Enough of Indian Racism
Time to decide for a Political Destiny of the Northeast

Yenning *

Protest against Racism at Saket Area, Delhi for stabbed 22 Years Old Manipuri boy on Feb 11 2014 :: Pix - MSAD

In Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi, a castigation, which captures the racist attributes of India, circulates in its varied forms. According to the Aryans of North India, the Dravidians of South India are the Sanskritised monkeys just as the Ramayana depicts and the Mongoloids of the Northeast are the jungalees and the Chinkees. In the eyes of the Dravidians, the North Indians are the Gangetic Barbarians. And for the Northeasterners, majority of them in the campus happens to be from Manipur, both the Aryans and the Dravidians are the Mayangs. How far the accusations are true Yenning leaves it to the learned readers to muse about or be amused.

Recent happenings in Delhi including the murder of Nido, rape of a minor and molest and physical assaults against people from the Northeast are not something new or isolated. However, one needs to go beyond the symptomatic incidences of racism and racial discrimination in India but identify the Indian racism that operates at the level of policy, statecraft and very constitution of the Indian State. Take for instance, on 5th May 2007, the United Nations Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination (CERD) in its Concluding Observations of the periodic report submitted by India noted with concern two issues related with Manipur or the Northeast India.

First, the Committee noted with concern that the State party (i.e. India) has not implemented the recommendations of the Committee to Review the Armed Forces (Special Powers) Act (1958) and repeal the Act, under which members of the armed forces may not be prosecuted unless such prosecution is authorized by the Central Government and have wide powers to search and arrest suspects without a warrant or to use force against persons or property in Manipur and other Northeaster States. The Committee was referring to the recommendations of the Justice Jeevan Reddy Committee, which recommended India to repeal the Armed Forces (Special Powers) Act and replace it "by a more humane Act," in accordance with the recommendations contained in the 2005 report of the above Review Committee set up by the Ministry of Home Affairs.

Second, the Committee noted that the State party (i.e India) does not fully implement the right of ownership, collective or individual, of the members of tribal communities over the lands traditionally occupied by them in its practice concerning tribal peoples in accordance with International ILO Convention on Indigenous and Tribal Populations. It expressed its concern about the large scale projects such as the construction of several dams in Manipur and other Northeastern States which were carried out without seeking prior informed consent of people.

Then from August 2008 to September 2011, Under the Early-Warning Measures & Urgent Procedures of the United Nations Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination (CERD), four Special Communiqués were sent by the Chairpersons of CERD to the Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary Permanent Representative Permanent Mission of India to the United Nations.

The first three Special Communiqués were sent by CERD Chairperson Fatimata-Binta Victoire Dah on 15 August 2008, 13 March 2009 and on 28 September 2009. The fourth Special Communiqué was sent by CERD Chairperson Anwar Kemal on 2 September 2011.

In all the three Special Communiqués Fatimata-Binta Victoire Dah reminded the Indian Ambassador Extraordinary about the Concluding Observations made to India in 2007, that it has not received any information from India, regarding the imminent construction of the dams such as the Tipaimukh Dam in Manipur, the Lower Subansiri Dam in Arunachal Pradesh and other dams on indigenous territories, allegedly without the free prior informed consent of the affected indigenous communities and the continued application of the Armed Forces (Special Powers) Act of 1958, although its repeal was recommended in 2005 by a special Review Committee set up by the Ministry of Home Affairs.

She pled for a constructive dialogue with the Indian Government and requested to submit comments with respect to the implementation of the recommendations contained in the concluding observations of CERD.

The fourth Special Communiqué by Anwar Kemal sent on 2nd September 2011 expressed his regrets that India has not provided any follow-up replies on the implementation of recommendations of CERD's concluding observations made in 2007 regarding the situation of human rights and fundamental freedoms of indigenous peoples in Northeast India.

The Committee requested the State party (i.e. India) to provide information on the situation of indigenous peoples in the North East of India and measures taken to implement the recommendations made by the Committee in its concluding observations of 2007 and to provide its replies to those issues in its 20th-2lst periodic reports to be submitted, as quickly as possible, and which was overdue since 4 January 2010.

It was found that India has never given any satisfactory reply in the Universal Periodic Review (2nd Round) done by the United Nations Working Group in May 2012.

We are citing these Concluding Observations and Special Communiqués for the obvious political implications that hint that racial discriminations are a reality in India and that India is a racist regime. The very idea of turning the Northeast or Kashmir into 'alien spaces' where martial law like Armed Forces' Special Powers Act (AFSPA) operates suggests that people of the region is closer to Hannah Arendt's 'objective enemies' whose definition is created by virtue of their existence in a particular position at a historical moment in time, and that they do not fall within the self-definition of a state.

The idea of 'national security' which the Indian state emphatically nurtures may in the long run create incurable conflicts where the state starts subscribing to totalitarian ideology of creating 'Others' within the country. From the perspective of the 'nation state', an ethnic group or a race claiming a right to produce difference and make distinctions which transcend the official state ideology is treated as an 'enemy within'. The State enacts several suppressive methods to deal with these 'enemy within'. In India, AFSPA seems to be a pointer towards this method. And for more nearly a decade India has been committing genocide under AFSPA. The hardening character of the state emerges in reinforcing greater violence at the moment of slightest opposition. Ethnic communities in India's Northeast of the Mongoloid stock have been targets of such violence.

This goes to signify that racial discrimination especially against the indigenous people of Northeast, who are largely of Mongoloid stock, is deeply embedded in socio-cultural history of India, notwithstanding the rights, as provided in its Constitution. Take for instance, as early as 1930, a top most Indian leader of the Indian National Congress labelled the Mongoloid people including the people of Manipur, among others, as "Thugs, Dacoits and Pindaris (criminals). In the same way, the Aryan conquerors of ancient Indian called the enslaved indigenous people of India as the Sudra. The Indian security forces are not an exception to this deep rooted culture. The prejudice became lethal when they are armed to the teeth and empowered with complete immunity under the AFSPA and other black laws.

So called developmental projects such as mega dams and extractive industries such as mining of mineral ores and extraction of oil and petroleum in the "alien spaces" inhabited by indigenous people, dalits and adivasis with the wanton use of security forces again indicate the colonial character of the Indian state. Thus, we find in the integration mode of the 'Indian' the necessity of having a territory for material needs and at the same time, oppression and exploitation of the native people, just as Colonial British did, which elites inherited unquestioned during the freedom struggle.

One of the theories that suggests existence of racism in India or that India is a racist regime points out appropriation of Brahminical values as well as colonial character both in terms of skills as well as the craft of making the Indian nation, which dates back right to the days of the freedom struggle. In such a project, how Hindustan as an idea of India or Hindustani as a national language became victims of the national project is a familiar story. Such rejections and appropriations of national symbols from largely Brahiminical myths and texts continue to have a tolling effect in India's nationality policy.

The 'Indian dilemma', a contradictory and conflicting nation-self, in which, the nation state had to be at once itself and the other than itself is an example. This dilemma leads the Indian state appropriating the colonial character, questioned and rejected during the freedom struggle, as well the Brahminical values under the garb of secularism, thus resulting into a situation of state-linked internal colonialism and a racist regime. The state uses legitimizing core concepts like national security, development, modern science and technology as justificatory ideologies for domination. Violence is used to sustain these ideologies.

In the face of recent onslaughts in Delhi, there is demand for passing an Anti-Racism Law. On a positive note, this would be an act of acknowledgement from India that racism indeed exists in India or there is something known as Indian racism. How far the law would be helpful in combating racism is a different story. It is akin to anti-rape law. In spite of the prevalence of similar law, rape continues to occur. But the enactment of the law proves that there is rape in India.

Further, immediate steps in terms of beefing up security (we don't trust Delhi police), deployment of ITBP or CISF or Nagaland Police or Manipur Rifles in localities where there are people from the Northeast is a must. But how are these measures going to be helpful? Thus, there is only one inevitable solution. It is time for people in the Northeast to say "enough" of being the step children of India. We can be happy on our own. So a political destiny has to be decided immediately.