Our lives, their prejudices
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Biros Leishangthem
I am deeply perturbed by the racial abuse that happened in Delhi. It is something many of us from the Northeast silently carry within us the moment we step outside of our homeland. Sometimes the hostility begins right from the airport or railway station. Occasionally, someone calls it out, but most of the time it dies down without any proper redressal, giving the culprits no real deterrence from repeating such behaviour. It’s such a harmful precedent for the public at large, especially for mainlanders or those who don’t “look like us.” When experiences like these disappear into silence without justice or accountability, they do not fade rather they become corrosive, eroding trust and safety in the spaces we share. In recent years India has witnessed a visible erosion of social trust. This declining social trust is not only a social concern but a direct barrier to inclusive development.
From a psychological perspective, stereotypes about Northeasterners have been woven into the social fabric through early childhood socialisation. Children acquire attitudes from their parents, media, school curriculum, and the language used around them. The Northeast is absent from their textbooks, misrepresented and exoticized in their entertainment, which only exposes their ignorance. When a child grows up hearing jokes, slurs, or casual dismissals about “chinky-looking people,” their mind forms schemas – mental shortcuts, that later solidify into prejudiced attitudes. These schemas become automatic; they guide perception without conscious thought.
So when we meet non-Northeastern friends, it’s not surprising that, at some point, some of them, if not all, reveal the entitlement or cultural superiority they were socialised into. This mindset is so deeply ingrained that it inevitably manifests.They are surprised, even shocked, to see people from the Northeast claiming intellectual spaces, cultural spaces, and other spheres of life. To them, we are people who live in forests and are simply content with a serene, natural lifestyle and somehow less ambitious. How dare we pursue careers, mark our presence in academic and professional spaces? According to them, we should stay back home, following a quiet, rural way of living. Their exoticisation of us, their disbelief in our achievements, their fascination with our food, clothes, and language – all of this is rooted in implicit biases formed in childhood and reinforced throughout adolescence.
Children imitate what they see, this is called observational learning. If they grow up hearing adults joke about people from the Northeast, that joke becomes a belief. If their only exposure to us is through stereotypical representations, that representation becomes their truth. And when such attitudes go unchallenged, they evolve into prejudice and discriminatory behaviours later in life. Among these attitudes are also those who cannot believe there are well-off households in the Northeast, reducing us to hunter-gatherer communities – that we belong only in remote natural landscapes. They respond with a condescending “Oh.” The same people, ironically, want to visit our homes and expect invitations to our “cultural festivities” and scenic landscapes. All these reactions come from deeply internalised stereotypes.
From my own experience, one person assumed I was lying when I spoke about the only floating national park in the world, the Keibul Lamjao National Park. That look wasn’t just ignorance; it was the manifestation of an entire system of miseducation. Their disbelief says more about their limited world than ours. Perhaps it is easy for them to doubt us when their daily surroundings have conditioned them to equate “Mainland India” with civilization and “Northeast” with backwardness.
Our parents have often told us to stay quiet, to not confront mainlanders because “they can be brutal,” “they won’t listen,” or “it’s dangerous.” We were taught to stay safe by shrinking, by letting it pass, by swallowing our anger. But this silence, forced or chosen, became another psychological reinforcement for them. It taught them that Northeasterners do not fight back, that we endure, that we accept, that we are passive. Over time, their prejudice deepened because it went unchallenged.
Yet even our resilience is viewed through their mainland gaze as something to be celebrated, rather than understood in its true context. For years, we have endured patronising attitudes, microaggressions, exoticisation, and outright hostility, not because we lack courage, but because we were socialised to navigate a world where our safety is never guaranteed. Still we rise, we build, we carve out spaces they once believed did not belong to us. Our resilience is not a decoration for their consumption; it is a history, a fight, a lived reality.
What happened in Delhi is not just an event, it is part of a larger psychosocial pattern shaped by history, childhood socialisation, cultural narratives, and unexamined biases. These behaviours are not isolated; they are reinforced through family conversations, peer groups, media portrayals, school environments, and the dominant cultural imagination. Over time, these external social influences intertwine with internal psychological processes, forming a cycle where prejudice becomes normalised and discrimination becomes habitual. And every time it happens, it reopens a familiar wound, reminding us of how far we still have to go and how long we have been bearing this burden as a community.
From Constitutional Promise to Lived Reality of Social Justice:
The Constitution of India places social justice at the heart of its democratic vision. The Preamble promises justice – social, economic, and political, as a fundamental objective.A democracy without social justice becomes a hollow facade. Democracy in India was envisioned not just as rule by the majority but as a transformative tool to uplift historically marginalised communities such as SCs, STs, OBCs, minorities, persons with disabilities, women, and the economically weak.
Fundamental Rights protect individuals from discrimination, while Directive Principles mandate the State to promote welfare, reduce inequalities, and protect vulnerable communities. The SC & ST (Prevention of Atrocities) Act, 1989 was enacted to prevent caste based violence and discrimination, reinforcing the Constitutional mandate under Articles 15 and 17. However, the conviction rate under the act has declined from 39.2% in 2020 to 32.4% in 2022 (NCRB data), raising concerns about implementation.
While India has made significant progress through Constitutional protections and welfare initiatives, the journey toward true empowerment is far from complete. Empowerment today requires not just policy reform but also social transformation grounded in equity, participation, and human dignity. Yet many marginalised individuals lack trust in institutions due to past experiences of exclusion or mistreatment, a concern highlighted in the 2nd ARC Reports on Social Capital.
The tendency to trivialise racial violence further erodes this trust. For instance, dismissing racial slurs as mere “jokes,” as seen in Anjel Chakma’s case, reflects the systemic failure to recognise hate crimes and weakens deterrence. Similarly, in Shajan Skaria v. State of Kerala (2024), the Supreme Court ruled that not every insult or intimidating remark against an SC or ST individual amounts to an offence under the SC/ST (Prevention of Atrocities) Act, signalling gaps in how the law interprets prejudice-driven harm. This underscores how racially charged misconduct is often not recognised as a serious violation of dignity and rights. Moreover, the National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB) does not maintain a separate category for racial offences against people from the Northeast, making the scale of the problem invisible and therefore easier to dismiss.
Social empowerment must therefore address discrimination through awareness campaigns, community dialogues, and school-based sensitisation programmes. Increasing the representation of marginalised groups in governance, through political participation, leadership development, and institutional inclusion, is essential for long-term transformation towards substantive social justice.
Going forward, social justice must translate into everyday governance and lived experiences. With inclusive, thoughtful governance, trust naturally follows. Empowering marginalised communities is a Constitutional commitment and a developmental necessity. It requires addressing structural inequalities, strengthening institutions, and fostering empathy within society. When marginalised voices are heard and included in decision-making, empowerment becomes not merely a policy goal but a lived reality that strengthens the nation as a whole. Without bridging these structural gaps, policies risk becoming symbolic and exclusionary.
I am deeply perturbed by the racial abuse that happened in Delhi. It is something many of us from the Northeast silently carry within us the moment we step outside of our homeland. Sometimes the hostility begins right from the airport or railway station. Occasionally, someone calls it out, but most of the time it dies down without any proper redressal, giving the culprits no real deterrence from repeating such behaviour. It’s such a harmful precedent for the public at large, especially for mainlanders or those who don’t “look like us.” When experiences like these disappear into silence without justice or accountability, they do not fade rather they become corrosive, eroding trust and safety in the spaces we share. In recent years India has witnessed a visible erosion of social trust. This declining social trust is not only a social concern but a direct barrier to inclusive development.
From a psychological perspective, stereotypes about Northeasterners have been woven into the social fabric through early childhood socialisation. Children acquire attitudes from their parents, media, school curriculum, and the language used around them. The Northeast is absent from their textbooks, misrepresented and exoticized in their entertainment, which only exposes their ignorance. When a child grows up hearing jokes, slurs, or casual dismissals about “chinky-looking people,” their mind forms schemas – mental shortcuts, that later solidify into prejudiced attitudes. These schemas become automatic; they guide perception without conscious thought.
So when we meet non-Northeastern friends, it’s not surprising that, at some point, some of them, if not all, reveal the entitlement or cultural superiority they were socialised into. This mindset is so deeply ingrained that it inevitably manifests.They are surprised, even shocked, to see people from the Northeast claiming intellectual spaces, cultural spaces, and other spheres of life. To them, we are people who live in forests and are simply content with a serene, natural lifestyle and somehow less ambitious. How dare we pursue careers, mark our presence in academic and professional spaces? According to them, we should stay back home, following a quiet, rural way of living. Their exoticisation of us, their disbelief in our achievements, their fascination with our food, clothes, and language – all of this is rooted in implicit biases formed in childhood and reinforced throughout adolescence.
Children imitate what they see, this is called observational learning. If they grow up hearing adults joke about people from the Northeast, that joke becomes a belief. If their only exposure to us is through stereotypical representations, that representation becomes their truth. And when such attitudes go unchallenged, they evolve into prejudice and discriminatory behaviours later in life. Among these attitudes are also those who cannot believe there are well-off households in the Northeast, reducing us to hunter-gatherer communities – that we belong only in remote natural landscapes. They respond with a condescending “Oh.” The same people, ironically, want to visit our homes and expect invitations to our “cultural festivities” and scenic landscapes. All these reactions come from deeply internalised stereotypes.
From my own experience, one person assumed I was lying when I spoke about the only floating national park in the world, the Keibul Lamjao National Park. That look wasn’t just ignorance; it was the manifestation of an entire system of miseducation. Their disbelief says more about their limited world than ours. Perhaps it is easy for them to doubt us when their daily surroundings have conditioned them to equate “Mainland India” with civilization and “Northeast” with backwardness.
Our parents have often told us to stay quiet, to not confront mainlanders because “they can be brutal,” “they won’t listen,” or “it’s dangerous.” We were taught to stay safe by shrinking, by letting it pass, by swallowing our anger. But this silence, forced or chosen, became another psychological reinforcement for them. It taught them that Northeasterners do not fight back, that we endure, that we accept, that we are passive. Over time, their prejudice deepened because it went unchallenged.
Yet even our resilience is viewed through their mainland gaze as something to be celebrated, rather than understood in its true context. For years, we have endured patronising attitudes, microaggressions, exoticisation, and outright hostility, not because we lack courage, but because we were socialised to navigate a world where our safety is never guaranteed. Still we rise, we build, we carve out spaces they once believed did not belong to us. Our resilience is not a decoration for their consumption; it is a history, a fight, a lived reality.
What happened in Delhi is not just an event, it is part of a larger psychosocial pattern shaped by history, childhood socialisation, cultural narratives, and unexamined biases. These behaviours are not isolated; they are reinforced through family conversations, peer groups, media portrayals, school environments, and the dominant cultural imagination. Over time, these external social influences intertwine with internal psychological processes, forming a cycle where prejudice becomes normalised and discrimination becomes habitual. And every time it happens, it reopens a familiar wound, reminding us of how far we still have to go and how long we have been bearing this burden as a community.
From Constitutional Promise to Lived Reality of Social Justice:
The Constitution of India places social justice at the heart of its democratic vision. The Preamble promises justice – social, economic, and political, as a fundamental objective.A democracy without social justice becomes a hollow facade. Democracy in India was envisioned not just as rule by the majority but as a transformative tool to uplift historically marginalised communities such as SCs, STs, OBCs, minorities, persons with disabilities, women, and the economically weak.
Fundamental Rights protect individuals from discrimination, while Directive Principles mandate the State to promote welfare, reduce inequalities, and protect vulnerable communities. The SC & ST (Prevention of Atrocities) Act, 1989 was enacted to prevent caste based violence and discrimination, reinforcing the Constitutional mandate under Articles 15 and 17. However, the conviction rate under the act has declined from 39.2% in 2020 to 32.4% in 2022 (NCRB data), raising concerns about implementation.
While India has made significant progress through Constitutional protections and welfare initiatives, the journey toward true empowerment is far from complete. Empowerment today requires not just policy reform but also social transformation grounded in equity, participation, and human dignity. Yet many marginalised individuals lack trust in institutions due to past experiences of exclusion or mistreatment, a concern highlighted in the 2nd ARC Reports on Social Capital.
The tendency to trivialise racial violence further erodes this trust. For instance, dismissing racial slurs as mere “jokes,” as seen in Anjel Chakma’s case, reflects the systemic failure to recognise hate crimes and weakens deterrence. Similarly, in Shajan Skaria v. State of Kerala (2024), the Supreme Court ruled that not every insult or intimidating remark against an SC or ST individual amounts to an offence under the SC/ST (Prevention of Atrocities) Act, signalling gaps in how the law interprets prejudice-driven harm. This underscores how racially charged misconduct is often not recognised as a serious violation of dignity and rights. Moreover, the National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB) does not maintain a separate category for racial offences against people from the Northeast, making the scale of the problem invisible and therefore easier to dismiss.
Social empowerment must therefore address discrimination through awareness campaigns, community dialogues, and school-based sensitisation programmes. Increasing the representation of marginalised groups in governance, through political participation, leadership development, and institutional inclusion, is essential for long-term transformation towards substantive social justice.
Going forward, social justice must translate into everyday governance and lived experiences. With inclusive, thoughtful governance, trust naturally follows. Empowering marginalised communities is a Constitutional commitment and a developmental necessity. It requires addressing structural inequalities, strengthening institutions, and fostering empathy within society. When marginalised voices are heard and included in decision-making, empowerment becomes not merely a policy goal but a lived reality that strengthens the nation as a whole. Without bridging these structural gaps, policies risk becoming symbolic and exclusionary.