NEthing, NEwhere: To be a Northeasterner (Part II)

By Utpal Borpujari

Festivals/cuisine:

Recently, there was a three-day festival, the Northeast Junction, organised by web portal assamtimes.org at the capital’s Dilli Haat. Sometime back, the newly-formed Northeast cell of Hindu College had organised a Northeast cultural and food festival to encouraging response. A couple of years ago, the capital’s people got a sampling of Assam’s famed Bhramyoman theatres in the form of three nights of performance by Kohinoor Theatre, with many non-Assamese theatre enthusiasts in attendance. Screenings of films from the region attract a sizeable non-Northeastern crowd if the event is publicised well, as we had seen when the Assam Film (Finance & Development) Corporation had organised a festival of award-winning films from Assam a couple of years ago at Delhi’s Siri Fort Auditorium. Jakoi in Assam Bhawan is one of the most written-about ethnic food restaurants in the capital, and others like Delicacy at Assam House, Nagaland’s Kitchen at Green Park Market, Bahi at Gurgaon, Kaziranga (for Assamese cuisine) and Bamboo Hut (Naga cuisine) in the Delhi University area in north Delhi are some of the outlets where people of Delhi are getting introduced to culinary delights from the Northeast, slowly but surely. This is apart from the state food stalls at Dilli Haat, which also offer reasonably good cuisine.
The point I am trying to make is that the best way to introduce a culture to another community is through its performing arts and food. Communities from the Northeast, and ministries like Doner and home should use their funds earmarked for such purposes in organising more and more events related to the Northeast in various parts of the country. This is an age where if anything is marketed well, it sells. So why not package the Northeast — as a geographic entity as well as individual states — in various formats and promote it aggressively in various parts of the country, not just in metros and big cities, but also in smaller towns? I am sure everyone will agree that this will help in integrating the Northeast with the rest of the country, more so when there is so much misconception about the region outside it.

Failure of politicians

More than blaming Delhi, as is the tendency amongst the media and various organisations in the Northeast, the major share of the blame for the region still being so unknown has to lie with our own political leaders over the years. If we know so much about a Kerala or a Rajasthan, it is because the political class, despite their usual politicking, has had the vision to develop policy that has made these states so visible internationally in various spheres. But when it comes to the Northeast, no one outside knows our history, culture, literary traditions, culinary delights…the list can go on and on. If our politicians had the foresight to do a little bit for the region, the Northeast surely would not have been the blind spot for others as it is now. Our politicians barely see the larger picture in this context, and are content with raising the pitch only when there are incidents like the recent ones.

Educational tours

This is one aspect that can supplement ideas explored in the education and advocacy heads mentioned before. Schools, colleges and universities across India can be encouraged, with the Central government coordinating on this with various states, to have educational tours to the region’s states on a regular basis. Village and home stays, meetings with our region’s writers, performing artistes, tours to places of historical and cultural interest, interactions with peer groups in local educational institutions can be part of this. Living with people and sharing one another’s experiences are the best process to develop understanding, and such an initiative can work wonders in the long run.

Sensitisation

Before one thinks of trying to sensitise the common people about the Northeast, the focus should be on sensitising those in various government departments, particularly police personnel. We all know how during the recent BRIC (Brazil, Russia, India and China) summit in Delhi, while in their effort to curtail protests by Tibetans against the Chinese President, Delhi Police had harassed a whole lot of Northeasterners just because of the way they look. Earlier, in 2007, Delhi Police had brought out an obnoxious advisory for Northeastern students, advising them not to eat ‘smelly’ food and avoid dressing in certain ways. I won’t doubt the positive intention of whoever had formulated that advisory, but the fact is that the way the whole thing was written was condescending towards the food and sartorial habits of peoples from the region. Certain food items — especially those fermented — do smell, but if one can have no problem with a smelly European cheese, then what’s the problem with Nagaland’s akhuni (fermented beans) or Manipur’s dry fish? India is a nation of a thousand cultures, and just because one section does not eat something or finds someone’s food smelly, it can never be a point of objection for the former if we really call ourselves a land of diversity. If one stops being oneself just to ‘fit into’ a milieu, as a bright, young politician from Assam had virtually suggested in a Facebook exchange of opinions with me following the NEIim survey, only the majoritarian views would persist and opinions and lifestyles of smaller communities would no longer matter. Bureaucrats and policemen, especially in metropolitan cities having sizeable Northeastern population, and armymen sent on postings to the Northeast must be given basic courses about the diversity and complexities of the region so that they have some understanding about why the people from the region feel alienated from the rest of the country. I am sure this will lead to much better handling of many situations.

These are but a few ideas that could work towards removing some of the misconceptions about the Northeast and its peoples in the rest of India. There could be many more if there is a serious brainstorming about long-term solutions to the issue. But while doing that, we the people of Northeast also have to look within. How much do we know about ourselves even after 65 years of independence? Does an Assamese know Manipur’s history or vice versa? Does the average Assamese, traditionally, not have a massive superiority complex over a Naga or an Arunachali? Do the media of our region not take a strong jingoistic stance when it comes to reporting inter-state border disputes? Aggressive and even provocative headlines are a common practice by the Assamese media following any development regarding disputed areas along the state’s borders with Nagaland or Arunachal Pradesh. How many of us visit one another’s states as tourists? Questions like these are uncomfortable, but important.

The NEIim study found that among the respondents, 87% working professionals cannot name all the states of the Northeast, but the fact is that most of them would not also be able to name all the states of India. Of those surveyed, 91% have no knowledge about the Northeast Industrial Policy, but I can bet they would be equally in the dark about industrial policies in most of the other states. So these, according to me, are not really important findings, and were only expected. What is more important is that 52% of the respondents have a negative perception about the region. Frankly speaking, if the figure had gone up as high as 90%, I would not have been surprised. But the fact that 48% of the respondents do not have a negative perception is really interesting, given the information gap relating to the region. It is important that we build upon this and change the image of the Northeast. For this, the governments of the region and the Centre, social organisations, community organisations both within and outside the region, and common people would have to work together, both at institutional and individual levels. Let’s do it. When boys and girls from the region are shining in the service, media and entertainment industries, apart from sports, let’s adopt an aggressive but positive strategy to tell the world that we look different, dress different and eat different, but we are no less Indian than anyone else. If we succeed in doing that, we won’t have Mizoram chief minister Lalthanhawla being asked to show his passport in a Mumbai hotel, or sometimes get ‘complimented’ — like I was by a journalist colleague in PTI in the mid-1990s, for “not looking like one from the Northeast”!

Meanwhile, we can hopefully chalk out and implement an action plan incorporating the above and other such interesting ideas to narrow the information gap vis-à-vis the Northeast. Let’s at least start off with a strong campaign — and I urge all the eight state governments of the region to unitedly make a pitch for this — to banish the derogatory term ‘chinki’, just as the words ‘chamar’ have been made unlawful in India and ‘negro’ in the United States.

(Concluded)

(published in Seven Sisters Post, www.sevensisterspost.com, 17-05-2012)

http://sevensisterspost.com/?p=12725#

NEthing, NEwhere: To be a Northeasterner

By Utpal Borpujari

Northeast India has been the flavour of the season in the metropolitan media in the last couple of weeks, both print and electronic. The reason is obvious — the unfortunate deaths of two youngsters from the region, Dana M Sangma of Meghalaya in Gurgaon/Manesar abutting Delhi and Richard Loitam of Manipur in Bangalore. The former committed suicide and the latter died after a ‘fight’ with hostel mates. The background of both the cases is too well known to be recounted here again. And the media have found an issue to debate on, the Parliament has got shaken up and there have been candlelight marches in various parts of the country demanding punishment for the abettors and perpetrators of the two deaths. Thanks mainly to the power of social media, the traditional media have been forced to take up this debate about the sense of alienation of people from the Northeast. Union home minister P Chidambaram, speaking in Parliament after a host of MPs led by BJP’s Arun Jaitley in Rajya Sabha raised the issue of discrimination against people of the Northeast in the rest of India, even spoke about an advisory to all the states asking them to be vigilant against any such incidents. With Dana Sangma being the niece of Meghalaya chief minister Mukul Sangma, the issue got a bigger profile as Sangma himself took the lead in raising a strong political pitch in Delhi. This has been followed by allegations from C P Singh, an additional director with Delhi’s Forensic Science Laboratory, of racial discrimination by his colleagues.
But the fact of the matter is, after a few days, things will be forgotten, as it has always been in such cases, and life will return to normal —except for the families of those who died —till the next such incident of death, molestation, rape, happens. And the whole debate will then take place again, and the cycle will be repeated. Everyone forgetting amidst all the cacophony that if one has to put an end to what is described by many as almost ‘racial’ targeting of communities on the basis of their looks, eating habits and lifestyle, then the need of the hour is to find ways for long-term solution to this, instead of crying hoarse everytime such things happen.
So, what are the areas that need to be looked into for removing all the perceived or real prejudices against people from Northeast India by the people of so-called ‘mainland’ India? There are many ways to deal with, and it does require a multipronged approach, to remove the various misconceptions about our region. Some of the possibilities that need to be urgently looked into by the Centre and the states of the region, as well as community organisations, intellectuals and other leading citizens from the region, especially those who have lived outside the Northeast, are the following:

Education/curricula

Soon after the deaths of Richard and Dana, an online petition calling for inclusion of information about the Northeast in the school curricula across the country, especially in the NCERT books, was activated. When I put that on my Facebook status, one noted educationist from Assam commented that it was not the answer (to end the misunderstandings). I beg to differ —and differ strongly. Almost 100% of the incidents of discrimination against the people of the region in the rest of India happen because people have virtually no inkling about us. They don’t know our history — just to cite one example, the strong role played by people in the Northeast in India’s freedom struggle — our culture, our ethnic diversity, and our contemporary societies. For them, the Northeast is one remote geographical entity where all the people look the same, are busy being insurgents and eat dog meat. Even so-called intelligent people carry that image in their minds. For example, a couple of years ago, in an article by one animal rights activist, Ambika Shukla (who is also Maneka Gandhi’s sister) had written disparagingly about the ‘dog eating habits of Northeasterners’ in Deccan Chronicle and The Asian Age newspapers, in a column following the alleged killing of a dog by a Naga student in Delhi’s Jawaharlal Nehru University. Yes, some communities in the Northeast eat dog meat, and it is part of their culinary tradition that one has to respect. But that does not mean the whole of the region eats dog meat. How many people outside the region know that there can be excellent spreads of purely vegetarian meals in Manipur or Assam? One must look at long-term ways to tackle such misinformation. And the sure way is to include chapters on various facets of the Northeast in school curricula all over India. Young minds are always prejudice-free and once they start knowing about — and thus understanding — the region, perceptions will change for sure. Perceptions do not get created or changed overnight. Education is one way to bring about a change.

Advocacy

This is one area where the Centre and the region have failed miserably. The region as a whole, for so-called administrative reasons, is conveniently called the “Northeast”. That may be alright as far as only formulating and implementing government policies are concerned for a backward region. But this has irreparably harmed the region as far as projecting the individual states and their peoples outside is concerned. For most outsiders — and this fact has been brought home by a recent survey among professionals in the media, corporate communications, HR and PR professionals (professionals who because of the nature of their jobs need to have a wide information base) carried out by Delhi-based Northeast India Image Managers (NEiIM), a group of young professionals from the region working in the media and communications industry —a Mizo and an Arunachali and a Manipuri and a Khasi are the same. And I am not even talking about various tribal communities in each state! The central government, and its wings like the ministry of home affairs and the ministry for development of north east region (Doner), have huge funds to spend on advocacy, which means to create awareness about Northeast in the rest of India using various advocacy tools, such as conferences, audio-visual media, cultural events and so on. A large chunk of the allotted money, if not all, gets spent in such endeavours, but the results are for everyone to see. This needs to change. Whatever advocacy is done must bring in results in the long term. The culture of organising “seminars” for the sake of it, where people talk, eat and go back home, does not serve any purpose unless the discourse is taken to the next level of publishing the edited version of the speeches and taking action on the recommendations. Instead of just painting the whole region as ‘Northeast’ at every platform, individual states need to be highlighted for each of their uniqueness. In this context, I remember how Bhabendra Nath Saikia, Jahnu Barua and Aribam Syam Sharma had boycotted a joint press conference at one of the International Film Festival of India (IFFI) editions in the late 1990s in New Delhi because they had not been given individual slots to speak but were clubbed under a ‘Northeast directors’ category. Their argument was, “We as individual filmmakers have our own individual points to make.” This is the philosophy that the states of the Northeast should adopt to their advantage. As the four southern states are called South India, the eight Northeastern states should be known as Northeast India just for their geographic location and maybe for certain strategic matters, but not for everything and anything.

Ghettoisation

While a discriminatory attitude bordering on racism towards people from the Northeast in many parts of India is a fact of life, it is also a fact that there is an attitude of ghettoisation among many from the Northeast. This might sound sensational in the present context, but it is a fact. An obvious pointer to this is the community-based student organisations in Delhi University. Like in the Northeast, here too, instead of forming state-wise student bodies, there are student bodies reflecting ethnic identities, and each group of student mostly stick within themselves instead of mingling with others, barring during one of the ‘Northeast’ events. You would see hardly any from other Northeastern states if there is a Bihu celebration of the Assamese community, and likewise for any other festivity involving different communities. We keep complaining that the rest of India does not understand us, but how much effort do we make to create awareness among them about us? And it seems it suits the governments also to keep people from the region as a special, exotic category. Or else, why are there special, separate hostels for students and working women from the Northeast in Delhi? Yes, to a great extent women from the Northeast require a great amount of protection against prying male eyes in North India. But that is the case practically for any women from anywhere in North India. The government, particularly the relevant ministries such as Doner, women and child development and home claim great credit for these initiatives, but if they want to actually help develop a sense of understanding about the Northeast, they should build hostels where probably a 60:40 or even 50:50 ratio of students or women from the Northeast and rest of India are housed. To tell a bitter truth, even if there are exclusive hostels for students and working women from the region, there will be groups according to ethnicities, leaving aside personal level friendships. In such a hostel, will a Kuki and a Naga stick together just because they are from the Northeast? And anyways, when one goes out to study and work, one has to share space with people from all over, so why not the same where one is staying?

(To be continued…)

(published in the Seven Sisters Post, www.sevensisterspost.com, 16-05-2012)

http://sevensisterspost.com/?p=12474#