Forced out of their home states because of poor job opportunities and incessant violence, these youngsters find themselves under renewed attack. This time for who they are. Helena Siine's is a typical case. A dispute with her landlady earlier this month seemed to be just another quarrel until it took a racial turn. "She started to call us Nepali prostitutes, gamblers and dog-eaters," Siine says. Their Indian identity negated, many northeasterners say, they are not even seen as a minority but treated as outsiders. Moreover, they have to deal with 'chinkie' taunts, lewd remarks and physical molestation.
Mary Niang, who lived in Gurgaon, outside Delhi, knows it all too well. The first night she and her friend spent at their new flat turned out to be the last. Her landlord barged in at 2 am with other men and molested the two girls. What distinguishes sexual assaults on northeastern women, explain some of them, is the attitude that this is something that's "done and acceptable". Worse, something that they "deserve".
Numerous instances of harassment of northeasterners spurred a group of them in Delhi to get together to form the Northeast Support Centre and Helpline in October 2007. Helping victims of harassment to pursue their complaints with the police and the courts, they have handled more than a hundred cases so far. It has also organised awareness camps in the Northeast to sensitise prospective students headed to Delhi. Asked why northeasterners are ill-treated, Lansinglu Rongmei, a lawyer with the centre, says she's not going to look for any explanations. "That question should be posed to the perpetrators. After all, we don't judge people by the way they look, what they wear or the traditions they follow," she says.
