[Assam] A new politics of race: India and its Northeast

[Chan Mahanta]

Dear Netters:

The following is a very interesting and enlightening article by 
Sanjib Baruah. He was hesitant to post it to assamnet because of its 
length. But I felt it something we cannot afford to miss.So here it 
comes.

The emphasis on bell hooks' name is mine, so people don't miss it. I did.

cm









IIC Quarterly (New Delhi: India International Centre)
Vol. 32 (2& 3) Winter, 2005) pp. 165-76
A new politics of race: India and its Northeast
Sanjib Baruah
There was a time when peoples of Northeast India were described as 
belonging to the Mongoloid race.  Today Mongoloid and other racial 
categories such as Negroid or Caucasoid -- and indeed, the very idea 
of race as a biological category -- have no standing in scientific 
circles. For there is more diversity of gene types within what was 
once thought of as a single 'race' than between 'races.'

But while race may no longer be accepted as a scientific category, it 
does not mean that human beings would stop making distinctions based 
on stereotypical phenotypes or skin colour. Arunachalis, Assamese, 
Garos, Khasis, Manipuris, Mizos, Nagas and Tripuris may indeed have 
some phenotypical similarities related to genetics. Thus one may be 
able to say that someone is from Northeast India based on looks, 
though he or she may not always get it right. For "human populations 
. . . possess a wide genetic potential which increases in variation 
through chance mutations or new generic combinations in each 
generation. . . . Completely stabilized breeding isolates. . . are 
exceedingly rare"  (Bowles 1977, cited in Keyes, 2002: 1166).  And of 
course, most of us realise that what we think of as the 'Northeastern 
looks' are not unique to peoples from the region.  For instance, 
peoples from the western Himalayas -- those from Nepal or the 
Uttaranchal -- might share features similar to those found among 
peoples in the eastern Himalayas.  

Race as a social category is the product of practices. There are 
visual regimes of labeling, and individuals encountering those labels 
from childhood may internalise characteristics associated with those 
labels and learn to adapt to the socially constructed racial order.

African American intellectuals have long recognised the role of 
visuality in the politics of race. The writer bell hooks -- even her 
way of writing her name without capital letters is an intervention in 
the regime of visuality -- describes her project as one of 'resisting 
representation' and of constructing an 'oppositional gaze.' "We 
experience our collective crisis as African-American people," she 
writes, "within the realm of the image" (hooks, 1992).  The project 
of black liberation, for her, is thus a battle over images.
The Indian image of the troubled Northeast is increasingly mediated 
by a visual regime constructed by popular films, television, pictures 
in magazines and newspapers, and limited contacts with people from 
the region.  Thanks to improved communications, Indians today are 
quite mobile, and Northeasterners travel to other parts of the 
country more than ever before.  There are a large number of students 
from the region in Delhi, Bangalore, Mumbai, Pune, Kolkata and other 
cities.  They are now a 'visible minority' in a number of university 
campuses.  A disturbingly large number of them tell stories about 
their experiences of being racially labeled as 'Chapta' (flat nosed), 
'Oriental' or 'Chinky'. 
A large number of Northeast Indian young women are employed in 
upscale restaurants and shops in Delhi - their 'Oriental' looks and 
English language skills being considered desirable for those 
positions.  Many of them live in ethnic ghettos, for instance, 
renting rooms and apartments in 'lal dora' areas: the urban villages 
of Delhi. Apart from rents being affordable, they feel physically 
safer than in upscale neighbourhoods. Compared to landlords in elite 
neighbourhoods, these landlords of more modest means are tolerant of 
Northeast Indian eating habits -- fermented dry fish, beef chutney 
and pork -- and less inclined to impose restrictions on the 
lifestyles of their tenants. However, racially marked niches in the 
labour market or in settlement patterns have the danger of 
reinforcing racial thinking. Incidents of violence against Northeast 
Indian women in the country's capital may partly reflect the 
racialisation of the divide between the mainland and the Northeast.
While many Northeasterners travel to the mainland, thousands of 
Indian soldiers and members of the various paramilitary organisations 
make the reverse journey to the region to fight external threats as 
well as on counter-insurgency duties.  In the streets and paddy 
fields of the region security forces stop and interrogate 
Northeasterners every day.  The soldier himself faces an unenviable 
situation: the most peaceful of surroundings can quickly turn hostile 
and he has to be alert against possible offensives by militants. 
Some sort of racial profiling becomes inevitable under these 
conditions, especially since we have no laws prohibiting it.  As 
Indian soldiers return home, their stories of 'treacherous' rebels 
hiding behind bamboo groves and jungles spread through friends and 
relatives. The shared visual regime provides ways of putting those 
stories and faces together.
Northeast India's fractured relation with the mainland has been 
described as a cultural gap, an economic gap, a psychological gap and 
an emotional gap. The shared visual regime now carries the danger of 
this fault-line becoming racialised.
II
Mani Ratnam's film of 1998 Dil Se is a love story between a woman 
militant from the Northeast and an All India Radio journalist. The 
male protagonist Amar, played by Shah Rukh Khan, travels to the 
Northeast to speak to fellow citizens for a radio programme to 
celebrate the fiftieth anniversary of India's independence.  He 
develops a relationship with a local woman Meghna, played by the 
Nepalese-born Manisha Koirala.
If Bollywood gossip is to be believed, Manisha Koirala was chosen for 
the role partly because of her 'small eyes.' Director Mani Ratnam, 
according to Aishwarya Rai, "definitely wanted a small-eyed girl in 
Dil Se. She had to have that kind of physical features as she was 
supposed to be from Assam" (Rai, 2000).  The caste of Dil Se also 
included a number of Assamese actors, among them filmmaker Gautam 
Bora, who played the role of the chief of a militant group.
The film's story  unfolds between the fiftieth anniversary in of 
Indian independence on August 15th 1997 and the Republic Day on 
January 26th.  While All India Radio reporter Amar embodies the 
Indian nation, Meghna represents the horrors of life in the Northeast 
torn apart by insurgencies and counter-insurgency operations.  Amar 
defends the nation against rebels bent on tearing it apart.
The Northeast of Dil Se is a dangerous place where women are raped 
and families are destroyed. Life in Delhi could not be more 
different: the film portrays it as a middle class city where tranquil 
family life and traditional family values prevail.  Meghna in the 
nation's capital is a danger to both nation and family.  She is on a 
suicide mission to blow herself up at the Republic day parade.  As a 
guest at Amar's home she is an awkward presence at a time when the 
family prepares for his arranged marriage.  "Had it not been for the 
army, the nation would have been torn to shreds," says Amar to 
Meghna. It is "your nation, not mine," says Meghna in defiance.
III
Am I making too much out of a film? Perhaps. But what if we are 
beginning to look at people from the Northeast through the prism of a 
visual regime exemplified by films like Dil Se? What if after nearly 
half a century of counter-insurgency, the counter-insurgent gaze is 
framing our way of seeing peoples from the Northeast? 
Films like Dil Se and pictures in newspapers and magazines enable 
people to put together a mental picture of the Northeast and its 
people.  The gaze of the Indian army patrol, reinforced by films like 
Dil Se, gives meaning to what is fast becoming a racial divide.
There are signs that we are slowly beginning to recognise this new 
politics of race, though we seem to be as yet unsure whether to use 
the 'r' word.  A Manipuri journalist wrote in a national daily that, 
"physically the people of the North-east are closer to Southeast Asia 
and China." However, "this racial divide," he said, is not 
appreciated "in a sensitive manner" (Singh, 2004). The journalist 
told me that the 'r' word was edited out at one place in the printed 
version. He had actually written, "racially the people of the 
Northeast are closer to South-east Asia and China." Apparently the 
editors substituted the term 'physical' for 'racial.'  However, his 
second usage of the 'r' word -- in racial divide - remained in the 
published text.
Let me turn to a small sample of writings by Northeasterners who have 
been students in mainland India, recalling their experience of being 
seen as different and encountering racial labels.  "I did my 
schooling in a boarding school in India," recalls a Manipuri living 
in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. He was the only student from the Northeast 
in that school.  He posted the following on an email discussion group:
Being the only minority I was subjected to many racist comments . . . 
The one that I still remember clearly was my being called "Chapta" 
(flat nose - for those fortunate ones that never heard the term) by 
my Hindi teacher. The word "chinki" . . . is peddled around with not 
even a little thought of whether the term could offend someone, by 
even my closest friends. I came in contact with some Mayangs (the 
Manipuri term for other Indians) here and it shocked me that despite 
my being there amongst them they refer to the other Asians as chaptas 
still with no consideration that I could find it offensive. Even on 
my bringing up the issue they just laughed it off saying they saw 
nothing offensive in it. So I have now resorted to referring them as 
"Pakis" and that really seems to anger them. For those who don't know 
about it, "Pakis" is a racist term used in Britain to refer to people 
with the sub continent features (Pakistan, Indian, Srilankan etc.) So 
the next time you hear any mayang using the word chinki or chapta, 
call them a "Paki". I think once this word gets common usage as a 
term to refer to them by all the people of the north east they will 
finally realize what it is like to be referred by a racist term 
(Manipur Diaspora, 2004; cited in Ray 2005). 
In Kuala Lumpur, he wrote, because of his features he had a hard time 
convincing people that he was an Indian. He got tired of explaining 
that he was from India since he "didn't look like the Indians they 
knew."  On the other hand, he said, he was "able to melt into the 
crowd and it was easier making friends with the Chinese and Malays" 
(Manipur Diaspora, 2004; cited in Ray 2005). 

At a seminar in Pune a Naga student joked that after coming to Pune 
he became "half Naga, and half Indian", while he was "a complete 
Indian" before. He elaborated that in Pune, shopkeepers, doctors, 
teachers and government officials, everybody treated him as Japanese 
or Chinese because of his features. He was asked to show his passport 
when applying for admission to college  (cited in Das, 2004). While 
doing fieldwork in Manipur, anthropologist Sohini Ray asked a young 
student about his first visit to Mumbai. He told her that "the first 
thing he and his companions found difficult was that every other 
person asked them where they were from, and stared at them." When 
they said Manipur, people asked where it was and if it was really in 
India. To avoid such uncomfortable encounters after a few days they 
started saying that they were from Thailand, because "it was more 
convenient" (cited in Ray, 2005).

An Assamese woman describes her first year as a student in Delhi 
University (1996-97), as follows: "I didn't look 'Oriental' - the 
politically correct term they'd devised in lieu of the derogatory 
sounding 'chinky'. So I didn't have to face some of the stupider 
questions. My friend from Mizoram was asked if she needed a passport 
to come to India." The 'Oriental' looking among us," did not have to 
go through hazing, she recalled since "Indians are always nice to 
foreigners" (Goswami, 2004).

IV

The emergence of a racial label to include all 'indigenous' 
Northeasterners fits nicely with the category 'the Northeast' that 
since 1971, in the words of a retired senior civil servant who played 
a key role in designing this political order, has "emerged as a 
significant administrative concept . . . replacing the hitherto more 
familiar unit of public imagination, Assam" (Singh, 1987a: 8).  In 
1971 a number of the new states were created (though not all of them 
were states at the beginning), and another piece of legislation gave 
birth to the North Eastern Council (NEC).  These two laws were 'twins 
born out of a new vision for the Northeast' (Singh, 1987a: 117).

Unlike the distinction between tribal and non-tribal that is an 
important part of our vocabulary in discussing the Northeast, the 
racial label has the advantage of including all those who belong to 
the troubled region, and, is perceived as being connected to the 
troubles.  For instance, a majority of the plains people of Manipur 
and Assam are not "tribal" which, after all, is an arbitrary 
governmental category. However, the Assamese and Manipuri 
insurgencies are among the most potent in the region. Thus the 
distinction between tribal and non-tribal is not very useful when it 
comes to discussing insurgent Northeast India. Since tribal and 
non-tribal Northeasterners share certain stereotypical phenotypes in 
common, the racial label has become more functional.

The racial label incorporates meanings that predate the era of 
insurgency and counter-insurgency.  Willem van Schendel, writing 
mainly with Bangladesh and the Chittagong Hill Tracts in mind, 
comments on the "remarkably stagnant view of the hill people" that 
has prevailed in South Asia.  The classic nineteenth century Western 
assumptions about social evolution from a state of savagery to 
civilisation were superimposed on the ancient South Asian distinction 
between civilised society and nature. The later distinction, 
indicated in the categories grama  (village) and aranya  (forest), 
implies a relationship that is complementary but always unequal. 
These two traditions, writes van Schendel, combined to generate a 
dominant view that considers the tribal peoples as remnants of some 
"hoary past who have preserved their culture unchanged from time 
immemorial. Backward and childlike, they need to be protected, 
educated and disciplined by those who are more advanced socially" 
(van Schendel, 1995: 128).  The visual label of race that transcends 
the colonial categories of tribal and non-tribal and reaches out to 
pre-colonial categories such as the Kirata people -- used to describe 
the people of the periphery - may now give a new lease of life some 
old Indian prejudices.

Responsible Indian officials have from time to time used the metaphor 
of children to describe the peoples of Northeast India.  In February 
2004 the Mizoram Governor A.R. Kohli described the entire region as a 
spoilt child. Contrary to the charge that the Northeast is "the most 
neglected region," he said it is "in fact, the most spoilt child in 
the country." The central government, he said, "showers funds and 
other goodies" liberally on the region. But the funds are not 
properly utilized or they do not reach the intended beneficiaries. A 
news report paraphrased the Governor as comparing the region "to a 
petulant child who is showered with goodies but does not know what to 
do with them" (Telegraph 2004). 

Such sentiments are also found in the language used by B.P. Singh - 
the former civil servant who played a key role in the creating the 
Northeast as an administrative category. In an article published in 
1987, he concluded: 

There is no tangible threat to the national integration ethos in the 
region despite the operation of certain disgruntled elements within 
the region and outside the country. But in the context of a history 
of limited socialization and ethnic conflicts, and rapid 
modernization after 1947 the unruly class-room scenario is likely to 
continue in the region for years to come (Singh, 1987b: 281-82).

  "Unruly class-room" is a telling metaphor.  In the Northeast, Singh 
seems to imply, what is needed is a paternalistic and disciplinarian 
teacher - someone who knows what is good for children and, 
occasionally uses the stick for their own good, the role that he 
probably sees the coercive apparatus of the Indian state playing in 
the region.

These passages smack of attitudes and habits of mind that long 
predate the politics of counter-insurgency.  But while these 
prejudices are old, they have acquired new meaning in the context of 
India's failed policies in the Northeast. While Singh's metaphor of 
an "unruly class-room" rationalises the coercive response to 
insurgency, Kohli's description of the region as a "spoilt child" 
expresses the frustration with the failures of a policy of 
nation-building through corruption or what Jairam Ramesh calls "using 
corruption as a mode of cohesion" (Ramesh, 2005: 18). 
V
What are the some of the consequences of the racialisation of the 
divide between India and its Northeast? 
1, Motivation for militancy: According to Manipuri intellectual and 
politician Gangmumei Kamei, a major motivation for joining insurgent 
groups in Manipur is the social discrimination that young Manipuris 
face in different parts of India because of their appearance (cited 
in Ray 2005).  Race has been a factor in the Meitei religious revival 
movement of the 1940s as well. Some revivalists converted to the 
newly formed faith "only after returning from pilgrimages to Mathura 
and Brindavan, where their Southeast Asian features raised curiosity 
and animosity among the local population." The racial divide, 
according to anthropologist Sohini Ray, is central to understanding 
the Meitei urge for constructing an alternative history.  A 
constituency for an alternative geneology emerged when "the whole 
idea of sharing a common ancestry with the people who are hostile to 
them for their looks" became unacceptable (Ray 2005).
2.  Perpetuating a divide: While official narratives about 
counter-insurgency view each Northeastern insurgency as distinct; the 
racial label disrupts this narrative.  As a result the differences 
between political conditions in different parts of the Northeast have 
no effect on popular perceptions about the 'disturbed' region, since 
racial thinking do not allow for such distinctions. For instance, the 
Mizo insurgency that ended with a peace accord in 1986 is usually 
portrayed as a success story.  Yet that does not mean that Mizo 
relations with mainland India are any different from that with other 
parts of the Northeast.  Even today Mizos such as Laltluangliana 
Khiangte complain about mainstream India not understanding their 
culture and traditions, and about Mizos being mistaken as South-east 
Asian tourists in the national capital (cited in Singh, 2004). After 
nearly two decades of a peaceful Mizoram, as Manipuri journalist 
Khogen Singh puts it, Mizos "still don't feel fully at home outside 
the North-east" (Singh, 2004).
3. Hijacking of counter-insurgency: There is evidence that the racial 
divide sometimes subverts counter-insurgency operations and they get 
hijacked for other purposes. For instance, it was reported that in 
the Karbi Anglong district of Assam, Indian security forces, 
ostensibly there to deal with the security threat posed by 
insurgencies, became partisans in local land conflicts between tribal 
Karbi and Hindi-speaking settlers.  The settlers whom Karbis refer to 
as Biharis had over time acquired informal control over what is 
formally designated as public lands and had consolidated a 
"considerable amount of economic and political power."  They now seek 
formal change in the status of those lands and formal land titles 
(MASS 2002, 11-13). In Karbi Anglong's ethnic configuration and the 
growth of insurgency, the loss of land by Karbis to "Biharis" is a 
factor. Many Karbi young people have come under the influence of the 
United People's Democratic Solidarity (UPDS).  But in local armed 
land conflicts, because of racial solidarity, "Bihari" settlers have 
occasionally secured the informal backing of Indian security 
personnel stationed in the area to fight the UPDS (MASS, 2002: 21).
4. Facilitating militarisation: The racial divide facilitates the 
relentless militarisation of the region.  Consider for instance, the 
recommendation to strengthen Indian military presence in Manipur made 
by E.N. Rammohan -- a senior Indian police official, who was Advisor 
to the Governor of Manipur.  In order to stop the penetration of the 
government departments by militants, Rammohan recommended that 
battalions of the Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF) should guard 
all government offices and the residential neighborhoods housing 
central and state government officials in the state.  Furthermore, he 
recommended that ten battalions of the Central Para-Military Force 
(CPMF) be deployed in the Manipur Valley in a "counter-insurgency 
grid", and six to eight battalions be deployed in each hills 
district, where roads are few, with "helicopter support to 
effectively dominate them" (Rammohan, 2002: 15). Were it not for the 
racial fault-line it is unlikely that such policy options would have 
been seriously considered.

5. Legitimisation of corruption: The leakage of funds allocated for 
Northeast India's development can be best described as insurgency 
dividend.  The figures are staggering. Jairam Ramesh estimates that 
the annual expenditure of the Government of India on the eight states 
of Northeast India, including Sikkim, is about 30, 000 crores a year. 
With the region's population at about 32 million, he estimates that 
the Government annually spends about 10,000 rupees per person in the 
Northeast.  This money is not going for development. In Ramesh's 
words, it is going to 

ensure cohesiveness of this society with the rest of India through a 
series of interlocutors who happen to be politicians, expatriate 
contractors, extortionists, anybody but people working to deliver 
benefits to the people for whom these expenditures are intended.

A surer way of improving the economic conditions of the intended 
beneficiaries, he suggests, might be for the Indian government to 
open bank accounts and deposit an annual cheque of Rs. 10,000 for 
every poor family in the Northeast (Ramesh, 2005: 18-19).

The racial divide facilitates the sharing of the insurgency dividend 
between local political and bureaucratic elites and outside 
contractors and suppliers.  Not unlike western businessmen who 
justify bribing politicians and bureaucrats in the Third World in 
terms of local norms, the image of the Northeast and its people in 
this new visual regime is that of a modern frontier where corruption 
is just a part of the natural landscape.  Even the "chinky" students 
from the Northeast in Delhi, after all, appear more "modern," 
"westernized" and affluent than many of their mainland peers 
apparently confirming the corruption-friendly image of the region. It 
is hardly surprising that when it comes to doing business in the 
region 'make a fast buck and run' appears to have become accepted 
practice.  Even today's much-lowered levels of inhibition and moral 
compunctions do not apply to India's modern but wild Northeast 
Frontier.
VI
Things did not have to turn out this way. As an Arunachali minister 
once said at a meeting in Mumbai, "Why can't you think that in a big 
country like ours a few people may even look Chinese? Come to 
Arunachal Pradesh, he said, people in areas bordering China will 
greet you by saying Jai Hind" (cited in Das, 2004).
In everyday conversations Northeasterners resist mainland India's 
representation of the region. But intellectuals, artists and 
activists will have to develop what bell hooks calls an oppositional 
gaze. Khasi commentator Patricia Mukhim believes that because of its 
geographical location policy makers in Delhi think of the Northeast 
primarily in terms of its "strategic importance."  The region, she 
suggests, is treated as "enemy territory, which needs to be subdued 
by force."  But "you cannot buy allegiance with force," she warns and 
calls for 'an entirely new approach' to the region (Mukhim, 2004). 
A new approach must start with the domain of representation. Our 
policies have an impact on the way the Northeast and its people are 
represented.  For instance, softening our international borders -- 
opening up the region on the east and the north, and encouraging 
close cross-border interaction  -- can slowly change perceptions. 
The region seen as a gateway to a friendly transnational 
neighbourhood will evoke very different emotions than those of a 
frontier or an "enemy territory"  -- a danger zone where foreign and 
domestic enemies conspire against the Indian nation. Policies could 
transform the Southeast Asia within India into a dynamic gateway to 
the Southeast Asia of world political maps. This could be the 
foundation for a new social contract between India and its Northeast. 
This could radically change what it means to look Northeastern in 
India. The battle for the future of Northeast India is also a battle 
over images.
References:
Bowles, Gordon 1977. The People of Asia. New York: Scribner.

Das, Arup Jyoti.  2004. "The Half-Indians" (Unpublished essay)
Goswami, Uddipana 2004 "Misrecognition" (Unpublished essay) 
hooks, bell 1992. Black Looks: Race and Representation. Cambridge, 
MA: South End Press
Keyes, Charles 2002 "Presidential Address: "The Peoples of Asia" - 
Science and Politics in the Classification of Ethnic Groups in 
Thailand, China and Vietnam," Journal of Asian Studies 61 (4) 
November, pp. 1163-1203.

Leshin, Len  2003 "What's in a name The "Mongol" Debate," Down 
Syndrome: Health Issues (website) http://www.ds-health.com/name.htm 
(Accessed September 16th 2005)
Manipur Diaspora. 2004. Manipur_Diaspora at yahoo-groups.com Archives, 
E-mail No. 367.
MASS (Manab Adhikar Sangram Samiti). 2002.  And Quiet Flows the 
Kopili [A Fact-finding Report on Human Rights Violation in the Karbi 
Anglong District of Assam] Guwahati:  Manab Adhikar Sangram Samiti.
Mukhim, Patricia.  2004.  "Life under Martial Law," [Shillong Notes]; 
The Telegraph (Guwahati edition) September 21.

Rai, Aishwarya. 2000. 'I've not come here looking for fame,' 
Interview by Kanchana Suggu, 
http://www.rediff.com/entertai/2000/mar/29ash.htm (Accessed September 
16th 2005).
Ramesh, Jairam 2005. "Northeast India in a New Asia," Seminar (550) 
June, pp. 17-21.
Rammohan, E.N. 2002. "Manipur: A Degenerated Insurgency," in K.P.S. 
Gill and Ajai Sahni (eds.), Faultlines. Vol. 11, New Delhi: Bulwark 
Books and the Institute of Conflict Management: 1-15.
Ray, Sohini. 2005. "Boundary blurred? Folklore/Mythology, History and 
the Quest for an Alternative Geneology in Northeast India" 
(Unpublished manuscript).
Singh, B.P.  (1987a) The Problem of Change: A Study of Northeast 
India, New Delhi: Oxford University Press.
Singh, B.P.1987b. "North-East India: Demography, Culture and Identity 
Crisis," Modern Asian Studies 21 (2): April: 257-82.
Singh, M. Khogen. 2004. "As Indian as You and I," Hindustan Times, 
September 10th 2004.
Telegraph 2004. "Governor Slaps Spoilt-child Tag on Northeast," The 
Telegraph (Guwahati edition) 14 February.
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