Peace Procession Rally Against Brutal Killing of Nido Taniam and physical assault of two Manipuri women at Kotla Mubarakpur
Date : 4th February, 2014

CONDEMN RACIAL DISCRIMINATION ON THE NORTHEAST PEOPLE
"JOIN PEACE PROCESSION AGAINST BRUTAL KILLING OF NIDO TANIAM AND PHYSICAL ASSAULT OF TWO MANIPURI WOMEN AT KOTLA MUBARAKPUR."

Date: 4th Feb. 2014;
Venue: Vishwavidyalaya Metro Station to Arts Faculty via GTB Nagar
Time: 3:00 p.m. RSVP: 9716477215

LET US UNITE
FIGHT AGAINST RACISM
UNITY IS VICTORY

Manipur Students' Association Delhi

Dear friends,

MSAD would like to condole for the untimely departure that Nido Taniam was forced to take by the criminal. We share the pain of the aggrieved family. We protest the crime and strongly condemn the criminal. At the same time the physical assault of two Manipuri women at Kotla Mubarakpur is also an act of racially targeted sexual harassment frequently faced by the women of North East in the Indian metropolitan cities. We condemn all these acts of racism continuously perpetrated by the 'mainstream' Indians.

Today is not the first time that we take ourselves to the street to fight Indian racism. As the history would illustrate, this kind of heinous act was not the first of its kind that the Indians has enacted for us. There are also numbers of discrimination cases meted out to north east people where the victims never divulge officially the incident as we envisaged it.

We would like to reiterate our stand that we are not safe in India. Delhi is a glaring example of the series of unabated and deliberate racial discrimination on us for our physical look and linguistic ascent that are different from the 'Indians.' Quite often we are being singled out as different and inferior from the rest of the Indians and overcharged, branded, castigated, insulted and harassed by the local landlord, neighbourhood, shopkeepers, taxi & rickshaw drivers, officials and law enforcing agents. So, it is not preposterous to arise a question among ourselves –'Are we an Indian or Indian alike!'

We would like to assert that the Nido Taniam Incident was a repetition of racism. We would like to make it very clear that the illegality of racism in our context may not be perceived from the legal paradigm alone. It has to be contextualized in a cultural milieu of the Indian political overtaking on us. Call it an Indian colonial situation or use a different term, the situation remains the same. What is undisputed is that we, the mongoloid people who hailed from the northeastern part of India, are culturally and racially different from the rest of India. The difference is a reality. We are being forced to be in the Indian Union through executing historical fault-lines superimposed on us. While the Unionism is being enforced on us, the inferior position that we enjoy within the Indian Union becomes a precondition for the Indian cultural racism that restricts us from enjoying social respect from the dominant Indians. As a result, for more than five decades we are bearing with the racial injury inflicted on us. If the Indian law cannot practically place us to the category of the respectable, we need to frame our own law and defend ourselves.

LET US UNITE
FIGHT AGAINST RACISM
UNITY IS VICTORY

With regards
Manipur Students' Association Delhi
4th Feb. 2014