Tackling the Racist Attacks on Indians for UPSC : The alleged ‘racist behaviour’ among Indians against some of our fellow citizens has emerged as a cause of serious concern lately. The fatal attack on Nido Tania, a young boy from Arunanchal Pradesh in a South Delhi market recently reulting in his tragic death, suspicious death of a young Manipuri woman in her flat in South Delhi’s Munirkha, the assault on two Nagaland youths in Gurgaon and merciless beating of a Manipuri student leader in Bangalore for not speaking Kannada are some of the recent instances of violence against our fellow citizens from the North-East.
Tackling the Racist Attacks on Indians from North-East : Essay for UPSC
We
definitely have a lot of ground to cover in light of very disturbing and
disconcerting developments affecting our nation-building process in recent
times. While one can definitely deal with an identified enemy within and
without the border, it is really difficult to nail those living amongst us and
masquerading as citizens. There are some citizens who, intentionally or
unintentionally, are weakening the evolution of nationalist tendecies in the
country. The nationlist feeling, the so-called ‘we feeling’ that Benedict
Anderson once visualised as a desideratum for his ‘imagined community’ to
constitute a strong,well-bonded nation-state still appears elusive if we look
around and cognize some of the developments in our civil society.
The alleged
‘racist behaviour’ among Indians against some of our fellow citizens has
emerged as a cause of serious concern lately. The fatal attack on Nido Tania, a
young boy from Arunanchal Pradesh in a South
Delhi market recently reulting in his tragic death, suspicious death of
a young Manipuri woman in her flat in South Delhi’s Munirkha, the assault on
two Nagaland youths in Gurgaon and merciless beating of a Manipuri student
leader in Bangalore for not speaking Kannada are some of the recent instances
of violence against our fellow citizens from the North-East.
The Central
Government is said to have taken a series of measures to ensure safety of
citizens from North-Eastern states in New Delhi and elsewhere. They include
regular police patrolling of colonies where people from North-Eastern states
live, starting exclusive helpline for them, race and gender sansitisation
programmes and speedy disposal of such cases. Today, we also have a Minister of
State [Independent Charge] for the North-East Region. The reinforced attention
and concerted measures have been taken following the death of Nido Tania to
ensure the safety of people from the region in the National Capital Region.
Earlier in
2012, in an attempt to prevent racial discrimination against people from
North-East, Indian Government has asked all the states and union territories to
book anyone who commits an act of atrocity or crime against people from the
region under the Scheduled Castes and Scheduled tribes [Prevention of
Atrocities] Act. A predominant majority of people from the North-East have the
protection of this central legislation available to them by dint of their
belonging to one or the other tribe as scheduled in the this Act. A person
found guilty for non-bailable offences under this Act can be imprisoned for
five years.
As per a
study, an estimated two lakh people from the North-East have migrated to Delhi
between 2005 and 2013 as also have many times. More people from the other provinces
fo India. According to the Union Home Ministery, crimes against the people from
the North-Eastern states have reportedly gone up by 270 per cent during the past three years. The Home Ministry data
also confirm that crimes against people from the North-Eastern states increased
from 27 in 2011 to 73 in 2013. The crimes that witnessed the highest increase
were in keeping with the national pattern though and inter alia included
molestation, rape and hurt. While molestation increased by 177 per cent during
the period, rape cases increased from one in 2011 to 17 in 2013.
The data give credence to observations
by the Government appointed M P Bezbaruah Committee that ‘people from the
North-Eastern states are racially discriminated against in Delhi’. The 11-member
Committee, formed in the wake of the dastardly attack on Arunanchal Pradesh
student Nido Tania, submitted its report to the Government recently where it
held that 86 per cent of the North-Eastern Indians living in Delhi have faced
some sort of racial discrimination. The Committee in its report has stated that
people from the North-Eastern states faced more problems in Delhi than in other
metropolitan cities such as Mumbai, Hyderabad, Chennai and Kolkata. It also
said that over two-thirds of women from North-East had reported that they faced
harassment and discrimination in Delhi.
The Committee in its 82-page report,
inter alia, has recommended the institution of fast track courts and special
police squads, integrating each and every aspect of the North-East into the
consciousness of people outside the region through educational interventions,
increasing social media outreach and legal awareness campaigns, having
earmarked residential facilities to address the accommodation problem faced by
North-East people, holding regular national and international events in the
North-East to create greater harmony and better understanding, making such
offences with racial overtones into cognisable and non-bailable offences and
expediting disposal of such cases.
Many citizens from the North-East
India have complained that they have been stereotyped by such characterisations
as ‘Chinky’, ‘Hakka’, ‘Nepali’, ‘Chinese’ and ‘Chow Mein’ by people in Delhi,
with reference to their facial features, particularly the appearances of their
eyes. For the distinct style including sartorial and tonsorial, tradition,
culture, music, dance and more distinct facial features, they are said to
become easy preys to outrageous remarks and alleged racial attacks. In 2007,
the North-East Support Centre and Helpline [NESC&H] was started with the determined object of
increasing awareness of prejudices and attacks against people from the
North-East. The Centre [NESC&H] was launched with the express purpose to
provide assistance to those from the North-Eastern community who face various
forms of alleged discrimination.
In the wake of back-to-back alleged
racial attacks on people from North-East in Delhi and elsewhere, the
influential North-East Student’s Organisation [NESO] has rightly demanded the curricular
changes by inclusion of the history, geography and cultures of the people of
North-East in our school syllabi. ‘In major cities in India, people from the
North-East are often mistaken for foreigners by some people. They have to be
educated. The only way we can educate them is by incorporating the history,
geography and cultures of the people of North-East in the school syllabi, NESO
Chairman Samuel Jyrwa opined recently. ‘No law, no matter how stringent it is,
can stop the racial attacks. The problem is in the mindset and it has to
change. The problem is also about people’s ignorance that there is an India
beyond West Bengal’, he said.
Against this background, what are
needed, apart from strong policing and exemplary punitive measures against such
offences, are more institutionalised inter-cultural exchanges and interactions,
culture sensitisation exercises including inclusion of specific chapters in
school syllabus fro inculcation of healthy, eclectic and cosmopolitan mindset
and attitude vis-a-vis people from diverse cultures and regions, not to speak
of encouraging more inter-caste, inter-regional and inter-faith marriages. We
definitely need to outgrow these archaic, anachronistic, pathological, and
abhorrent leftovers from our past and build a broader consensus to ensure the
emergence of a more tolerant and progressive India from the womb of our
nation-building process. The sooner we complete our odyssey from being the
state-nation to a nation-state, the better.
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