In Delhi's crime profile, the violence arising out of racial intolerance in between its favourite pastime of rapes, abuse of women and gun battles is unmissable. The tragic murder of Nido Taniam, the young university student from Arunachal Pradesh, is therefore nothing exceptional, but a part of its inherent and uncontrolled racial delinquency.
This is not the first case, and this is not going to be the last case.
A file photo of Nido Taniam. PTI
Despite death-penalties, historical uprisings, the security of women in Delhi — both in public and private places — hasn't changed and will not change because majority of the people on the streets and those govern haven't looked for the devils within themselves. They don't realise that the violence against women in Delhi is endemic to the city, that was a manifestation of a sick society, and this behaviour will change only through systemic transformation. Some wise people did say this during the excited times of outrage, but in the rush for the expeditious and popular, nobody chose to hear it.
Delhi's obsession with rapes continued and will continue.
Nido's death exposes another aspect of this sick society — a casual intolerance to anything that looks like the other. People from other parts of India, particularly the south and the North East, who have lived in Delhi, know this exists, but often ignore it because most of the time it looks and feels benign. It's a habit, it doesn't hurt much unless one is too thin-skinned.
But incidents such as that of Nido shows that what starts as benign teasing has a dangerous pathology that needs to be treated — whether it comes from a vagabond on the street or a politician. Before Nido, girls from the North Eastern states had been routine targets of sexual harassment, rape attempts and teasing in public spaces.
Mumbai had a history of intolerance towards the South Indians starting in the 1960s and North Indians of late; the North East also has a history of viewing the rest of Indians with deep suspicion; and the whole of India has a real problem with people from African countries.
But to me, Delhi's problem is deeper because it has two layers — one, the instinctive racism of Indians and the second, it's deeply provincial mindset. Delhi may have people from everywhere that befit the capital of a country, including foreign nationals, but it still cannot shirk off its Raj era provincial obeisance to the Punjab region. Up close, Delhi is a metropolis whose scion-cultural building blocks are the Lajpat Nagars and Rajendra Nagars and the umpteen colonies, where you also see ghettoes of racial minorities such as the south Indians, Bengalis, Nepalis, people from the north east, and of late even Africans.
I have lived in Delhi during my twenties and later on in my late-thirties and have found this provinciality, not only in the markets such as Sarojini Nagar where Nido came under attack, but also among the well-heeled and party-hopping beautiful people. I could never figure out completely where it stemmed from, but I guess, quite a bit of it had to do with skin colour.
The daughter of a big socialite, otherwise a nice girl, who used to work with me once asked this: "Why are south Indians dark"? I said, probably because of their genetic make up. She said, "no, because they watch Sun TV, Soorya TV and Kiran TV without a sun-screen". On another time, when she saw a group photo of undergraduate girls from a prestigious college in Trivandrum, she asked: "Why do they all look like maids?"
The daughter of a high profile Nepali women, an international professional, faced a funny question at an exclusive school in Vasant Vihar, this time from a classmate who was hardly six or seven. "How did you get admission in this school? Isn't your father a security guard?"
"Kalu", "Madrasi", "speaking in Madrasi" as if Madrasi is a composite language of South India are so common experiences for south Indians while for the North Easterners it's always being chinky, Chinese and perhaps permissive. South Indians, probably because of another stereotype - this time useful - of top Indian civil servants, foreign service officials, IIT/IIM toppers, MNC-managers and the dramatic socio-economic growth of the southern states over the last two decades seemed to have more or less escaped the provincial eyes of Delhi. But the North East is stuck in a time warp because Delhi, as the capital of India, ignored them far too long.
Diepiriye Kuku, an African-American visitor to India, wrote his arresting personal experience in the Outlook Magazine: "In spite of friendship and love in private spaces, the Delhi public literally stops and stares. It is harrowing to constantly have children and adults tease, taunt, pick, poke and peer at you from the corner of their eyes, denying their own humanity as well as mine. Their aggressive, crude curiosity threatens to dominate unless disarmed by kindness, or met with equal aggression."
He goes on to add: "Discrimination in Delhi surpasses the denial of courtesy. I have been denied visas, apartments, entrance to discos, attentiveness, kindness and the benefit of doubt. Further, the lack of neighbourliness exceeds what locals describe as normal for a capital already known for its coldness."
This is the same provincial mindset that made AAP Minster Somanth Bharti and his supporters slot all Africans in his constituency as sex and drug traffickers and sex workers. Interestingly, everybody who followed up on the story used the word "Africans" or "African nationals" forgetting the fact that Africa has more than 55 countries and the people one referred to were from independent, sovereign countries.
Kejriwal promised tough action against the accused in the Nido murder case. It won't help. It will be another example of the outrage-rape-outrage cycle. He doesn't have a formula for social transformation. Education minister Manish Sisodia promised chapters on North East in school books. That too wouldn't help because had our school books been effective, educated Indians should have had better sense of socio-cultural history, India, its people and even civic sense.
The overall picture is that of majoritarianism. In Delhi, it is a provincial majoritarianism. The overall context of lawlessness and politics breeds and protects it. Since they want to showcase their intent and purity of purpose in Delhi, it's AAP's duty to make a case for transformation.
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