[Assam] (Assam): Racism in North India

[BBaruah at aol.com]

Dear Netters
 
The following letter from Aparna Pallavi appearing in today's Sentinel is  
food for thought and reflection by all of us.
 
Bhuban
 
      Last updated : SATURDAY 16  SEPTEMBER  2006     
   
Racism in North India  
As  an undergraduate student at Delhi University in the early 1990s, Dr Renu  
(Gupta) Naidu took little notice when her friends routinely referred to  
students from the Northeast as ‘Chinkies’ or hurled obscenities or racial  
insults at them.
“Any Northeastern student entering a college campus  earns the epithet ‘
Chinky’ on day one, and has to live with being looked  at as, at the very least, 
an oddity, for the rest of her or his stay,”  says Naidu. “Students told me 
about being asked questions like whether  they eat rats.” This racial hostility 
comes unbidden from the  non-Northeastern student community.
Naidu had herself faced  discrimination as a ‘non-Marathi’ student during 
her post-graduation at  Nagpur, and it dawned on her that Northeastern students, 
with their  distinctive ‘non-plainspeople’ epicanthic features, behaviour 
and dress  habits, were in all likelihood confronting far more discrimination 
than  she had. In June 2006, Naidu was awarded a PhD for her work on the lives  
of Northeastern tribal girl students in Delhi, with her research based on  
interviews with 200 students from 10 colleges in Delhi University’s North  Campus.
The first disturbing fact — statistics compiled from official  records of 
various colleges in the city — that Naidu’s study has uncovered  is that the 
dropout rates of Northeastern students touches 50 per cent,  with more girls 
dropping out than boys. The reasons for this trend,  according to Naidu, lie in 
the intense sociocultural conflict, and the  resultant stress, that impact all 
aspects of the lives of students from  the Northeast.
“For a student from the Northeast, irrespective of  whether she or he is from 
an urban or tribal background, Delhi is like an  alien land,” says Naidu. “
The language is unfamiliar, the cultural and  social terrain is unknown. Even 
getting a letter of introduction to open a  bank account is a mammoth task. 
What is more, their distinctive physical  features immediately mark them out as 
outsiders among the local  populace.”
Being cheated as a matter of course is one direct fallout of  this situation. 
Angom*, a Manipuri student at Miranda House told Naidu,  “Even 
rickshaw-pullers, auto-drivers, vegetable vendors and bus conductors  cheat us because they 
know that we are not aware of the price of things  here, and are not in a 
position to drive hard bargains.”
For girl  students, the situation is worse still: in the conservative Delhi 
milieu,  their Westernized style of dressing and easy camaraderie with the 
opposite  sex — owing in large part to their liberal tribal culture — they are 
seen  as ‘fast’ or ‘of easy virtue’. This imperception exposes girls from the  
Northeast to the worst sorts of sexual harassment, both within campuses  and 
without. Diana, a Mizo student at Indraprastha college, said, “Delhi  men 
believe that north-eastern girls are easily available. They look at us  with only 
one thing in mind: sex. If we protest, they warn us to clam up,  because we 
are alone and there is no one we can turn to for  protection.”
The attitude of college authorities and the local police  to incidences of 
sexual harassment and teasing is usually nonchalant.  “Incidents of this nature 
are treated as routine, and often the girls are  blamed for them.” 
Furthermore, she says, “Police stations refuse to  provide data on the sexual harassment 
of Northeastern girls.” One police  official, in fact, told Naidu: “Yeh to in 
ladkiyon ka roz ka naatak hai,  kahan tak complaint darj karien? Aur waise 
bhi bina chingari ke aag nahi  lagti (This is a daily drama these girls play 
out; how many complaints do  we register? Anyway, there's no smoke without a 
fire).”
The  vulnerability of the girls is underscored by the fact that most  
Northeastern girl students live in rented accommodation. Nine colleges of  the 13 
(three are women’s only colleges) in the North Campus have hostels;  only four of 
these have girls’ hostels.
“Rented accommodation exposes  girls to different kinds of harassment,” says 
Naidu, “They are subjected  to sudden and arbitrary hikes in rent, and 
threatened with immediate  eviction if they don’t comply.”
Here, too, sexual harassment is  omnipresent. During their conversations with 
Naidu, many Northeastern  girls confided to being harassed for sexual favours 
by landlords and their  families. “The son of one landlord’s family even 
offered a rent waiver in  return for sexual favours!” exclaims Naidu.
Apart from sexual  harassment, Northeastern girl students have to face 
discrimination at  other levels too, and this impacts their education adversely “The 
general  impression is that these students are not good at studies and are 
(here)  just for a good time. The stamp of ‘reservation’ sticks to them, and 
the  resentment that comes with it has to be faced,” says Naidu.
According  to her data, of the 200 students interviewed, only 10 per cent 
said that  their classroom participation is high, while around three-quarters  
registered below average classroom participation. A sizeable proportion  felt 
that teachers’ attitude to their classroom participation was either  neutral or 
discouraging. Of the 200 students, 111 said their participation  in 
co-curricular activities was ‘minimal’; 107 felt discrimination during  co-curricular 
activities; 58 felt ‘isolated’; 167 students registered  feelings like 
helplessness, discouragement, irritation and stress in  academic activities.
This overall pressure drives many students to drop  out, Naidu feels. Those 
who stay on find it difficult to meet academic  goals burdened with so much 
stress.
Consequently, most Northeastern  tribal girl students are not particularly 
keen on getting jobs in Delhi  after completing their education. “Coming to 
study in Delhi, for most  Northeastern students, is a matter of prestige,” says 
Naidu. “The unstable  political situation in the Northeast has caused 
educational standards to  drop, which makes it very easy for Delhi-educated students to 
get the best  jobs once they return. This, coupled with the fact that the 
atmosphere  does not offer much by way of encouragement to reach out and mingle,  
causes most students to see their student days here as just a  stopover.”
Students told Naidu that social work interventions, such as  the presence of 
social workers in colleges in enabling and facilitating  roles, and steps to 
fight discrimination and enhance sociocultural  exchange between communities of 
students, could help alleviate the  problems. But the single-most important 
step that Naidu feels needs to be  taken with a sense of urgency is arranging 
sufficient hostel facilities  for Northeastern girl students. “This one step 
will go a long way in  providing stability and security to their lives and help 
them concentrate  on their academic goals,” she says.
This is why Naidu is currently  working on a policy paper to call attention 
to the issue of this manner of  student discrimination, which she wants to send 
to the ministries of  tribal welfare and social justice. “The problem of 
Northeastern girl  students needs recognition in the right places,” she says. “At 
present,  the different kinds of stress that these students have to put up 
with is  impacting their studies seriously, and every effort should be made to 
ease  the situation.”
(* Names of all students changed.) 
Aparna  Pallavi 
(Women’s Feature  Service
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: /pipermail/assam_assamnet.org/attachments/20060916/892bc80c/attachment.htm