If you have Mongoloid features, are one among the 45,000 odd students from the North East studying at Delhi University or any other institute at the National capital, loves the cuisine of the region and likes to wear jeans and T Shirt, then you are in danger zone.

This is precisely the message that Delhi police tried to convey when it came out with its dos and don'ts for North East students studying at the National capital and what is more there is a clause in the code of conduct which states that the girls from the region should not move around in flimsy or revealing dresses and avoid lonely roads when thus dressed.

The message that rings out loud from the do's and don'ts or social profiling drawn up by some fertile minds in Delhi police is that people from this region virtually go to Delhi to have a party, get high on drugs and drinks and move around in revealing dresses.

On the other hand, there is also the explicit point that the food relished by the people of this region is poison to the people in North India or the term which has come to be widely known as mainstream India while, trying to draw the line between the people from the North East region and the people staying to the west of the Chicken Neck.

When in Rome do as the Romans do, so as to avoid being groped or molested or even raped and not to disturb the neighbours and the landlords with pungent food such as Ngari or Hawaijar is the core message behind the suggestions put forward by Delhi police.

Understandably, the stand of Delhi police has met with strong criticisms from a number of social organisations in the North East, notably from Meghalaya. It is only right that the Governments of the North East States should jointly take up the matter with the Government of Delhi.

We really do not know what Delhi police meant by wearing revealing or flimsy dress, but this point by itself exposes the mindset of the police that so and so woman was raped because she wore provocative dresses !

Such line of thinking can come from only a warped mind and it provides the perfect leeway to the would be rapists or eve teasers, for which Delhi is infamous for.

There were reports of some girls from the North East either being raped or molested in the past few years, but were then so many other girls who were not from this region.

Does this then mean that the girls from the other places were also provocatively dressed, as per the standard laid down by Delhi police ?
Was the Swiss diplomate raped because she was in provocative dresses ?

Stereotyping the students from the North East is not a new phenomenon and it has existed at the National capital ever since a large number of students from this region went for their higher studies at Delhi University, Jamia Millia Islamia and JNU.

Coming as they do from a region far removed from the consciousness of mainstream India, it is not surprising to see how easily the stereotype description of the students from NE can become entrenched.

As for the food habit of the North East people, no one seems to care that each region in India has it own taste bud. So while the tandoori chicken, with the blood still fresh in the bone marrow is a delicacy in North India then the unpeeled potatoes is accepted as staple diet in Bihar.

So too the curd rice with a dash of pickles in South India and mind you, not every one agrees with the manner in which the curd rice is eaten.

And how about the raw onions with all its pungency with chappatis or rotis and green chillies that one finds being eaten inside a train compartment in North India, that may be very irritating to the passenger sitting next ?

Also read opinion on this issue here.