The Richard Loitam murder: Denying our inner bigot

Richard Loitam, a young architecture student, was found dead in his hostel room on 18 April. The most contentious aspect of this murder – and its shoddy investigation – is this: Is Loitam’s death damning proof of racism or not? This in turn has led to a broader debate as to whether people from the North-east are, in fact, victims of racism.

Home Minister P Chidambaram dismissed the problem in Parliament as “subtle discrimination” experienced by a wide range of communities: “Some years ago, it was based on language. Sometimes it was based on regions. Every south Indian, who came to Delhi, was called a Madrasi. Things have changed.”

Chidambaram’s claim is echoed by by Nitin Gokhale, who goes one step further in his Outlook essay, “ We Are All Xenophobes” He first argues that Loitam’s murder, while tragic and criminal, is hardly evidence of prejudice: “The question is: could this not have happened to any teenager studying away from home?”

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There is indeed little hard evidence – at this stage – that Loitam’s killing was racially motivated. The circumstances of his death point to murder, and as Tehelka notes, the initial police investigation was peculiarly lax. The college is also stonewalling in the most shameful fashion, but it is unclear if their attitude would be different if the victim belonged to a different community. And the organisers of the 29 April “Justice for Richard” rally in Bangalore dissuaded protesters from making claims of racism.

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More dubious, however, is Gokhale’s insistence that times are indeed changing, and in this moment of transition, “it is inevitable that “newcomers—whether from the ‘deep south’ or from the ‘far east’—will face tough times.” The best course of action is to stop complaining:

[P]eople from the eight states are nothing if not brave. All they need to watch out for is the danger of succumbing to the notion of victimhood. As I often say to my friends from the region, they have been repeatedly indoctrinated by their leaders to view themselves as victims of conspiracies hatched by the central government and people from the rest of India. The truth is, no one has either the time or the inclination to do so.

But the old mindsets are changing both in Delhi and the Northeast. The neglect meted out in the past has given way to more focused attention to the region and its people. Even in mega cities, as more and more northeasterners work and mix with others, a gradual acceptance of their different looks and languages will happen. And as a Mary Kom or a Lou Majaw become icons for sports and music fans from even outside the Northeast, the region will gain larger focus than before.

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This then is the cheery version: it’s all good, and will get even better. And it’s certainly not shared by those who are the targets of such bias. Chidambaram’s own colleague, Union Minister Agatha Sangma skewers the effort to lump together all “outsiders” in Delhi: “South is very different from North, but no south Indian in Delhi would be made to feel he does not look Indian,” she told Times of India_._ People from the North-east are treated not just as newcomers, but as aliens whose Indian-ness is forever suspect.

We may all be burdened with pejoratives, as Gokhale suggests, be it as a Bong, a Mallu, Madrasi, Bihari, or a Tant.  The Delhi police has not, however, issued a “safety handbook”  telling us, “Bamboo shoot, Akhuni and other smelly dishes should be prepared without creating ruckus in neighbourhood.” Can we imagine a similar directive ordering Bengalis to watch how they cook their fish, or a Tamilian to cool it with that smelly sambhar?

That the 2007 handbook included a dress code directed at North-east women is both revealing and prophetic. The tips include: “Revealing dress to be avoided”; “Avoid lonely road/ bylane when dressed scantily.” Much like the newly issued Gurgaon police directives, it recognises these woman as targets of sexual violence but also blames them entirely for it.

There is no doubt that all women are subject to such sexism, but more so those from the North-east who are widely viewed as promiscuous. There is a  consistent pattern of kidnapping, assault, and molestation, and of police hostility in the face of such violence. And these are the cases that actually make the news. Harrassment of Manipuri girls is a daily routine in neighbourhoods like Munirka, but goes unreported because, as one MNC employee told Times of India, “We are cross-questioned and asked inappropriate questions and the police are reluctant to even file a complaint, forget an FIR.”

Author Siddhartha Deb’s explanation for their plight sound far too familiar:

It was possible to see a pattern in [these] stories, of the clash between women from the country’s northeast and local men, two disparate groups thrown together by the modernity of the new India. It was the sudden explosion of malls and restaurants that had created jobs like the ones at Pizza Hut where men and women worked together. It had drawn thousands of women from the northeast, prized for their English and their lighter skin. It had also stoked the confused desires of men from deeply patriarchal cultures.

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From the names of the Delhi neighborhoods… — the areas where women had been harassed, assaulted, raped and even murdered by landlords, colleagues and neighbors — it was possible to tell how they had been villagers not too long ago and had been haphazardly absorbed into the urban sprawl of Delhi.

Columnists offered a similar explanation  for the recent Gurgaon gang rape, citing the sexual fury of newly wealthy rural men at modern Indian women who they view as ‘immoral’ outsiders.

So the likes of Chidambaram and Gokhale may be right, after all – though not in the way they intended. Our attitudes toward our North-east brethren are indeed an example of a broader problem: of a new India that remains mired in the prejudices of the past, be it misogyny or racism. But the magic wand of development will not make our inner bigot disappear. Our only jadoo ki chadi, as Aamir reminds us, is our mind.