Delhi, through the lense of a Manipuri boy

Nickson Laishram *

The station was unusually crowded. The sudden outburst during the most hectic hour of the day in Delhi was the least I had expected that day. It was pouring outside so we had to take shelter in the already full mouth of GTB Nagar Metro Station gate. Amidst the crowd I thought I saw the smile of a familiar face, I rushed up towards the friendly smile thinking he must be one of my colleagues.

But when I approached the man he was just another stranger waiting for the rain to stop. The mood of the waiting people were not the best you would expect from someone in Delhi during an unexpected rainfall. I turned around lazily and joined my senior and continued the not so comfortable wait for the mighty rain to stop. Just a moment later, the same friendly face approached me. This time the smile was gone instead the man looked very serious and disturbed. He asked, “Did you just mistake me for one of your Chinese friends?”

The seemingly innocuous question is loaded with meanings, if not for you, at least China means something negative for me personally. The first time we come to know something relevant about China was through the history books. Chinese have always been the villians in those stories we read. Despite Nehru’s great effort, they broke the Panchsheel and invaded Indian territory.

To these days, China remains more of an enemy than an ally trying to hurt India in the wound that hurts the most (of course I am talking about their affairs with Pakistan). Understanding the huge connotation of the question, “Are you Chinese?”, will help you understand how we feel when we are treated as a Chinese, let alone the mockery that usually entails such questions.

You may feel the geographical closeness will make us more familiar with the Chinese culture and in the worse case may even feel that we are somehow connected to it. One can’t be more wrong in thinking that. There is literally no such familiarity or connection whatsoever. The mere resemblance in physical feature doesn’t guarantee any political inclination of a citizen, I mean just look across the border to the west, we have all the historical connections with them and how bad is our relation with them? I don’t want to stretch this point because of the sensitivity of it.

And here we are, in the capital city of our country, treated as Chinese. Some people defend themselves saying we look more Chinese or Nepali and that it is only natural to be mistaken on this matter. Will it make sense if I ask them if they are from across the border just because they look like one to me? I mean how many Chinese students come to Delhi to study? If one were to ask this question to every person in Delhi hardly 0.1% of the population would have had actually met a Chinese and interacted with them.

And it is also very clear to them that people from the Northeast India come to Delhi in huge number and that they have a supposedly “Chinese” look. Still some of them choose to be ignorant or play the ‘Ignorant role’. It would be wrong to blame all the people in Delhi, and I am not doing that either. Likewise it would be wrong to claim that every single one of the Manipuris here face the same problem like me.

In my 3 years at Hindu College, I have made a lot of good friends and people with the right knowledge never mistreat us. It is those who either don’t have the knowledge or the decency to treat a fellow human as an equal that tend to mistreat us. To understand the problem a bit better lets look at the ground on which differences inevitably arise.

The language barrier

I would call the language problem, the mother of all problems. The inability of us to speak either Hindi or English properly is a big barrier. Many of the problems I would be mentioning later could be prevented or dealt with easily if we don’t have this problem.

Most of the Manipuri students in Delhi come here to study after +2, and in the initial stage of meeting new friends when interaction is the key to cementing a good foundation of friendship, most of the time we are unable to interact with them. This problem, as small as it seems, is actually the demon for it spoils the very first impression and in many cases created an unsurmountable wall in front of us.

Our intelligence and wit is most of the time judged from the words and deeds we do but most people are impatient and just hear the words one expresses and judges them prematurely. And in our case with less words spoken, we are judged on the negative end of the intellectual scale. In our modern educational system such a handicap is fatal and from the very first day at college many bright students begin to feel dull and dejected.

Many prominent thinkers-to-be stopped thinking, many law makers-to-be stopped believing in the judicial system, many artists began to doubt their abilities. This one problem is mainly the flaw of our education back at our State and we can’t blame someone else for our shortcomings. Instead of isolationg ourselves, we have to give double the effort to overcome this problem.

We have to talk a bit more extra even though opening up is not in our individual nature for the rest of our carreer is going to be judged by our proficiency of speaking a particular language. With all the flaws in the system, we still have to work to improve ourselves.

Crude generalisation

“People from the Northeast are very cute”. This is a common line I usually hear when someone nice interact with me. Hearing such compliments and flattery is indeed very nice and heartwarming. But there is something not so nice in this line of taking inference. It is okay to say someone is nice, stupid, smart, hot, and what not? But it becomes problematic when we infer the nature of the people of the whole Northeast people based on the limited people we have met, so is the same the other way round when we generalise the nature of Delhites based on our limited experience of Delhi.

The worse role of such generalisation is its unintended contribution towards the prevailing prejudices. Once we inferred that people from some sections or region have some particular trait, we are going to attribute those traits to each and every one of the people we meet from that region or section. It’s no different from predicting the future as we have already decided the nature of all the people we are going to meet in future.

Ironically such generalisation is very hard to arrive at in case of people. To some extent people belonging to the same community have some common features. But Northeast itself is full of diversity. Regardless all such differences among NE people, people still manage to form a mental construct of how Northeast people are and how they behave as a single group.

If this happens, say a particular troublemaker from Manipur does something bad or mischievous and some people from Delhi witnessed it. For those people, the features of a Northeast people are going to be predominantly defined by their particular experience. Likewise it won’t be any different from me blaming everyone in Delhi for the racism I am facing, which is not right.

Instead of saying people from Northeast are cute, I would be elated to hear , “ You are stupid, Nickson”. We need to change this approach of generalisation and we need to judge someone based on who they are and not based on where they come from if at all judgements are ever needed. Just to elucidate the absurdity of such statements, a small State like Manipur is home to more than 30 communities (based on e-pao.net data) each having their own dialects, traditions and cultural differences.

And now if we consider the whole Northeast, the diversity is even more. And to decide a common feature for all these diversities based on very limited experiences is plain absurdity.

Difference in cultural values

India being a vast Nation, it is full of diversity and that’s a fact very single one of us know. Even though we may not know in what form those differences exist, we atleast know the unity in diversity involved with the very own concept of Indian nationalism.

Before India became the India of today , the States were either part of the British provinces or princely States. The people in the provinces were subjected to the authority of British rule and power. But the princely States were autonomous and were not as much influenced by the power play of the British. For this reason, the cultural values that evolved in these two types of regions are fairly different.

One with the values that necessarily demands a greater authority and control meanwhile the other one with more independence and autonomy to their core. Ofcourse there are values that overlap and have common features for even the people in princely states were subjected to their rulers. Coming to the present scenario, for the fact that Manipur is one of the regions which is least developed and Delhi being one of the most developed, when people of the two regions interact they tend to apply their innate values and dictate the relation which becomes problematic in many cases.

The different food habits for example is a vivid illustration of this conflicting relationship. Manipuri because we eat meat and fermented food items and cook also, some PGs and flat-owners wont allow us to stay. And in some case if we are allowed to stay. We are forced not to eat this and that and ask to cook the above mentioned food items in an isolated area. This is the crudest form of discrimination there can be. They would say cooking those items produce bad smells.

Let me be clear here, when you are experiencing something for the first time it might appear odd as you are not used to it, that doesn’t mean that thing is inherently bad. If it were that bad we won’t be eating it remember. And if I were to say this kind of food is common to this and that part of a developed nation, will your perception remain the same?

Our tendency to divide ourselves into classes and judge accordingly is a disease in our society. This disease is an English legacy. During the national struggle what English did to us (demeaning Indian traditions) was seen as a crime against humanity and now the same thing has been done to a section of the Indian society, how are we going to react to this? In a country like ours, if the culture of the minorities are not protected where are we heading as the biggest democracy?

Not only this, one thing can mean different meanings to the two parties involved which can lead to conflicting interests(which need not be the case always). From the simplest values of friendship to the most complex ones, there are fine differences. When such differences arises, what I have observed in my short experience is for the two parties to try and rate their values above the other. This should be reflected upon by each one of us if we feel this trend of maltreatment needs to stop.

The key to solve this problem is very simple, for ones we should try and convince ourselves that there can be two different and equally right way of looking at something. Every value is relative and what could be ‘the way of doing something’ for me need not be “the way” for you. When we are not sure about what the other party feels, try asking them instead of going back and feeding on the popular notions.

No matter how hard we try, culture and likewise religion are the two things we can never have a common ground (atleast not in the near future). So acceptance of the differences and learning to respect them is crucial.

Some people tend to point to the lacking education among the people as the primary reason for such unfortunate problems in the nation. Even though I accept it to some extend, it goes deeper than that. When I was participating in a campaign to promote “Rally for Rivers” in an endeavour to save the rivers of our country, I went to Akshardham temple with two of my friends. During the process I talked to a group of people there and I tried explaining the program but a guy from among the group suddenly pointed towards a group of ragpickers across the road and ask me to explain this sh** program to them.

I was totally taken aback. I stopped my explanation and joined my friends but I didn’t tell them what had happened. Surprisingly the same group, who asked me to go and explain the program to the ragpickers, was listening carefully when one of my friends explain the same thing to them and they were more than impressed and even asked to have a photo with the group. All this while the guy who pointed at the kids was avoiding eye-contact with me and he was in a hurry to leave the place.

This is one of the few incidents when I was reminded that some section of the Indian society has very little tolerance and patience for people like me. Education can play a huge role in erasing all the intricate divides in our Indian society but the more important need is for us to change the attitude towards fellow humans. The need for us to belong to a hierarchy and for one person to belong to a higher or lower class needs to stop.

Such a primitive outlook has no place in today’s world, more so in one of the leading cities of India like Delhi. It’s about time the system back at Manipur be revamped and make life easier for all of us by improving the quality of education and creating a conducive academic hub. I long for the day when we no longer have to leave our homes to get the standard education we all need and I have full faith that it is happening soon.