This article deals with how we should approach the issue of racism. It has become an important matter as there have been attempts from many activists and academic circles to assimilate the north-east region in their narrative that revolve around caste. The article discusses two attempts of assimilation:
1. There have been attempts to understand racism faced by the people of north-east using narratives from anti-caste struggles in the mainland.
2. Some scholars and activists have tried to understand the societies in the north-east using narratives and perspective from the anti-caste struggles in the mainland.
Here, we make a case for avoiding the use of mainland narratives and categories of analysis in our inquiry of racism or in the study of our societies. There is a need for separation between how we understand the world around and how mayangs understand the world. The need for this position has surfaced because of the assimilation that the mainland scholars and activists are pursuing. It poses a threat as it is an imposition to shape our identity further.
Deviating from Racism
Scores of articles have been written calling attention to caste-based structural discrimination and brutality Dalits face in India while discussing the ongoing anti-racism movement in the United States. These articles and opinions aim to show that it is not just blacks in the US but also lower castes in India who suffer similar structural violence and brutality. What these mayangs cannot see is not casteism, but racism itself when they discuss Black Lives Matter (BLM). Waking up to the race discourse only after the BLM uprising is dishonest and racist at the same time. It is dishonest because the issue of racism in India is still prevalent and it is racist because all the mayangs are silent about it. Even before the BLM uprising, we have witnessed rampant racism against people from the north-east along with the widespread of COVID 19 pandemic. Some have been spat on, many nurses have come back home because of racial attacks and ill-treatments in hospitals, house owners have harassed students, some mayangs have even thrown one Assamese daily wage worker out from a train. On top of this, we have seen the mayangs harassing and attacking people from north-east on their way back home in trains. If this is not enough, the 19th Sikh Regiment has killed Lamdan Lukham and injured six other civilians in Pumao village, Arunachal Pradesh, on 16th May. In another case, a team of Indian army and Assam police had picked up Jayanta Bora, 25, on 15 June, 2020, and he succumbed to death that very night because of custodial torture. What one needs to understand is that these killings do not happen out of the blue. Assam has its own history of secret killings by Indian Army. Manipur has registered 1528 extrajudicial killings both by Indian army and police. Similar killings have been reported in all the regions of the north-east under the draconian AFSPA, which provides impunity to the Indian army.
The matter here is not about how they go about fighting for their social and political equality, it is about those who talk about casteism in India in the context of racism in the United States. It is about their blindness to racism itself. While speaking of racism in the US, instead of drawing attention to systemic racism in India and speak about the racially marginalized communities that are least represented, they rather choose to take the opportunity to speak only of casteism and colorism and hijack the race discourse in India, silencing the voices from the north-east. It is also about constantly silencing and hijacking the voices of racially marginalized people from the north-east, stepping over them, and conflating the separate issues of racism and casteism. None of these articles and opinions mention the racism that the indigenous people from the north-east face both in the region and in the mainland. The effort has been to bring together racism faced by the black community in the US and the experiences of Dalits in India so that the anti-caste movement in mainland India becomes part of the global anti racism movement. The problem is not only it equates casteism and racism but it also silently ignores the racism that mayangs perpetrate against the indigenous people of the region. It also attempts to paint casteism in India as racism in India, erasing the struggles and experiences of the indigenous people from the north-east.
Other than this attempt to silence the racism faced by the indigenous people of north-east in their narrative, there are some who talk about including discussions on mainland caste when we study the racism faced by north-east people. Is it the case that we can gain more insights into racism we face if we look into the society of the perpetrators? The answer is not that simple. How much do we know about the caste system of mainland societies given that we are from the north-east? Is it even possible for us to understand it in the way they understand it? To meaningfully include the discussions happening in the mainland about caste, we need to learn all their language. Why do we need to take such a burden in the first place? Should we talk about our experiences through the lived realities and the way we understand the world or should we make a detour and visit the alien spaces? We can take the example of a certain concept note of an Imphal based journal calling for articles on racism faced by the indigenous people of north-east. It brings in discussions from mainland narratives on caste at multiple places while talking about racism. It tries to bring in the mainland binary of caste and class in its understanding of what it calls “asian nationalisms.” The narratives from caste and class debate, jargons such as “brahmanical epistemic circulation,” “brahmanical capital,” and notions such as civility have come in the concept note. These mayang academic jargons, “brahmanical epistemic circulation,” “brahmanical capital” and the class-caste discourse are strange things for many in the region. Are we going to understand these jargons in the same way as mayangs understand them? These are things with which they understand their society. We are not going to understand these mayang jargons easily as these things are quite strange to us. We might have to spend a lifetime understanding these things, let alone locate the cause of our experience of racism there. Why do we need to make things complicated for us?
Our exercises in explaining the world around us using mayang academic language complicates our efforts to understand the racism that we experience. We are dragged into the study of mayang society, learning their narrative and jargons, when we are trying to understand our experience. To bring in mainland narrative in the study of racism serves only to deviate. It does not make sense to study the experience of the racism that we face using the lens and narratives of the perpetrators. If we find ourselves in a dire need to understand certain aspects of the mayang society, then we can always examine the mainland from our own lens. It is one thing to gain knowledge about different societies and another to study our issues through the lens of others. Already, our people are going through the phase of reclaiming their indigeneity, fixing their misplaced identity because of historical erasure and imposition of alien narratives. Amid this, if we burden our own people to learn another alien concept to understand their own lived experience, we will be taking one step forward, two steps back. What could also be possible behind this exercise is the manifestation of an internalized culture that has made us constantly dependent on the mainland in various sectors. So much so that we even feel the need to lean on to the mayang narrative in order to understand our own experiences. It lacks agency, to say the least.
We could think of another reason for this desire to understand our experience of racism in terms of mainland academic jargons. It could be the case that some scholars have the hope that mainland scholarship would accommodate them if they speak about racism in a way that mainland activists and scholars understand, laden with jargons from mainland academia. We might find ourselves in a situation where we need allies but we need to understand that we do not need to change our language for that.The responsibility of allyship is on them; we do not need to conform ourselves and our narratives into what is convenient to them. To put it in the simplest way possible, we have always seen them as mayang, not as dalit or brahmin or any other caste. Moreover, we need to also ask what do we get by analysing the mayang society as brahmanical, saying that upper-caste oppress the dalits over there, while talking about our experience of racism. The movement against Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA) in the mainland is an eye opener on how much value they give to the indigenous voices. After remaining silent for ages on the plight of the indigenous people, the mayangs hijacked the anti-CAA movement and erased the narrative of the indigenous people to turn everything into what fits their narrative.
Mayang Jargons and Top-Down Analysis
Many scholars and activists have made passing comments on how caste based oppression is there in the hills of north-east but they fail to proceed much in this line of thought as there is no material to support this claim in the indigenous communities in the hills. However, mayangs have been more careless in using the caste narrative when they talk about communities in Assam, Tripura and Manipur in the region. We can take the example of Imphal plain, a small patch of flat land in Manipur, to elaborate on the matter. Many scholars and activists have often claimed that communities in the Imphal plateau practice caste.
Madhu Chandra, a member of All India Confederation of SC/ST, has written many articles for mainland progressive activist websites arguing that caste system exists in this patch of flat land in Manipur. His writings assume that with the coming of Hinduism in the eighteenth century, the caste system also came to Manipur. This understanding is nothing but a mainland narrative about caste now applied in understanding a particular society in the north-east. This understanding did not take into account the feudal system that existed in Meitei society called the Lallup system till the late 19th century and how its remnants still persist today. Bengali bamons who migrated to Manipur in the eighteenth century were made to join Lallup and Lallup is not the caste system of the mainland. Lallup has more similarities with feudal systems such Ahamudan in Upper Burma and Sakdina in Thailand.This understanding of the mayangs ignores the debates and confusions surrounding the religion of the Meiteis. Thomas Callan Hodson, in his 1908 ethnograph The Meitheis, argued that Meiteis are more animist than Hindus. What is this animism that he talks about? He also commented that most Meitei do not live a Hindu way of life. He called the Meiteis “semi-hinduised” in his 1911 book Nagas of Manipur. Moreover, how do we explain sanamahi religion among the Meiteis? John Shakespear opposed Hodson’s claim alleging that Meiteis are Hindus in his 1913 paper, “The Religion of Manipur.” Hodson responded saying “Colonel Shakespear and I are not likely to agree because our point of view is naturally different…What struck us both was the difference between the religions of the people with whom we were familiar. Colonel Shakespear attributes the difference to Hinduism…I attribute it equally to the prevalence and persistence of animism.” These remarks express the difference as a difference in perspective, where we stand and look at the Imphal plains. Furthermore, Hodson’s book The Meitheis triggered a response from Pukhrambam Parijat who wrote Manipur Purabrita in 1917 to promote the narrative of the Aryan origin of the Meiteis. It shows that the foundations of Hinduism were still shaky even in the early 20th century. The Meitei revivalist movement emerged in the 1930s to further degrade the consolidation of Hinduism in Manipur. Moreover, many scholars and activists have made attempts to equate amang-aseng which became prevalent in Manipur in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century to the practice of untouchability in the mainland society. Amang-aseng is completely different from the practices of purity and pollution in mainland India. The top-down approach, the sweeping claims on how the caste system is there in Manipur are riddled with problems. This top-down approach, explaining the society in terms of caste hierarchies, has severe limitations when they are put to work to explain the Meitei society.
We can mention another example of the top-down approach here. Round Table India, a web magazine, took an interview of Santa Khurai, a prominent Nupi Maanbi activist from Manipur. They published the interview with a caption which identified Santa Khurai as a Bahujan. When Santa Khurai noticed it, she contacted Round Table India and the part where it implied her perspective as Bahujan perspective was removed from the post. Santa Khurai said, “She did not notice it at first as these terms are very new and alien to her. Given that our society is completely different, we are not very clear on what they mean by these terms.” Santa Khurai was vigilant and understood the problems of using the mainland jargons in expressing her plight and her struggles. Santa Khurai told us, “We have heard about Dalits as their politics is visible now. Bahujan is a very new word for me. They have terms such as Savarna, Vaishya and Shudras. They have different castes. We are not very aware. The students who study social work might understand these things better. When these things are put in the narrative, we take time to understand what these things mean.” This episode shows us two things: First, indigenous people are not aware of these mainland academic and political jargons much. Second, there are academics and activists who engage in a top-down approach while studying the north-east. They use their knowledge of caste of the mainland society and apply it to their study of the north-east. It also proves that we have our own language and narrative to study, understand, and explain the issues we face. Learning and imposing mayang language and narrative only leads to confusion and misrepresentation. We have seen this in many activists and scholars, even from the north-east, who engage in this top-down approach. Furthermore, if we use these mayang jargons in understanding our society, then it gives the mayangs an opportunity to create confusion in the narrative of the indigenous people of the north-east, the narrative that there is settler colonialism in the region and the indigenous people have been resisting the settlers and the colonial politics since the British colonial period.
Diluting settler colonialism narrative
Settler Colonialism, in simple words, is a form of colonialism that works over a period of time, replacing the indigenous population with an invasive settler society. Tripura is an example of that. The indigenous people of the north-east have been fighting against it for the longest time. The indigenous people of the north-east have been resisting the Citizenship Amendment Bill (CAB) since 2016. In 2019, when the bill became Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA), the mainland liberals started their anti-CAA movement. In their narrative, we find no discussions on the plight of the indigenous people of the north East in the anti-CAA movement of mainland India. The narratives of the north east region vanished when they reached the mainland. On the top of that, the mayang liberals and their bootlickers from the region actively denied that the north-east region faces settler colonialism.We should all remember how Indian state brutally suppressed Mizo nationalist movement. There is a peace process going on between the Indian state and Naga nationalist movement. Manipur is still in turmoil, nationalist movements still exist. These forces do not cite British colonial authorities, they cite how they became part of India and what happened after that. Their demand is the right to self-determination and many of them have articulated the changes in demography in the region as “demographic invasion” or “settler colonialism.” How do these things come about?
Militarisation always has a close association with any form of colonialism. Quite coincidentally, the whole of the north-east region is heavily militarised. It has a traumatic history of raping, killing, and torturing indigenous people, which continues to this day. How do these matters figure in the mainland Indian narrative? These questions do not figure, they are avoided. Without addressing these movements and the understandings of the indigenous people, the mayang liberals have claimed that there is no settler colonialism in the region. Hence, to defend the expansionist mayang nationalism, they conjure the term ethno-nationalist for all those who claim that there is settler colonialism. Second, mayang nationalist liberals have to limit their curiosity, they can only condemn the draconian laws in the region but the issue here is why there are draconian laws required in the region. Why is it that there is a need for heavy militarisation and draconian laws? Is it because indigenous people continue to see colonial authorities existing there even now? These are the questions mayangs cannot contemplate for they bring out their fragility. The very fact that they only want to deal with the human rights issue superficially but not interested to delve deeper into the historical and current political context clearly displays their racism and selective ally-ship in their activism.
When mayangs get confronted on racism, they often resort to red herring and respond digging the internal conflict within the north-east or display their mayang fragility and come up with false ideas like “reverse racism”. When placed at the spot for racism, they also respond that there is caste discrimination prevailing in the north-east against marginalised sections (another red herring). This response when studied minutely is marred with problems, especially their understanding of the societies in the region through caste. First, we should focus, for a moment, on how they relate racism that we experience and the response. It seems the responses are to evade the reality of settler colonialism mayangs practice in the region and create a distraction to avoid taking accountability. That is also the purpose behind any red herring: to take a detour when someone doesn’t like to engage in the current topic. Does it mean that, just like their historical masters, mayangs are trying to morally justify their colonialism using the rhetoric of caste? Or, does the response mean that indigenous people cannot claim their rights as mayang racists think that indigenous people practice caste? Or, is it a way of telling the indigenous people that they also need to look into themselves? One can work on this mysterious mayang response on the matter but what is clear is that it is definitely a way to avoid talking about racism and settler colonialism by answering things in a language we cannot understand. However, if asked on the details of the matter, their unfamiliarity with the region would surface. We often encounter it happening in our social media conversations with the so-called woke mayangs. Nevertheless, they relate racism and casteism together time and again. Therefore, we should not consciously bring these two together in our own analysis. It is their opportunity to confuse things. Instead of accepting that the region faces settler colonialism, mayangs make attempts to explain it away, often arguing that caste system is practiced in the region. Arguing for a caste system in the region serves them to force the region in their mainland narrative. It means we all fit in the same hierarchy and people in the region practice caste based oppression. It is same as saying a Dalit from Maharashtra is also oppressed in Manipur as a Dalit.
We do not need to tell these mayangs about the movements for social transformation that have erupted in the region. And, there is also no need for them to tell us what we should do in our society, we are already doing a lot of things. These matters are different from the racism we face both in the mainland and in the region. What they must be confronted for is their racism and while doing so we should not get bogged down in a debate with them on the nature of either our societies or theirs. They can deal with the evils of their society as we deal with ours. The only thing a liberal mayang must consider for now when it comes to the north-east is their settler colonialism.
Ruth Chawngthu