Swift response from Delhi : A change -- Over haul the mindset
- The Sangai Express Editorial :: Ocotber 18, 2014 -

Rare for Delhi to respond so swiftly to a situation.

Rarer still is it when it comes to a case of people from the North East being hammered and assaulted in the metros of India.

Union Home Minister Rajnath Singh certainly decided to walk the untrodden path when he called up Karnataka Chief Minister Siddaramaiah barely 24 hours after a student from Manipur was brutally assaulted at Bangalore by a bunch of goons and made it known that discrimination of any sort is a strict no no.

May be taken as just another lip service from a political figure from mainland India, but yet at the same time it is not often that Delhi has responded so swiftly to an incident in which people from the North East region have been at the receiving end.

Tough to say how effective the call or instruction from the Union Home Minister will be and this is all that more so given the fact that just one day after the Bangalore incident, two young men from the North East were brutally assaulted at Gurgaon.

A grim reminder that India will need more than a responsive Minister or two to stem the rot. A deep rooted evil it is and the first point that should be acknowledged.

India and Delhi may deny that there is racism in the country but then it is also equally true that denying racism may just be the pointer that there is indeed racism in the country.

A point which must be rather familiar to the people of the North East, especially when they cross the proverbial chicken neck.

A malaise that runs deep.

It will take more than a phone call or a statement to address the deep divide between the people of the North East and mainland India.

This is what should be clear to Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his men. The mindset has to change. Not something which can be achieved overnight nor a commodity which can be bought over the counter.

To address this point, it becomes all that important to acknowledge the fact that the idea of India as a Nation is something more than a slogan to be raised during election time.

Important to acknowledge that India does not begin and end with only the Gangetic plain, the western frontier or south of the Vindhyas.

A beginning has to be made somewhere and the sooner this is realised and measures taken up accordingly, the better it would be for the country as a whole.

India is not only about the Indus Valley civilisation, Ashoka the Great.

Importantly the land and people to the east of the Brahmaputra are not the football of anyone’s likes and dislikes that they can be kicked around.

Will definitely need more than a prompt response from the Union Home Minister.