French/English version of the exhibition. Government ministers, ambassadors, and celebrities had gathered on the occasion of the 20th anniversary of the Slave Route Project, a worldwide initiative to break the silence about the slave trade and slavery. The ambience was joyous, hopeful, celebratory.

In Delhi, the ceremony in the immense gardens of the IGNCA reflects a different mood as everyone is acutely aware of the special significance of the event. The attack has generated media coverage not only in India, but also in Africa, Europe, the U.S., and the Caribbean; and as we celebrate the past, there is no escaping the distressing reality of the present.

In 50 abundantly illustrated panels, Africans in India shows African high-ranking officials, generals, and rulers, who for centuries were an integral part of India's social, political, cultural, and religious landscape. It was a time when being of a different origin, religion, color, or ethnicity was no obstacle to reaching the highest positions. A time when slave dynasties—like the Turkish slaves who founded the sultanate of Delhi—were established; when Africans who had arrived enslaved could become Chief Ministers, de facto rulers, or founders of princely states. A time when the word Habshi designated a person from Abyssinia (Ethiopia) and was proudly worn by African notables. It was not a derogatory term as it is today.

Journalists seized on the sad irony of the situation, and several articles focusing on the exhibition referred to the anti-African racism that manifests itself in other parts of the country, but seems to be more intense in Delhi. As Ms. Dipali Khanna, president of the IGNCA, noted, "It's a mere coincidence that our exhibition has started off at a time when the media is abuzz with stories of racial attacks on Africans in Delhi. But we do hope because of it, people will understand that Indians and Africans have coexisted since time immemorial."

The exhibition, and the subsequent curatorial talk and conference, became important teaching moments. A large number of schools are visiting Africans in India and young students may thus grow up with an appreciation for the multicultural, multiracial meritocracy-outside of the Hindu caste system—that open-minded India was for so long. What happened there could, indeed, be a lesson to the world.

By bringing this unique page of history to life, the Schomburg Center will hopefully contribute to helping people—in India (where the exhibition will travel to other cities) and elsewhere—better negotiate the present and the future.