People Targeting People

Indian racism, behind three lynchings in Dec, is a problem ignored at our own peril

Another day, another state, another horrific lynching – the third this month. The year is ending on a shameful and scary note with the creeping normalisation of ‘othering’. Can youngsters and working people not move around in their own country without fear, and safely? The 24-year-old from Tripura stabbed by a group of Uttarakhandis in Dehradun was an MBA student, in the city for a year. He met racist slurs with calm but was fatally wounded in a hate crime. The two migrant workers lynched, a 19/20-year-old Bengali in Odisha and a 31-year-old Chhattisgarhi in Kerala, were called ‘Bangladeshi’, a charge risking the safety of migrants anywhere in the country.

African and Northeast India’s students and workers have for decades faced racism in even the heart of Delhi and across northern states. No govt has recognised racism or hate crime; police invariably excuse dangerous views and such extreme violence as ‘stray incidents’, which they are not. There are patterns to this racism and ‘othering’, but unaddressed, it’s finding brute expression more frequently. Indian students themselves are at the receiving end of racism, especially in Trump’s America. Privileged and upperclass Indians have always been startled to find themselves classified as ‘coloured’ in Western contexts – lumped together with the very communities many of them look down upon – but now are being MAGA-othered like never before. Yet, while we ourselves are victims in other lands, we overlook racist attitudes that mark our own people. A Niti policy report suggests India host 1L international students across central/state universities by 2030. This can’t happen if foreign students’ safety – on race and skin colour – isn’t 100% assured. For India’s Northeast, mainland’s ‘othering’ is a long-held grievance that, allowed to grow, has political repercussions.

Years of soft-pedalling on the swift scale of ‘othering’ – whether on social media with propaganda and fake news or in xenophobic violence on ground – is making it dangerous for ‘not local’ workers. There is little consequence for perpetrators; police and govt response is reactive. Years ago, when fear of ‘kidnappers in town’ triggered lynchings of even tourists, police cracked down and controlled the false propaganda. Ahead of elections in politically volatile Bengal, Assam and Kerala, a surfeit of ‘infiltrator’ tropes is increasing intolerance. ‘Othering’ is a systemic poison. Its spread must be acted upon determinedly, if govts don’t want to end up having to protect the people from one another.

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