For most of the times that any incidences of racial discrimination and hate crimes happens against people from the Northeastern States of India, the majority relates to their appearance. The generalization of all mongoloid faced people in India with a single term ‘chinky’ is a truth. It is also a fact that, like Nido Tania, being a ‘chinky’ might cost them their lives.
Any acts of discrimination or physical harm like murder, assault, hurt etc. has to be dealt with through the recourse of the criminal laws and the criminal justice system. In case, the victim is a member of the Scheduled Cast or the Scheduled Tribes, the crime can be also remedied by filing additional charges with the help of the provisions of the Schedules Cast and Scheduled Tribe (Prevention of Atrocities) Act, 1989. The condition is that the perpetrator has to be from the higher cast in the case of a SC and in the same way, a non-tribal in the case of a ST for the Act to be applicable. The Act seeks to remedy and wipe out the historical discrimination against the scheduled castes and the scheduled tribes in different parts of India. It is also criticized for being more tilted towards remedying cast based discriminations rather than those based on tribe.
Since 2010, the word ‘chinky’ became a word that was considered banned under the provisions of Section 3 of the Act vide a letter by the Ministry of Home Affairs to all the states and Union Territories wherein it was considered a crime punishable by imprisonment of up to five years.
When most of the instances of assault and crimes against people of the North East happen, there is a general perception that the crimes are a result of the ignorance about the people from the region. The alienation in the form of exclusion in educating the masses about the history, culture, traditions and the peoples of the region is said to be the main reason behind the constant discrimination that they face. Their struggle for a space within the national identity of being an Indian is peppered with stories of violence both in the public and private spheres as well as institutions. Some die making news like Nido Tania and Loitam Richard while many die unheard of.
In criminalizing the word ‘chinki’, the legislature has shown the same amount of ignorance that the masses of India are blamed of. By generalizing all mongoloid people as scheduled tribes, it has done greater injustice than has been done by the assumption that the criminalization of a word could be an answer to stop discrimination against all people of the North East.
The entire Himalayan belts, of which the Northeastern states form a part, are inhabited by people who belong to the Mongolid race. Similarity of physical features makes it difficult to identify which state they belong to. Hence all of the times, the stories of discrimination has the same underlying narrative of being racist in nature. Even the law and the lawmakers are guilty of such generalization as is apparent in the context of the word ‘chinki’.
The Northeast and Himalayan states are extremely diverse within themselves. Race is but one identity amongst others like religion and caste. Hence the word ‘chinky’ could include a scheduled tribe as well as a non-tribal. It could cover a person of the scheduled caste or a higher caste of mixed racial parentage or a member of the other backward classes.
Most of the higher caste Hindus, as well as members of the scheduled castes, share Aryan or North Indian features. There are scheduled tribes who share Mongoloid features but there are also members of OBCs, almost the rest of the population, who share strictly mongoloid features. There are many who are born of mixed racial parentage whose determination of being a scheduled tribe depends upon the race of the father and more importantly, whether he is a scheduled tribe himself. The above law refuses to consider people in these fringe areas, thus perpetrating the discrimination.
Then there are the refugees from Tibet, Burma etc as well as the sizeable Chinese populations residing in cities like Kolkata. What would be their recourse in the case of a racially motivated verbal slur? Is racism an identity that needs protection within the framework of citizenship or is it to be granted protection regardless? Hence, if a Nepalese citizen with mongoloid features, working in India, is called a ‘chinky’, what is his remedy? What is the protection that can be granted to Japanese or a Thai tourist against a racist slur within the territory of India?
Hence, the criminalization of the word ‘chinki’ is a populist eyewash and a reaffirmation and perpetration of the fact that India refuses to mainstreamize people of the Northeast as well as the entire Himalayan belt who are racially different but still Indians. Also, when any act of discrimination or a racially motivated attack happens on the people from the Northeast, is the criminalization of the word ‘chinky’ supposed to be ‘The’ word to sum up the discrimination or is there the need for a recognition of the discrimination as a special kind of hate crime and brought within the larger criminal justice system rather than the confining frameworks of the SC and ST (POA) Act? The most important question is, is tolerance of the different a culturally, personally or socially acquired habit or does it need the intervention of law at all points?
The increasing numbers of hate crimes against people of different races is making it apparent that India’s tolerance of the different is a farce. There has been an increase in the violence against white women, some of whom have written about them being subjected to harassment with a racial motivation. The recent Khirki Extention fiasco involving Nigerians is an extension of the discrimination that Africans and people of the Negroid race have been facing for long because of their dark skin.
It is a general trend that when any incident of a racist attack is voiced against, especially a Northeasterner, the atrocities against migrants of the mainland in these states are brought into the debate; as if to say that it is tit for a tat process. However, the problem is that most of India does not know that the strife and unrest in these states are almost half centuries old and a struggle for identity and space within their states against historical cultural, political and economic discriminations of the Indian State. In facing discrimination and ignorance in the streets, in the system as well as legislations, it only but continues. At the end, any remedial steps end up being nothing but tokens of populism unless dealt with in depth and sensitivity. Maybe one remedy could be to make racist and hate crimes a national problem rather than based on a few criteria, outside the confines of a single legislation, and bring it within the ambit of an all encompassing specialized law. Article 15 of the Indian Constitution squarely recognizes prohibition of discrimination based on race. It is time to recognize that apart from casteism, racism in India, needs an urgent legislative remedy. The remedy is not just to protect a few recognized classes of people but a general class needing the same remedy.
Jwala D Thapa,
Asst. Professor,
Sikkim University,
PhD Scholar,
The WB National University of Juridical Sciences
