Commentary | Aditya Ranjan Pathak and Anandita Pathak, Learning Culture, Unlearning Stereotypes: Ending Discrimination Towards India’s Northeast
The beginning of June witnessed a massive social media campaign led by students, activists, professionals, academicians and concerned netizens, especially from the Northeastern part of India, against discrimination faced by Northeast Indians in “mainland” India. These conscious and concerned citizens took part in a twitter storm in the evening of June 4th demanding the inclusion of a mandatory chapter on India’s Northeast in the syllabus of National Council of Education, Research and Training (NCERT), a government organization that publishes model textbooks for use in schools across the country. This online tool became a strategy to register protests and draw attention to their long standing demands.
The online campaign began in the early days of June as a result of an incident which shook the conscience of the country. In a recent video, popular 21 year old YouTuber, Paras Singh, mocked, abused, and launched racially charged attacks against a Northeastern provincial legislator from Arunachal Pradesh, going as far as to label him as a “non-Indian.” The YouTuber also notedly claimed that “Arunachal was a part of China.” Since then, a number of glaring instances have caught public attention, including journalist Rahul Kanwal’s insensitive statement on Nagaland’s territorial affiliation to India. Such instances of insensitivity reflect a general sense of detachment and lack of knowledge felt at the center of mainland India towards the political realities at regions perceived to be peripheries.
Arunachal Pradesh and Nagaland are two of seven sister states located at the crossroads between India and Southeast Asia that make up the Northeastern region of India, along with Assam, Manipur, Meghalaya, Mizoram, and Tripura. With a population of over 45 million (2011 census reports), 27% of whom are indigenous (K.R Diskhit and Jutta K.Dikshit 2013), the Northeastern region is a conglomeration of around 140 indigenous tribes, all with diverse culinary cultures and linguistic and socio-economic systems. The region is not an uniform space with homogeneous people, but has its own distinct identities which are often more neglected than acknowledged. It is not enough to look at the Northeast as a site with beautiful landscapes, greenery and gorgeous hills; it is imperative to see its people as citizens with a unique form of culture, politics, culinary practice and history.
Discrimination against the Northeast dates to the colonial period, when the British colonial rulers labeled the region primitive and unsuitable for living due to its mysterious ecology and esoteric diseases. The disconnect between the area and mainland India worsened after independence when the Indian state constructed the category of ‘Northeast’ in order to govern and control this region. This construction has been a problematic one because it homogenizes the region and its people, making way for stereotypical beliefs (Duncan McDuie-Ra 2017). As a result, discrimination against the Northeast and its residents continues amongst mainland Indians due not only to its geographical distance but also to negative stereotypes about local customs, habits, and proximity to China fostered by the national media. The cartographic anxieties and borderline disputes with China regarding the Northeast only fuel more alienation, discrimination, and hatred by their own countrymen towards the people of Northeast.
Since the 1990s, with the economy opening to a consistent trickle of neoliberal policies in governance, laborers began to migrate from the Northeastern Region of India to various metropolitan cities like Delhi, Mumbai, Bangalore, Chennai, Hyderabad and Kolkata in search of better opportunities to build lives. The national capital, specifically, witnessed a wide influx of people from various parts of the Northeast because of its employment prospects, exposure into a multicultural space, and its prominent academic institutions.
This flow of people remained steady due to the opening of sectors such as fashion services and a boom in call centers in the early 2000s. Duncan Mc-Duie Ra, in his ‘The Northeast Migrants in Delhi : Race, Refuge and Retail,’ cites two chief reasons for migration to Delhi, which we think applies to most metropolises of the time. One was the specter of unemployment and the demand of labor from the northeast, which needs to be understood in the context of Delhi transforming into a global city. And the second is that Delhi is the best destination for higher and tertiary education.
With a huge amount of population migrating to different metropolitan cities, there has been an alarming rise in ethnic discrimination, which has been lying unaddressed for decades now. According to available statistics, around two hundred thousand people migrated around 2005 to 2013 particularly to Delhi, 86 percent of whom have faced discrimination of some kind. Covid 19 protocols only made rampant discrimination against the Northeast Indians worse, be it in Delhi, Pune or even Kolkata. They were called ‘Coronavirus,’ denoting deep-rooted estrangement and disconnection. There were numerous instances of assault and humiliation, criminalisation, and eviction from living spaces. This fear of being viewed as 'different' violates the security of Northeast Indians in the metropolitan cities. This should be unacceptable for citizens in a modern nation state that guarantees fundamental rights.
Many years have passed since one of the most brutal examples of racial discrimination in India: the murder of a young student called Nido Taniam in Delhi in 2014. Yet, the MP Bezbaruah Committee Report, presented by its 11 members in response, is still without implementation. As of now, the situation has not improved at all. While there are some laws which exist as safeguard, they remain woefully unimplemented. Most of the people, even the educated ones, are not aware of these laws. There are policies which do not translate into action. The negligence towards this issue has led to the present situation remaining to be resolved. And the resolution needs to be solid and long-term for the times to come, and cannot be for temporary shutdown of the social media uproar. Hence, in this case, although law and policies are integral for the society, one needs to think beyond law and policies. The existing law needs to be more strict and justly implemented. The Government must acknowledge the grievance of the issue and raise awareness of anti-discrimination laws, along with consequence for breaking those laws, through campaigns, ads, and other media.
But even beyond the laws, it is time for a social reckoning. It is high time to acknowledge that along with its geographical value to India the northeast is also made up of people who have greatly contributed for the betterment of the nation. Numerous tribes have cohabitated in this very space for centuries and there is a shared connection which sustains itself beyond ethnic distinctions. It is these distinctions which should be respected and celebrated and not countered with slurs and racial bigotry. Discrimination, be it brutally physical or verbal or even implicit, is not new, however, for the Northeast Indian population in the mainland. This has been persistent in all forms in postcolonial India. While subtle forms of discrimination against language, fashion sense, and racial appearance are something faced on an everyday basis by people from the Northeast, this has become something which is not being addressed by society at large. In fact, discrimination has been normalized to a large extent. This normalizing in itself is frightening.
For centuries, education has been an instrumental tool which plays a key role in enlightening and sensitizing the masses. Education could provide a foundation or a platform through which people imbibe knowledge about the Northeast's geography, history and culture. Learning more about the region would illuminate the masses that the Northeast has much more to offer and that it is not a mini version of China. As much as learning is important, the unlearning of stereotypical norms is also important. Thus, an insight into the region would allow the mainlanders to form a connection with its seven sisters and hopefully they will grow a kind of kinship with its people as their own.
However, it can only happen with one step at a time. In this case the uproar and campaign for inclusion of a mandatory chapter on the Northeast (regarding its history, politics, economy, culture and society) in the NCERT needs to be approved. If the familiarization is made when young minds are being shaped, they will not remain ignorant till they grow up. The child will not be curious if his or her neighbor is from China or Korea. The pedagogy in higher education, that is, in the universities and colleges too needs to transform. We hardly know of any universities and colleges in India, be it state or central, including northeastern literature or history in their course material. The syllabus needs to alter, adapt , and take cognizance of this matter. Only then a path can be set towards illuminating people regarding the northeast. A systemic change in mentality can only be accomplished with real systemic change in policy. This small but crucial step has the potential to bring about changes in the way we look at Northeast India and its people. It will be a significant step towards ending discrimination against people from Northeast India.
Notes
K.R. Dikshit and Jutta K. Dikshit, North-East India: Land, People and Economy (Springer Netherlands, 2013).
Duncan McDuie-Ra, “Solidarity, Visibility and Vulnerability: ‘Northeast’ as a Racial Category in India” in Northeast India: A Place of Relations, edited by Yasmin Saikia and Amit R. Baishya, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2017), 27-44.
Aditya Ranjan Pathak is a Research Assistant at Urban Ecologies Project based at National Institute of Advanced Studies, Bangalore and University of Cambridge, UK. He holds a masters degree in History from Ambedkar University, Delhi.
Anandita Pathak is a SAFE Fellow, YP Foundation, New Delhi. She is a final year undergraduate student at the University of Delhi.
To cite this Commentary essay, please use the suggested entry below:
Aditya Ranjan Pathak and Anandita Pathak, “Learning Culture, Unlearning Stereotypes: Ending Discrimination Towards India’s Northeast,” criticalasianstudies.org Commentary Board, June 16, 2021; https://doi.org/10.52698/GGPU8908.