INCREASE IN RACIAL

DISCRIMINATION
AGAINST NORTH-EASTERN INDIANS
DURING THE COVID-19 CRISIS
SOCIOLOGY PROJECT

AARAV UPADHYAY
XI A (HUMANITIES)
ROLL NO: 22
 ACKNOWLEDGEMENT
• I would like to express my special thanks of gratitude to Ms. Bhakti
and Ms. Sejal who gave me the golden opportunity to do this
wonderful project on this topic. Their support and guidance
throughout the project has been extremely helpful.
• Secondly I would also like to thank my parents and friends who
helped me a lot in finalizing this project within the limited time frame.
• The outbreak of Covid-19 has been highly racialized and stigmatized
around the world based on the origin of the virus and its highly
infectious nature.
• Profiling of Asians or mongoloid looking individuals as a suspect carrier
of the virus has resulted in taunts and discriminations occur worldwide.
• In India, the pandemic has reinforced racism against Northeast Indians,
which the country has been grappling with this social problem in the last
one decade or so.
• During the pandemic, the fight by Northeast Indians was with the
mindset of the rest of Indians as much as the virus itself. It was

a fight not only against the presumption of being ‘non-Indian’ with negative affiliation, or worse
‘unwanted Indians’, but also to get due recognition and acceptance as equal Indians.
 INTRODUCTION
• The Indian Prime Minister announced the world’s biggest lockdown on 24 March 2020 for
21 days in his late evening televised address to the nation to contain the spread of Covid-19.
This announcement came 2 weeks after the World Health Organization (WHO) declared the
outbreak as ‘pandemic’ considering ‘the alarming levels of spread and severity’ on 11
March.
• As the coronavirus epidemic in China worsened and spread to different parts of the world in
February 2020 there was a rise in racism and prejudice against Asian looking people in some
parts of the world, particularly in Europe, Iran and the United States of America,
• Alongside, racial discriminations against the Northeast Indians were also increasingly
reported, and such incidents culminated in the first week of the lockdown.
 Chongpi
Kipgen

Hailing from Manipur, she has noticed a rise in racist attacks

and discrimination against people from the Northeast living
in Mumbai, in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic. “Before
the lockdown, they used to call us Nepali, chinki, momo or
chowmein, but now they look at me and say, ‘Go corona’ or
blame me for eating animals that caused the spread of the
virus,” says Ms. Kipgen.
 STATEMENT OF PROBLEM

This research tries to study the increase in racial

discrimination against North-Eastern Indians during the
Covid-19 crisis and to answer all the questions pertaining to
the same.
 OBJECTIVES OF STUDY
1. To study the issues, prejudices and struggles faced by the North-Eastern segment of the Indian society :
2. To outline incidents of racism against Northeast Indians during the pandemic and otherwise:
(Otherwise)
On January 29, 2014, a young guy named Nido Taniam was beaten to death in in the Lajpat Nagar area of
Delhi, the reason he looked simply different.

In 2016 two young guys from Mizoram were beaten in Bangalore for not speaking their local language.

Two students from Nagaland were brutally tortured for hours by local men in Goregaon to teach them a lesson
that you don’t belong here. They said, “if you Northeast people come here we will kill you.”

Some hotels denied to give them entry just because they don’t look Indian enough. There are too many cases
in which people from Northeast are treated harshly just because they don’t look “Indian enough.” They are
told to prove their nationality. These people not given jobs, house on the basis of their ethnicity or race.
Zohmangaihzuali Kuri, a 38-year-old model coordinator from Mizoram, who has been living in
Mumbai for close to two decades, says that people from the Northeast are often confused with
the Chinese and have to prove their Indian identity. “Even though Mumbai is a very safe city,
people are treating us very differently,” says Leo Tharmi Raikhan, a 34-year-old resident of
Kalina, Santacruz, who hails from Manipur.