By Imlisanen Jamir
There is something deeply revealing about the way powerful nations can strip a person of their dignity with a single sentence: your birthplace does not belong to the country on your passport. On November 21, during what should have been a three-hour layover in Shanghai, an Arunachali woman — Pema Wang Thongdok — was detained for 18 hours. She was traveling from London to Japan. Her papers were valid. Her identity was not.
Chinese immigration officials refused to accept her Indian passport. To them, Arunachal Pradesh was “part of China.” In that moment, the border was not a line on a map — it was a weapon used to deny a person the right to move freely. The ordeal was not an accident. It was a performance of power.
When Pema later spoke online, she thanked those who defended her and dismissed the trolls who tried to belittle her experience. She also made a crucial point: she does not live in India, so any action taken by the Indian government will be for Indians and Arunachalis at home — not for her. Her humiliation has been claimed as national business, even though she alone bore the weight of it in that airport room.
India reacted as expected. The Ministry of External Affairs called the detention a violation of international conventions and said it had taken up the matter “firmly” with Beijing. It also reiterated the familiar line: Arunachal Pradesh is an integral and inalienable part of India. China has offered no credible justification, and none is likely to come, because the point was not to justify — the point was to remind India what China claims.
But the true cost of such reminders is paid by people like us. Northeasterners learn early that the world sees us not as individuals with lives and histories, but as proof of territory. Our citizenship becomes a battlefield. Our movement becomes a negotiation. Our dignity becomes a prop in a rivalry that benefits neither our safety nor our future.
India remembers us when challenged. China remembers us when convenient. Neither shows much concern when we raise our own problems — unemployment, infrastructure, discrimination, alienation. Our loyalty is expected. Our rights are optional.
In the eyes of power, we are most valuable when we are insulted. Our suffering becomes a press release. Our silence becomes expected once the outrage cycle ends. This is the life of people who come from a place that two nations want and neither fully respects.
This incident is not an isolated mistake. It is a message. It says that our identities will always be questioned before they are accepted. It says that we are allowed dignity only when it suits someone’s diplomatic tone of the week.
We are not the chess pieces they move.
We are not the border they argue over.
We are people — and we do not exist to prove anyone right.
Comments can be sent to imlisanenjamir@gmail.com
