THE ANNUAL EXAMS at Delhi University were just days away. One night, clutching a bundled roll of tutorial notes I had collected from a nearby college hostel, I trudged down a quiet street towards where I lived. A lazy Haryanvi drawl broke the silence: “Kya nasha kar ke aaye ho?” (What drugs have you taken?)
The question came from a burly policeman in a Delhi Police Gypsy. I was barely 18, freshly arrived from Assam, and all I could manage was a mumble: “Main nasha nahi karta.” (I don’t do drugs.)
What had triggered the cop’s query was my “northeastern” looks. In a split second, I had been profiled and ‘sorted’ as someone on drugs. That moment clung like a heavy blanket long after the night had passed. Every now and then, it resurfaces—especially when another “Anjel Chakma incident” jolts the national conscience.
A 24-year-old MBA student from Tripura, Chakma was brutally beaten in Dehradun after he protested racial slurs. He fought for life in hospital for more than two weeks before succumbing to injuries on December 26. His last words were: “I am not Chinese… I am an Indian.”
Recently, two Indian students at the University of Colorado Boulder reportedly won nearly Rs1.8 crore in a discrimination lawsuit. The incident dated to 2023, when a university employee objected to a student heating a bowl of palak paneer in a residence hall, calling its smell “pungent”. The matter escalated into disciplinary action, against which the lawsuit was filed.
But back home, such prejudice remains common. People from the northeast routinely encounter discrimination in the so-called “mainland”, especially in metros and towns where their numbers have grown in the past two decades.
Chakma’s last words reveal a deeper truth: a desire to belong paired with the pain of being excluded. That the slur hurled at him was “Chinese” is not incidental. It draws from a jingoistic ultra-nationalist narrative sharpened by recent India-China tensions. Equally relevant is the fact that the northeast remains an unknown realm for many.
Ringed by Tibet-China, Myanmar and Bangladesh along 98 per cent of its borders, the northeast is connected to the rest of India by a narrow 2 per cent land corridor often called the Chicken’s Neck—a term that underlines the rather tenuous linkage.
But the vulnerability is not so much geographical as it is psychological. Distinctive facial features, dress, strong tribal bonds, food habits, heavily accented Hindi—all become markers of the “other”. After nearly eight decades of nationhood, many Indians have failed to appreciate the ethos of coexistence, of trying to understand diverse cultures, peoples and ways of life that are different from theirs. With every act of racial violence, the idea of ‘unity in diversity’ loses another fig leaf, exposing an uncomfortable shame.
Before Chakma, there was Nido Tania, 20, of Arunachal Pradesh, who was killed by a mob in Delhi in 2013. A year later, Akha Shalouni from Manipur died in the capital. She was 29.
Between these deaths, and countless incidents before and after, people from the northeast have been abused, assaulted, humiliated, and in some cases, killed. All because they looked different, dressed differently and ate differently.
Madan Prasad Bezbaruah, former Union tourism secretary, described Chakma’s killing as “another sad incident” that fuels the feeling of alienation “which over the years was slowly receding”. Bezbaruah was head of the Union home ministry committee formed in 2014 after Tania’s death, mandated to address racial discrimination, targeted violence, police insensitivity, legal gaps and cultural alienation faced by people from the northeast.
“The committee looked more at the positive side—how to make the rest of the country understand that the northeast is different, and that difference is a cause for celebration and not to build barriers,” he told THE WEEK. “All the recommendations were neatly summarised and categorised for short-, medium- and long-term action.”
They included making racially motivated acts cognisable and non-bailable offences, sensitising law enforcement agencies, providing legal aid, expanding northeast representation in textbooks, and promoting cultural exposure.
A monitoring panel was set up to oversee the implementation of the committee’s recommendations. But most members of the panel now feel that actions have been delayed. “The mandate was largely adequate and well designed,” Joram Maivio, a member of the monitoring committee, told THE WEEK. “But it lacked clear accountability mechanisms, timelines, and strong enforcement provisions.”
The causes of racial prejudice against people from the northeast are layered. Historically, large parts of the northeast had long been isolated since colonial times. As a result, there has been an acute lack of awareness about the region and its peoples. Prolonged insurgencies also contributed to the region’s “remoteness”, hindering development and creation of employment opportunities. More recently, migration of youth from the northeast to urban India—particularly into service and hospitality sectors—has added a socioeconomic dimension, where competition over scarce resources fuels resentment.
Without doubt, a lot needs to be done.
A good beginning would be to take stock of the implementation of the Bezbaruah committee’s recommendations with a white paper listing action taken against each recommendation. “The anti-racial discrimination law has to be enacted,” Maivio said. “Northeast cells, helplines, and special units should be set up in major metro cities. The issue is no longer policy design, but political will and accountability.”