#ExclusivelyInclusive: Why are North-East Indians Treated As Outcasts?
|By Kasak Shirotriya|
”India is my country and all Indians are my brothers and sisters I love my country, and I am proud of its rich and varied heritage. I shall give respect to my parents, teachers and all the elders, and treat everyone with courtesy. To my country and my people, I pledge my devotion. In their well-being and prosperity alone, lies my happiness.”
We all must have taken this pledge when we were in school. But have we ever felt like behaving accordingly? Do we all treat each other equally? The answer is a big ‘NO’.
Since the beginning, we have been taught that India is a diverse country because there are many different regions within the country. Each region has its own unique ethnicity, culture, and points of view. Each state of India displays something different in terms of style, skin colour, culture and character. But don’t you think that diversity comes with discrimination? This is the unspoken reality of our diversity.
India as a racist country
There is no shame in accepting the fact that India is a racist country. According to the World Values Survey conducted in the year 2017, India was ranked as the second most racist country in the world, where people from other countries are ill-treated by some Indian people, based both on skin colour and country of origin. This survey talks about the racial discrimination and harassment faced by the foreigners but the issue we are talking about now is that Indians are targeting Indians.
Let me explain you why? When a person from the North East India goes to another part of the country, he/she is often looked down upon. They are generally termed as ‘Chinese’, ‘Japanese’, ‘Koreans’, ‘chinii’, ‘chinky’, ‘chowmein’ and what not. But they are not called Indians. The situation is even worse for the girls and women from the North East. Due to the region they belong to, they are popularly believed and supposed to be an “easy” and “cheap” sex prey. Sad but true.
Indian Constitution says that everybody is equal and has given equal rights to every citizen of India. Some things only remain on paper but are not implemented in real life. If we are asked to name all the seven north-eastern states, definitely we won’t be able to name all of them. That is a consequence of us (collectively as a nation) being inconsiderate towards these states.
Racial Discrimination increased at the time of crisis
When the whole country is battling with the corona virus, here the north-east Indians are fighting with another disease which was racial discrimination. Since the COVID-19 outbreak began, we saw so many cases in which north-east Indians were called ‘corona virus’ or ‘tum logo ki wajah se hi corona virus faila hai’ and were asked to go back to China. Even some of the students from North-East India have revealed that they had to book the entire rickshaw privately because people were not ready to go with them. Just because of their appearance, they were treated like this. Some shopkeepers refused to give them groceries because they thought they are Chinese. In this regard, the Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA) even issued an advisory to all states to take action against harassment of people from north-east India.
In 2012, the Ministry of Home Affairs asked all the states and union territories to book anyone who commits an act of atrocity against the people from the region under the Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes, in order to prevent racial discrimination on against people from North-East. So, if you call a north-eastern ‘chinki’, you will be jailed for five years.
We take pride in saying that India is one of the countries with rich culture and heritage but on the other hand, there are people who are facing racial discrimination every day. This is so heart breaking and shameful at the same time that we Indians are racists towards the people from our own country. The racial discrimination towards the north-east must end. I understand that change doesn’t come in a day, obviously we cannot eradicate this issue suddenly but what we can do is to take baby steps. Talking and spending time with people from different races, ethnicities and regions will make you understand that we are all the same, we are all human. Acceptance is not a luxury; acceptance is the way of life.
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