Combating racism
- Hueiyen Lanpao Editorial :: February 03, 2014 -

The death of Nido Tania, a 19-year old student from Arunachal Pradesh, after he was beaten up by a group of men at Lajpat Nagar Market in South Delhi on Wednesday, has once again brought in focus the all-pervasive racist attitude of the mainland Indians towards the people of North East origin in particularly because of their different look and lifestyle.

Regardless of the denial by Indian lawmakers and the police, the truth is that people from the Northeast India have always remained at the receiving end of a perpetual hate crime targeted against them in other parts of the country.

As denial or ignoring racism amounts to a new form of racism itself, Indian lawmakers and police should not remain in denial mode anymore for the welfare and betterment of the country that takes pride behind the euphemistic concept of ‘Unity in Diversity’.

Denial of the all-pervasive racist attitudes and biases in India by the lawmakers and the failure of the police to act against the perpetrators, even to the extent of refusing to entertain complaint, is also indeed very sad, especially for the people of North East origin, who have been compelled time and again to question their sense of belongingness to the great democratic nation called India.

Back home, people in the seven Northeastern States of Arunachal Pradesh, Assam, Nagaland, Manipur, Meghalaya, Mizoram and Tripura have to endure the suffering from prolonged imposition of one of the most racist piece of legislations called the Armed Forces Special Powers Act, 1958, which takes away even their basic fundamental rights to life and freedom, and once they come out of the region, people of North East origin have to confront with the sneering racist remarks of the mainland Indians, who consider them as the ‘others’, every waking moment of their life.

The death of Nido Tania is not a stray incident.

There have many other victims of the hate crime perpetrated against people of Northeast origin in other parts of the country before Nido Tania.

But all that the Government and its related agencies have done after every incident of such racist attacks is just to give assurance for ensuring protection and security of the people of Northeast origin.

But this could never be the solution to the problem at hand?

To put an end to the malice of racism, Indian lawmakers and police should first of all stop pretending and admit the fact that racism does exist in India.

This admittance would itself lead to finding the solution to the problem.

However, at this point, we can’t help but to wonder, how the effort being made by the Delhi police to impart training on self-defence to the people of Northeast from next month along with providing classroom instructions and skills for self protection, discussions on risk situations and risk reduction, crime prevention strategies, etc, are actually going to help in solving the problem of hate crime perpetrated against them.

Instead of solving the problem, such measures would only aggravate it.

Racism is something that remains in the mind of the perpetrators, and it could never be done away with by winning in a one-to-one physical combat.

Rather than adopting such stupid measures, Delhi police could do well by extending help to the campaign for inclusion of the history and culture of the Northeast people in the school and college syllabus for the rest of the people to know and understand the true meaning of cultural diversity of India.