Why Delhi is an NE nightmare

9 Jul 2009, 2322 hrs IST, TNN

NEW DELHI: Mizoram chief minister Pu Lalthanwala was not so off the mark after all. From being called `chinkies' to being propositioned by just about anybody to being refused a place to stay for their `loose morals' it is Delhi's worst-kept secret that people from the northeast (NE) are subject to all this and more in the country's capital which prides itself on its cosmopolitanism. A two-year study by the North East Support Centre and Helpline has now confirmed that 86% of people from the NE face racial discrimination in Delhi.


The study conducted by the helpline's spokesman Madhu Chandra as part of his Phd thesis from the South Asia Institute of Advanced Christian Studies, Bangalore, took into account the responses of 80 students, some of them newcomers. Even those who said they faced no discrimination had been taunted as `chinkies' and `Nepalis' and had been accused of having too `free' a culture and had at times even been called strangers. The cases recorded by the helpline include sexual abuse, manhandling, harassment by employers, landlords and police and eve-teasing.

Police response, the study shows, is often inadequate with FIRs being lodged in only 67.65% cases and there was action in only 17.65% cases. Only two of the 34 cases that were reported to the police actually made it to the court. The findings, say most people from the region, bear out what they face everyday.

Imsutoshi Longkumar, a Phd student in JNU, recalls an incident when he had gone out of the campus to buy some books and a bunch of young men at Ber Sarai asked him where he is from. "I said Nagaland at which one of them exclaimed flabbergasted: `What, England?' I repeated the word. Looking very confused, another person asked me if it is near New Zealand. They were not joking.'' Such lack of knowledge about each other is where discrimination starts, he says, talking about the "struggle'' of his north-eastern friends who stay outside the campus. He has been in Delhi for five years and said JNU campus is one place free of all such discrimination.

While the study shows that longer one stays in Delhi greater is his/her exposure to discrimination 86.49% of those who had stayed for more than two years in the city felt discriminated against Imkongneken of the Ao Students' Union has been in Delhi for just a year and has already faced taunts of "chinky'' while the car he was travelling in was standing at a red light.

Women talk about being the target of sexual slurs. "I gave up swimming because I realized while other women are left alone, it is impossible for me to enter the pool without being surrounded by a large number of men trying to feel me up,'' said a woman from Manipur, pleading anonymity.

But many people from the northeast say that they deliberately downplay apparent acts of racism for fear of "institutionalising'' it with too much attention. Says a media professional from Assam: "The more you create a ruckus about it, the more widespread it stands the risk of becoming. But there is naturally a limit till which this can be practised.''

[Times of India]