Unravelling the face of Racism in India

The Indian pride of being able to stand united despite having many cultural differences within the nation has proved to be quite untrue as North-Easterners have been victimized consistently in several parts of the nation. This year things have gone even worse and by now the North-easterners are compelled to believe that these incidents were all racially motivated.

Though a lot has been said 'for and against' these incidents from time to time, we have not achieved any definite solution as of yet. 'Hatred' is never ending by nature and surely not the solution. So, this is an honest attempt to find out the causes and their solutions to this evil 'Racism'.

COMMUNICATION GAP AND THE 'RESPECT' ELEMENT

Communication gap between mainland India and the North East India have been always a big social problem and consequently, people from rest of India don't understand and know much about the culture and the geography of the North East. Most of the Indians do not even know all the names of the eight Northeastern states of India. Literally, we have not been able to integrate fully with the Union of India as of yet. As a matter of fact, it is still a distant dream until we both could learn to respect each other.

EDUCATION AND MEDIA

Racism, prejudice and xenophobia are all products of ignorance. North-east should be made more and more popular to the rest of India until all the ignorance vanishes. Mass media can undoubtedly do a whole lot of favour in this regard. Mainstream movies and serials could have more of North-eastern places. The mainstream movie makers could try to portray the beautiful aspects of the north east including the various cultural aspects and this would clarify many controversial questions and change the mind set of many mainlanders.

The Indian school education could be equally helpful. The chapters relevant to the North-eastern states must be designed and taught in the most informative and innovative ways. Individuals should be educated in such a way that they consciously stop using racial terms such as 'Chinki'.

The mass media as well as the print media should take more initiative to educate the ignorant minds about North-east as well.

TABOOS

An individual brought up in a milieu where one spends many hours of the day in engaging with stupid superstitious believes, lesser exposure and irrational thinking mostly swayed by emotions, rather ignorant about others, finds difficulty in accepting someone who according to them does not follow the 'Bharatiya Sanskriti'.

Hair style and dressing generally make the conservative lot of people to develop an opinion that North-easterners are 'bad' people. While drinking wine in North Indian territory has mostly been a sin, drinking traditional wine or home made beer in some parts of the North Eastern region has been a culture and tradition.

Problems will be solved only when people start recognizing differences and become tolerant. Recognition is vital for human existence, which otherwise leads to social exclusion of any group or community of people. When the message will be sent to the masses about various unknown differences that already exists in the country, people will start realizing the beauty of a diverse society.

THE POTENTIAL NORTH-EASTERNERS

North-easterners are not lagging behind in any aspect. The ambitious north-eastern 'gems', be it from any field of art could try to reach out the mainstream and strive harder to get their works nationally acclaimed which would in turn make the mainlanders well aware of our potentials. Eventually, they would look at North-east with more respect. We could definitely reach our objectives and make North-east more recognized and acceptable in the mainland India through our best works.

A CRIMINAL SHOULD BE HATED AND NOT HIS COMMUNITY

There is good and bad everywhere. There are people who do criminal activities everywhere but they do not represent the masses. So holding any community guilty for the wrongs done by one of its men is itself racism again and we need not be a racist in order to fight racism. Its high time to reach out to solutions than merely water the poison tree.

KEEP AWAY FEARS

There's a thin line between 'being in fear' and 'being aware.' Being aware is indeed a very wise thing, keeping in mind the present sensitive situation but at the same time it's important for every north-easterners to not let the fear creep into our souls as this may lead to further prejudices. Fear would only distract us from our goal. With great courage we could definitely close this dark chapter of Racism for ever. Until then hold on to the grounds firmly and don't give up!