Content creators in Toronto are increasingly speaking out about a concerning rise in anti-South Asian hate online, and are urging members of their community and the government to take action.
Aashim Aggarwal is one Torontonian who has experienced this hate first-hand.
The food influencer, who is of Indian descent, tells Now Toronto that over the past few years he has seen a rise in hate comments related to his ethnicity popping up in his and other South Asian creators’ accounts.
“Anytime as a video starts to go more and more viral, that’s when I start getting all the hate comments. And it really doesn’t matter what the video could be about. I could literally be saving puppies, and there [would] still be comments with South Asian racism, Indian racism, as the focus…It happens to me constantly,” he told Now Toronto.
Although the creator says offensive comments are more widespread online, he has also witnessed in-person racist remarks directed to him or other Indian-Canadians in public.
“I wish I wasn’t, but I’m not shocked at all, because I’ve been seeing the rise in hate online over the past few years, and I kind of just knew it was a matter of time before people start started feeling emboldened to be openly racist in person as well,” he said.
Meanwhile, earlier this week a Toronto Maple Leafs fan spoke out online after a picture of her and her family meeting player Matthew Knies, that was shared by the Leafs’ social accounts, received tons of hate comments directed at South Asians.
Knies day with Leafs Nation 💙 pic.twitter.com/IQOZpWef8A
— Toronto Maple Leafs (@MapleLeafs) August 23, 2025
The comments included remarks saying the team targeted racialized groups for the social media post and accusations that these groups would’ve been “clogging up the line” to meet the player.
“Toronto is a very diverse city, there’s a lot of different groups of people. And the Toronto Maple Leafs fanbase itself is made up of a lot of different people, so for you to say that, ‘Of course they picked that picture because they are biased towards Indian-Canadian families’ is so stupid,” she said in a TikTok video.
@nxii.xo god forbid a guyanese girl is a leafs fan bye #mapleleafs #fyp #foryou ♬ original sound – nai
Other content creators have also been speaking out about the concerning trend in Ontario and the GTA, with many recalling their own recent experiences of anti-South Asian hate online and offline, and saying that racism in the region is “alive and hideous” and even “weirdly normalized.”
RISE IN ANTI- SOUTH ASIAN HATE IN TORONTO SINCE 2019
Kripa Sekhar, executive director of the Toronto-based South Asian Women’s Center (SAWC), says it has become common to hear from community members about racist encounters in the city.
“Some of our own staff and as well as clients have mentioned that they have faced a lot of racism on the TTC, as well as in other places. And you know, it’s almost as if people look down on South Asians now,” she said.
“We are seeing a rise in this, [but] many of them will not report it. A lot of it goes unreported because they’re afraid, they’re scared, they’re very new to the country. Some of them don’t know what the consequences will be, and therefore they don’t want to even talk about it or report it.”
Earlier this year, a report by Toronto Police Services revealed that hate crime in the city has risen 19 per cent in 2024 compared to the previous year, while a sharp increase of 80 per cent was registered between 2019 and 2023.
Between 2022 and 2024, anti-South Asian hate has also seen a spike, going from 14 reported occurrences in one year to 41.
Meanwhile, Aggarwal says that even as a public figure who is used to receiving criticism online, racist occurrences have significantly affected him, and even led him to consider giving up on creating social media content.
“I think no human is really capable of just receiving such seething hatred and racism towards them from thousands of people on a daily basis. So, it definitely hurts. There have been lots of periods where I question why I’m doing this,” he said.
“I oftentimes have my notifications off because I don’t want to just see notifications pop up…I spend definitely less time on the app than I want to. I avoid the comment sections of larger accounts that talk about Canadian news and things like that.”
ANTI-IMMIGRATION DISCOURSE DRIVING UP HATE
Queen’s University Global Development Studies Professor Reena Kukreja, who specializes in migration, critical race theory and far-right hate, says that although Canada is known for being multicultural, it is not immune to prejudice.
“Canada has had a history of excluding who they felt would not fit in, whether we look at the Chinese immigrants in the 20th century, or the British-Indian colonial subjects again during that time. So, it does have a history,” she told Now Toronto.
However, Kukreja explains that in the past few years, hate towards racialized groups seems to have been normalized, especially fueled by public discourses from political leaders and figures around immigration policies.
Extremist discourses and anonymity pushed on social media has also driven up the number of public racist attacks, according to the expert.
“The immigrant other becomes a very convenient (scapegoat) to dump all the social ills on…a way of shifting the blame from within your own neoliberal weakening of the welfare system onto, ‘Oh, look at these racialized others. They’re using the food banks. Oh, look at them. They are flooding the health-care system,’” she said.
According to Kukreja, studies indicate that suffering from constant hate attacks, especially in everyday life, can generate high levels of stress to victims, who find themselves having challenges when socializing.
“Many of these youngsters, or the immigrants, the newly arrived immigrants, are doing what we call public-facing jobs, so they have to keep a face on otherwise the job will go, and that creates a lot of psychological pressure. So, there’s a mental health challenge.”
COMMUNITY CALLS FOR SUPPORT, ACTION
Aggarwal says that despite the terrible effects that racist encounters have had on him, he has been able to take something positive from the experiences: community support. The influencer says that many South Asian community members have been supporting and speaking out against hate.
At the same time, the creator urges the community to do more.
“I’ve unfortunately seen a lot of [South Asians] pointing the finger at whether it’s through religion or what part of South Asia you’re from, or how long it’s been that you’ve lived in Canada,” he said.
“While I don’t think it’s our responsibility to end racism…I do think the South Asian community has a responsibility to ourselves to come together as a community, rather than point the fingers at one another, because it just makes it worse for everyone.”
The influencer also says he’d hope social media platforms and media outlets would have better policies to limit offensive comments.
Meanwhile, Kukreja says she would like to see more action from public figures.
“The political leaders have to take responsibility and call out against this and say this is not acceptable. You know, anti-racism is something that we should follow,” she said. “We can’t expect the communities that are the racialized others [to take] up the tab of doing the anti-racist work.”
