On a gloomy morning of October 16, India woke up to the terrifying news of another racist attack on people from the Northeast. Only a few days back, Bangalore witnessed one of the most atrocious racist attack; for merely not speaking Kannada. If that wasn’t enough to digest, Gurgaon incident is even more terrifying.
Two call centre employees were allegedly stopped at Sikandpur village and one of them had his hair forcibly cut.
This is how the whole incident took place:-
Awang Newme, one of the victims of the racist attack, said that he left his friend’s (Aloto) house at 11:30 PM when four men (attackers) invited him for drinks. He is quoted to have said,
“They asked me to get my friend and also call other friends to have drinks with them. But after some time, they started beating us and I didn’t know why. They beat us with cricket bats and hockey sticks. They belted me all over the body and forced us to keep drinking. After some time, my friend managed to escape. I escaped around 4 am”.
As horrible as the image so formed in our heads are after reading the victim’s admission of the whole incident, one wonders what might’ve prompted the attackers to do something like this.
Newme, on this, quoted one of the attackers repeatedly saying to him and his friend,
“We want all of you from the Northeast to leave Sikandarpur”.
Another local living in Sikandarpur said,
“The boys were confined for over three hours and beaten brutally. Aloto was then rescued by a relative”.
The police have till now detained just one person and are concluding the whole incident as a mere drunken clash and not a racist attack.
Reacting to such stories revolving around the police behavior to tackle the situation, Northeast Support center and Helpline reacted with a strong statement on the whole incident. They said,
“The boys were called outside by a group of attackers, around 15 in number, and were then forced to drink alcohol. They were confined to a room near Sabzi Mandi in Sikanderpur village and were beaten up with cricket bats and hockey sticks”.
Social media hasn’t been away in expressing the views of people on this episode. Twitter is especially buzzing with #RacistShame being the number one trend in India.
Here are some selected Twitter reactions on the same:-
#RacistShame STICK THIS ON THE FACE F EVRY RACIST PIG pic.twitter.com/jyiwM4uYuT
— chandni suresh babu (@ChandniBabu) October 16, 2014
Don’t you use the petrol, natural gas that our land tilts. Don’t you wake up to our tea. Don’t you glorify Mary Kom? #RacistShame #racism
— Paromita Bardoloi (@ParomitaBardolo) October 17, 2014
India is one of the most racist nations in the world. It is slightly hypocritical when we cry about the west being racist. #RacistShame
— Rashi Kakkar (@rashi_kakkar) October 17, 2014
#RacistShame Whenever people see NE people they assume that they r from either Nepal or China. NE people r simply the best people of India.
— Abhishek bari (@abhishekbari03) October 17, 2014
We blame aus and US for distinguishing while we ourselves discriminate Kashmiri – terrorist Northeast – chinki UP – bhaiya #RacistShame
— Keyur Shah #BDL# (@keyur_shah5) October 17, 2014
This whole incident creates a whole new image of India that still exists in the densest corners of the country. We’re not driven by our mind every time but our perceptions sometimes get the better of us.
In one of many fine articles by Marci Marcel Thekaekara, she wrote,
“India is always a mystery, a country which is so huge that practices from Kashmir to Kanyakumari are as different from each other as Scotland is from Greece or Russia. Each state is like a different country with diverse languages, cuisines, clothes, customs, climate. Punjabis are closer in terms of their food and language to Pakistanis than to Tamils.”
Just maybe, the land of mystery needs to demystify this problem instantly. Maybe, we need our Indian version of Sherlock to help find a solution so as to make the land of diversity have unity be spoken in the same breath all over again.
Recommended: An Appeal By Africans Living In India – Stop Racism Please! (Video)
Courtesy: The Indian Express
Mohit Marwah
