The foreign' Indians

It was the rarest of spectacles, an alignment of political stars that no astrologer could have predicted: Rahul Gandhi, Narendra Modi and Arvind Kejriwal, all lending their support to a single agitation. Even more unexpectedly, the agitation in question was one being staged by students from India’s Northeast region. For decades now, that region and the “mainland” of India (to which it is connected tenuously by a land corridor 22 kilometres wide at its narrowest point) have had a troubled relationship. Differences in culture, religion and food habits, and even in physical appearances, have deepened the sense of alienation felt by many from the…
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Cant fight racism by soft power alone

At a discussion on Doordarshan in the  studio  at Mandi House in  New Delhi  on Friday, several students and professionals from the Northeast spoke with anger and sadness about the discrimination they face on a daily level. Words which are barred by court edicts such as “Chinky” still remain in common use, filling them with anger, but also a sense of despair. That they continue to work, study and live in metros like Delhi redounds to their credit and to the city’s shame. This issue is not unique to the region or its people; they live in a country and societies steeped in prejudice, where Dalits, women, religious minorities and tribals are  constant  t…
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Racism, Our Dirty Secret

Prejudice based on one’s regional origins  is deep-seated among Indians, including the police -Indrajit Hazra Article 14 of the Constitution deals with ‘Right to Equality’. It tells us with the straightest of faces that ‘The State shall not deny to any person equality before the law or the equal protection of the laws within the territory of India.’ The very following sentence in the country’s operations manual is Article 15(1) that deals with ‘Fundamental Rights’. It says even more pithily, ‘The State shall not discriminate against any citizen on grounds only of religion, race, caste, sex, place of birth or any of them.’      Last Friday, Del…
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PRICE OF INDIGENEITY: Meiteis’ demand for Scheduled Tribe Status(Republished from kanglaonline)

By: Seram Neken, Imphal based Freelance Journalist Simply speaking, groups with indigenous character are termed as ‘Scheduled Tribes’ in India. The word ‘Indigenous’ as used by the international community, is not used in Indian constitution as it refers to some sense of political self-determination. Perhaps, the framers of the Constitution gave room for cultural self-determinism of some specific groups in the form of Scheduled Tribe and Scheduled Caste under Clause 1 of Articles 341 and 342. Besides their primitive nature and geographical isolation; the Scheduled Tribes are identified with their social, educational and economic backwardness. T…
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When “tribe” definition ceases to be anthropological and becomes constitutional

By Pradip Phanjoubam The storm in the tea-cup over the demand from certain sections of the Meitei community for inclusion in the 5th Schedule of the Indian constitution which lists an ever increasing number of recognized tribes in India, is unfortunate for many radically different reasons. Obviously, the tribal status in India is no longer defined by anthropological or sociological parameters, but by the cravings of the incentives accorded to this status. In this way, the conditions for an ever proliferating number of demands from different communities to be given the tribal status, and equally importantly, the reason for perpetuating this ret…
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