The North East reality in the national capital

Bula Devi *

Protest in Delhi against killing of Nido Taniam on 01 February 2014 :: Pix - Debanish Achom

The racist attack on Nido Tania, a student from Arunachal Pradesh, in a south Delhi market that resulted in his death, highlighted the difficulties that people of the Northeast, particularly students, face outside their region. It is a well-established fact that people of the Northeast find it difficult to gain ready acceptability even in a place like Delhi, a city now known for its cosmopolitan nature. There can also be no denying that people of the Northeast do not face any discrimination in other parts of the country, whether it be North, West or South India.

Subsequent to the Nido Tania incident, every attack, assault, rape or molestation involving people of the Northeast makes headlines in the national media, particularly the print media in Delhi. Not a week has gone by when some incident or the other is not reported.

Sample some of the headlines: 'Naga woman molested', 'Assamese student attacked,' 'Manipuri jawan assaulted'. The reportage, invariably, is coloured by a racist brush. Newspapers do not fail to point out that the victim is a Manipuri, a Naga or a Mizo and the incident is given a racist overtone.

Take the case of the attack on an Assamese student of Delhi University earlier this week. Reporting the incident, the Hindustan Times, the largest circulated newspaper in the national capital, wrote: "This is the second incident of violence reported against students from the Northeast within one week in the Capital." The story clearly hints that the attack on the Assamese student was racist in nature.

But, are all the incidents that grabbed headlines, subsequent to the Nido Tania case, racist in nature? Was the Assamese student who got into a brawl with some co-students inside his college premises attacked because he belonged to the Northeastern State? In the words of the student himself, the fight in which he got beaten up had nothing to do with the State he belongs to. It was like any other youthful brawl in which he tried to stand up to a college bully but unfortunately ended up being the victim.

Giving credence to the Assamese student's version of the incident is the police. Talking about the incident, the same newspaper that hinted that the attack was racist, went on to quote a senior police officer who said: "There were no racial overtones to the incident. The fight occurred over a minor personal squabble."

But the national media, unfailingly, gives all such incidents a racist colour. This is rather unfortunate and detestable. What the media does not realise is that by doing so, it is not doing any good but is only harming the Northeast and its people. Highlighting the incidents in such a manner only reinforces stereotypes and strengthens the divide between people of the Northeast and the rest of India.

The national media is doing the Northeast great disservice when it, in the normal course, ignores the region and only reports on it when there is a terrorist strike or a riot or when stolen cars from Delhi end up in the Northeast. How the national media can help overcome mutual distrust is not by focusing only on the negatives but by highlighting the positives.

Take for instance Mizoram's superb win last month over Railways to lift the Santosh Trophy, the national football championship. With a population of a mere 10.97 lakh, less than one tenth that of Delhi's, Mizoram bested traditional football powerhouses such as Bengal, Kerala, Punjab and Goa.

The media should have lapped up this superlative performance. But unfortunately, apart from reporting the match, the national media by and large ignored the achievement.

The same media toasted Parvez Rasool, a Kashmiri Muslim, when he was selected for, mind you, not to the Indian cricket team but only for the India A team for its tour to Zimbabwe. While Parvez's achievement needs to be lauded, Mizoram's feat was by no means any less, which ought to have been highlighted by the national media. Only The Indian Express did justice to this Northeastern State's achievement.

Coming back to the run of unfortunate incidents in the Capital, the media can also be faulted for unnecessarily highlighting the State to which the victims belong. There is no need for the kind of headlines that I have already mentioned. If not on a par, but worse crimes and atrocities have taken place in Delhi involving people from various parts of India, but in none of them has the media felt the need to point out the victim's domicile State.

Take two recent examples in Delhi, both of which grabbed headlines and TV time. Both of them involved innocent maid servants from impoverished regions in their home States. In the first case, a Bahujan Samaj Party member of Parliament and his wife were jailed to torturing their maid to death. The headlines simply read: 'BSP MP and wife arrested for maid's death.' They did not say: 'BSP MP and wife arrested for Bengali maid's death.' The reportage also seldom highlighted that the maid servant belonged to Bengal.

In the other incident, a top executive of an MNC met the same fate as the politician couple for atrocities she committed on her maid. The reportage and the headlines did not scream that the unfortunate victim belonged to Jharkhand. It is time the national media debates this and does some introspection.

Some years back, a newspaper editor in Delhi banned his staff from identifying a crime victim/perpetrator's home State after a reader belonging to the Northeast complained to him regarding an offensive headline. The crime incident involved a person from Manipur and the headline read: 'Manipuri held for drug haul'. The editor was livid and ordered his staff to be more sensitive. His justification was that if the perpetrator had been from Punjab, neither the report nor the headline would have mentioned this fact. Well said that.

In the journalistic practices of the past, a communal riot involving Hindus and Muslims rarely ever identified the communities to which the rioters and victims belonged. The reportage would read such: "Three persons were killed in a clash between two communities..." They would never identify the religion of the warring groups. Perhaps it is time the national media revives these sensitivities.

Another point debatable is that many of the recent cases are being booked under the SC/ST Act. Cases that are genuinely racist in nature could be booked under Section 153 A of the Indian Penal Code. Why isn't anyone looking into this aspect ? Why are activists who are working day and night for the protection of the people of the North East not insisting on expanding Article 153 A to cover people of the North East?

Perhaps this is something which the Bezbaruah Committee can look into. The committee held several meetings in Delhi with people from the North East belonging to different professional backgrounds , students, parents and so on. They held meetings with the SC/ST Commission, police and many more, besides having meetings in Hyderabad, Bangalore, Bombay and Pune.

They were supposed to hold meetings in Chennai also but it appears the State government did not extend enough cooperation to the committee. In the meantime, elections were announced, putting the brakes on the committee and delaying its much-awaited report.