“Chak De India” – the movie came out some years back, but I am sure that a majority of you still remember these lines from it…  “aapko apne hi desh mein koi mehmaan kahe to aapko kaisa lagega..?” (How will you feel if you are regarded as guests/outsiders in your own country?) The lines were uttered by two North-Eastern Indian women hockey players during their registration process in the Women’s hockey team of India. Remember the scene now???

outsiders_in_own_country

Surely, the movie dealt with other major issues but this particular line caught my attention. And yesterday, when I was reading this incident that a North-Eastern girl was badly molested in Munirka (New Delhi), my belief strengthened that girls from North-Eastern states like Mizoram, Assam, Tripura, to name a few are still treated outsiders in their own country. This victim from Mizoram was waiting for her younger sister, just when a restaurant waiter approached her and started passing lewd comments at her. It was when she started shouting; the neighbours came into her rescue and saved her from the brutal deeds of the culprit!

This is not the first incident which marked any North-Eastern girl as a victim. One can count thousands of such occurrences in the past… Some call them Nepalis, some address them as Chinese or Tibetans, but is it really their fault that their facial features do not match any typical Indian woman? Every day or the other, these innocent girls, who come to metropolitan cities to make their career, have to face lousy comments in some form or the other and have no choice but to ignore them, each passing day.

Well, it is accepted that these “so-called outsiders” are not good at communicating in Hindi, but does this mean that they are not Indians? The fact is that in most of the North Eastern states, English is the most widely spoken language and they hardly converse in the national language of India. But, once they land at the core of the country, where Hindi is widely spoken, they should be little empathetic and show their willingness to learn a bit of the language.

Not only in Delhi, similar incidents are reported in the everyday newspapers in other Indian states as well. North-Eastern people, especially girls are not safe and secure in these states. However, the rate of these incidents is significantly higher in Delhi. Why? Are Delhiites harder on these people? Are they more discriminating than other Indians? Believe it or not, the discrimination on North-Eastern people is a sort of racism!

The fact that a majority of these girls come alone, stay alone, make them a soft target, be it for molestation or some other brutal crime. Why don’t we guys understand that having unfamiliar features does not make them outsiders and they are as much Indians as our mothers or sisters. It’s high time that we should start addressing these issues and commence making some really HUGE changes in our mindsets!