Citizens From Northeast India - Strangers in Their Own Land

Girls from the Northeast often find themselves victims of discrimination and physical attacks in other parts of the country, mostly because of their looks. How can this social distance be bridged, asks Utpal Borpujari

On June 26, 2009, Mizoram Chief Minister Lal Thanhawla said at an international seminar in Singapore: “I am a victim of racism. In India, people ask me if I am an Indian.

They ask me if I am from Nepal or elsewhere. They forget that the Northeast is part of India.” This April 24, during a conference in Aizawl he once again said, “You (rest of India) continue to ask for our passports at hotels and airports… It means you don’t accept us (Northeasterners) as one of you, as Indians.”

Lal Thanhawla’s comments last year, made when racial attacks against Indians in Australia had been hogging headlines, made instant headlines. But the fact is that people from the Northeast face regular discrimination, including physical attacks and snide remarks, in other parts of the country because they don’t look, well, “Indian”.

And, it is the women from the region who come to study or work in places like Delhi, Pune or Bangalore, who bear the brunt of such “racist” attitudes, going by statistics and media reports.
Take for example the incident of October last year, when a PhD student of IIT-Delhi allegedly burnt a young Naga girl in her rented accommodation in South Delhi because she had repeatedly spurned his advances.

A couple of years ago, another young girl from Manipur was gang-raped in a moving vehicle after she was forced to get into the car near Dhaula Kuan in the capital. In Pune, an incident of an allegedly racial attack on four Naga students had created news last year.

Scary statistics

These are just but a few examples. According to Madhu Chandra, spokesperson for the North East Support Centre and Helpline (NESCH) that was set up some years ago to provide help to victims of such incidents in the National Capital Region (NCR), a study only reaffirms the trend.

The study found that 78.75 per cent of those interviewed had faced racial discrimination; they had been called “chinkies” or “Nepalis” and made to feel like “strangers in their own land”.

Chandra says NESCH, which coordinates with student community organizations from the Northeast, has handled 34 cases since October, 2007, 41 per cent of which were cases of sexual abuse, 18 per cent of beating by locals, 12 per cent of rape, and so on.

‘Ignorance builds stereotypes’

The feeling of insecurity that Northeastern women get is reflected in what Laisram Indira, a Manipuri journalist who is now based in Australia, says. “In Delhi, I lived for 14 years with prejudices every day. It took a lot of time to find acceptance and assimilate with neighbors.

People would find any excuse to pick a fight with me. I had to fight for acceptance on an everyday basis because people just treat you as an outsider who cannot speak the local language. The media in India went berserk over the unfortunate attacks on Indians in Australia.

If only they got berserk when Northeastern girls were molested or raped,” she says.

Nalini Deka, professor of psychology with Delhi’s Indraprastha College for Women, blames this attitude on the lack of information and exposure of the rest of the country to the Northeast.

“It has created a sense of psychological absence of the region in the minds of policy makers, politicians and the bureaucracy. The only images they have are of tea, floods, insurgency and perhaps the exotic,” she says.

“One way of increasing exposure is to have state-funded study groups of young people that will invite non-Northeasterners to various centres of learning and research to write, report on the socio-psycho-political issues of the region,” she suggests.

Mere lip service?

Chandra says the attitude of both people and police towards Northeasterners is “shocking”.
“People from the region, particularly girls, are considered strangers because of their looks.

The feeling is that one can do whatever one likes with them, and they will not have anyone to help them. But most shocking is the attitude of some policemen who refuse to file cases of molestation or sexual assault  until pressure is mounted or the media take up the case,” he says.

The Delhi Police, who had received flak a couple of years ago for issuing “one-sided” instructions to Northeastern students on how to dress, eat and behave, issued a “zero tolerance” policy against incidents faced by Northeastern people after the South Delhi incident where the girl was burnt to death.

However, Chandra says the promise by Delhi government to set up a helpline and a Northeast cell is “mere lip service”.

He says while he has lived in many parts of India earlier, he has not faced anywhere else the kind of everyday humiliation he faces in Delhi.

“ When I said that I was from Manipur or Nagaland or Mizoram they would not be able to locate me geographically, and would insult me by calling me Chinese, Nepalese or Japanese,” he says.

Mumbai-based film editor Pallavi Baruah Kotoky, who went to college in Pune, says: “When I first landed in Pune, most of my classmates used to tell me,  ‘you look different’. Their problem was I didn’t look like a Northeasterner as I didn’t fit into their preconceived notion of what a person from Northeast is supposed to look like,” she says.

Integration is the key

“Most students from the region have a tendency to hang out only with people from their own state. It is natural to feel insecure in a new place, but many of us choose to restrict ourselves to our own narrow, safe and secure world instead of mixing with others,” she observes.

Prof Deka shares the view. “When you isolate yourself and communicate only with one another in your language you are treated as a stranger, further increasing the social distance,” she says.