Lessons to learn from the brutal murder of Anjel Chakma
The town of Dehradun, including India, has to search its conscience and decide how it can do right by Anjel Chakma and what can be done to inculcate greater inclusivity
On December 26 this year, Anjel Chakma from Tripura, an MBA student in Dehradun, Uttarakhand, succumbed to his injuries and passed away. Earlier, on Dec 9, he and his brother had been subjected to racial insults from some locals. When they resisted, Anjel was attacked with a sharp object that ultimately caused his death.
That the humiliation, vilification and caricature of those citizens of India from the North-East continues nearly unabated is a very disturbing sign for India’s image of its self-understanding as a nation and its acceptance of its diverse population.
But it is even more disturbing that the incident should have occurred in the city of Dehradun, the capital of Uttarakhand since 2011.
Just a few months ago, in a literary festival in Dehradun, local students presented their vision for Uttarakhand in 2047. There were the usual, and deeply felt, hopes for a prosperous and harmonious Uttarakhand, one that paid special attention to the acute ecological crisis in the region.
The highlight of this event was that it was presented by students representing the impressive diversity of the Dehradun populace. There were speeches in Garhwali, Kumaoni, Jaunsari, Nepali, English, Hindi, Sanskrit, Punjabi and Tibetan. Each of these languages is spoken by a not inconsiderable section of the population. I am not sure which other part of India hosts such a range of peoples.
A town that has its roots in Sikh history, having been settled by Guru Ram Rai in the 17th century, Dehradun has seen different peoples come and find a home there. The influence of Sikhs and Sikhism can be felt to this day.
One of the crucial battles of the Anglo-Gurkha war was fought in the town. The Khalanga War Memorial was erected to honor the fallen soldiers, British and Gurkha. The valley boasts a sizable population of Nepali-speakers.
Eventually, after the Anglo-Gurkha war, the British took control of the valley, and set up settlements and cantonments.
After the 1947 partition of India, a lot of people from what became Pakistan found shelter in the Doon Valley.
A considerable population of Tibetans found a home in Dehradun, with one of the largest settlements being Dhondupling. It is said that the social reformer, Vinoba Bhave, had donated land for the Tibetan community to settle in Dhondupling.
There, near the famous monastery on its premises, Mindrolling, a young trainee monk from Arunachal Pradesh explained the finer points of the Tibetan alphabets to the author of this piece.
Dehradun is also home to a large number of government and research institutions and attracts people from all over India. The Oil and Natural Gas Commission (ONGC), the Survey of India, The Forest Research Institute (FRI) and the Indian Military Academy (IMA) are among the many prestigious establishments in the valley.
Not to mention its storied schools, chief among them the Doon School. Many of the schools are residential, attracting students from all over India. More recently, it is home to several universities, one of which Anjel attended. The universities attract not only students from all over India but from several countries outside India as well, including from the continent of Africa.
Yet, despite all these markers of a mixture of cultures, people and languages, it looks like a place like Dehradun is not immune to the ills of racism, of narrowness and bigotry.
It is not as though Uttarakhand has not had its own share of hate and ultra-nationalism in recent times. A Kashmiri shawl trader was roughed up recently in Udham Singh Nagar. Dehradun itself has seen government action against so-called “illegal madrasas.” Earlier incidents of “love jihad” in towns like Purola struck fear in the heart of Muslims.
The attack against Anjel exhibits itself as a mix of pervasive racism and an extremely narrow idea of who is an Indian. It doesn’t help when the Prime Minister of the country looks away from a calamitous conflict in Manipur for the longest time. It is a shame that people from the North-East have to constantly prove – to the people of “mainland” India – that they are as Indian as any one else.
When the official narrative is so centered on one religion, one language, one type of original inhabitants of the land, one history (mainly) and a select number of castes that wrest privilege, then the seeds of narrow-mindedness are everywhere.
The violence against people from the North-East is no stranger to India’s capital, New Delhi as well. In fact Delhi Police has a Special Police Unit for North East Region (SPUNER). And, after the Anjel incident, a senior police official in Dehradun stated that Uttarakhand has such cells too, which were activated post the incident.
Why do we need “special cells” for a section of our own citizens? This quite obviously points to an egregious gap in the social fabric of the nation.
It is claimed by many that the Modi government has made various forms of communication – land and air etc – a priority for the North-East. But, more than that, a crucial communication with the people of the North-East is missing.
A serious, sincere and sustained endeavor to properly include the people of the North-East into the “Greater Indian Family” – however nominal and fraught that term might be – has not been evident. Such an effort cannot certainly be with an insidious intention to co-opt the people of the North-East into a Hindi heartland mainstream, as has been attempted in the past.
We need a well-thought-out roadmap that treats the citizens of the North-East as equal citizens of this nation on their terms, and as crucial contributors to its culture, society, ethos and economy. They often do not figure in any popular narrative, discourse, story or expression related to India.
Despite the NCERT’s feeble attempts to include a wide range of characters – including from the North-East – in conversational situations in its books, the story of India is basically a story of mainland India. And more narrowly a story of North India.
If “Aryavarta” was limited to the land to the west of Magadha for the longest time, it was mostly bounded on the south by the Vindhyas. The author of this piece remembers the joy of a participant (from Kerala) in a class on the Ashokan Brahmi script upon finding mention of the “Kerala-putras” in one of Ashoka’s inscriptions.
We have no inclusive school-level or popular history of India that encompasses elements of the North-East in any meaningful way. Heck, if Indian histories include history of South India as more of an afterthought, that is a surprise too.
So, if the Tamil Nadu government goes gaga over Keeladi finds or if Mayawati decided to lavish money on Bahujan history in the form of theme parks, one can understand just a little of their impulses.
We cannot keep failing our fellow citizens of the North-East. We need ambassadors of goodwill and people who can accept the North-East as itself. We probably need more people like “Uncle Moosa”, a Malayali and a much loved library-activist who settled in Arunachal Pradesh since he arrived there in the 1970s.
The town of Dehradun has to search its conscience and decide how it can do right by Anjel Chakma and what can be done to inculcate greater inclusivity. So does Uttarakhand, as does India. Vasudhaiva Kutumbakam is our motto, right?
[The writer, Umang Kumar, is Writer and Social Activist based in Delhi NCR.]
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