Why rage if China claims Northeast?

We get all worked up every time China claims Arunachal Pradesh for itself

Why rage if China claims Northeast?

We get all worked up every time China claims Arunachal Pradesh for itself. But the way we treat our own people from the Northeast, it is a wonder that all the seven states have still not acceded to China or gone solo; or that China hasn't claimed all seven with some confidence.

The rape and killing of the Naga girl by allegedly a sex fiend IIT Delhi scholar is just another in a very long line of attacks on northeastern women. One may argue that a sex-obsessed man would not make distinction of races, but why not? There's no evidence to suggest that he raped and killed any other person.

But what probably hurts much more than the fatal extremes like this one or the Mumbai Gateway attack is the daily, slow-fire humiliation at ticket counters, hostels, campuses, offices and a hundred other places.

And why? If we refuse to call somebody our own just on the evidence of narrow eyes, then we should not have a problem if Arunachal or all the Seven Sisters go to China.

Accent? Yes, in the Elphinstone College hostel there used to be jokes about "sex in the bus" at the Assam-Arunachal border read "checks" but then, I would be ragged about the English alphabet for Bengalis starting with "A for orange", or a Maharashtrian for making "lou, phaiou times a week".

But a Maharashtrian or a Bengali is spared the insult of being viewed as an outsider; the girls are not seen as easy lay.

Indians from the plains have a cultural problem dealing with a certain "chilled-out" aura about northeasterners their being relatively relaxed about interacting with the other sex, the hilly frankness, the awesomeness with which most of them play a Guns 'N' Roses riff on the guitar.

It's a vulnerable western-ness. Jerks on Delhi or Mumbai streets find it easy to bully this western-ness which they themselves crave, or to gain vicarious power over it by taunts, rape or even murder.

Neighbourhood boys won't come all the way from Northeast to retaliate (it would be interesting to see these street-smarties go tease a Khasi girl in Meghalaya and come back in one piece).

And of course the Indian state doesn't care. It has perfected the art of indifference towards Northeast. It's a very long story. Suffice to say, there are far more seething insurgent groups in the Northeast than there are trains or flights to those states from Delhi. The seven Northeastern states send 24 MPs to Lok Sabha. Bihar sends 40, UP 80.

Just ask around in office how many have visited the Northeast. Chances are, a couple of them will say they've been to Nepal.

But Nepal is not Northeast. Nor is Darjeeling or Sikkim.

And chances are, you don't know who the Seven Sisters are. And your friend from Shanghai does.

Abhijit Majumder is Executive Editor of MiD DAY

abhijit.majumder@mid-day.com

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