Urban Pind, A Dog And Urban Pinch

David Buhril *

Very recently two serious incidents occurred in the Capital city that involves us- people from the North East.

One, a media professional from Nagaland was prohibited from entering a public lounge bar, Urban Pind, on their expat night just because she was from the North East.

Secondly, a research scholar from Manipur who is on the verge of submitting his doctorate thesis was caught red handed with his bloody hands while he was trying to make a good dish out of the dog that he and his friends killed in his hostel room in Jawaharlal Nehru University.

There are two excuses of both the incidents. While the authorities of the lounge bar said that the media professional did not "have the right profile" to enter the public place, on the other hand the one who knows what makes a good ambrosia said that he killed the dog in "self defence."

The research scholar was imposed with a fine of Rs. 2000 and evicted from his hostel. If he had killed a chicken or fish in the same venue he could have shared whatever he makes out of it to his non-veg flat mates who otherwise have provoked animal rights after the incident.

I don't know if it was Columbus who said that a dog is man's best friend. But it has made all the difference. A difference that makes you and me or us incorrigibly different.

Well, it is not wrong to re-examine oneself after witnessing the reaction of the others. However, the reaction of the others would be too far from blinding us or change our taste bud.

There was once when it was the West and the rest of the world. Today, after decolonization and the antique Non-Aligned period in India, the geography, history and culture of the North East and more importantly everything about the people of the region is yet to fit suitably inside the radar of the rest of India.

We have seen enough to realise that our survival as human being will depend on the ability of people who think differently of us to accept whatever difference we exhibited and inherited anywhere. We cannot change to surrender ourselves to suitably gel inside anyone's standard of acceptance.

We have become a case of separate reality, which the celebrated democratic system has validated as we failed to prove the number game that defines democracy.

However, with the recent developments that has become almost a routine affair for us in India's cow belt that is waking up to globalization, sushi, and the new world order it would do our democracy better if there could be an understanding of the cultures and diversity that is still invisible to them. I could grow tired exulting blissfully in seeing naive audiences.

I could see no reason in observing the regiment of empowered generations, of proclaimed intellectuals and activist, who are blind to the draconian law (AFSPA) that validates the killing of man by another armed man that is still imposed by the Government of India in India's North East, but are cynically contemptuous about the food culture and the features of the people of the region.

While that speaks a lot about the confused people who are rearranging their reason and ignorance after the British left them to run the country with new frontiers, I cannot help myself but say that India is no stranger to racism.

For the new nation whose birth is still unfinished, we are a witness to the mapping of the billion people on the basis of race and everything that matters to them.

It amazed me when people could bear the brunt of Delhi's heat to walk with big and loud pamphlets in support of dogs and cats, but could never wake up to the harsh reality of the trampled people in fringe geography who are living without realizing their fundamental rights. Animal rights seem to weigh heavier than human rights, which is unfortunate.

What I have learned is that I could grow tired of tolerating disrespectful introspection into my own cultural domain. I could be insulted too. It goes beyond Urban Pind or the dog. If this is how people who have been confined within an imagined single national culture reacts, I don't find a safe space for our continuity as equal human being.

When we know we cannot rewrite our history with dal makhan or roti or biryani messed up with lassi and smeared with a good overdose of gulab jamun, it is no surprise that the others are shocked with our taste bud and food culture.

But our tolerance, which is yet to be Gandhianised, find it difficult to tolerate further when our taste bud is called "dirty" if not "filthy", "uncivilized" and the girls and women are categorized as "cheap", "easy", and an object of "Rs.20 orgasm."

There are more label to our features and colour - "chinky", "bahadur", "Chinese", "Nepali", etc. I know there is a big difference, which is inevitable. But it should not act as the soft ground for negating our existence as human being.

Today we have become victims of our cultural consequences when we choose not. We ought to ask if we should continue to allow us to be victimized. Our social pattern and behaviour, and everything about us are attached to a big question that is left to be answered by everyone outside us.

Are we witnessing neo-apartheid? The designed curriculum about the triviality of race differences did not seem to seep inside the self proclaimed learned intellectuals as it raised its ugly head anytime when the ground suits them. It is clear that racism still remains a widespread fact of many people's lives.

I sometimes wonder how racial logic and racial frames of reference are articulated and deployed when our emerging cultures are seen as having sub-human qualities by the supposed dominant national culture in generating and legitimizing beliefs, values and behaviour.

Well, we know for sure that it need not be ordain by anyone to get popular acceptance. Instead the challenge of our celebrated democracy is how to overcome the limitations of multiculturalism and anti racism that has become the new threat.

I find us severely reduced when our culture is no longer seen as the language of our identity and existence, but is seen as a separated reality if not differentiated reality, which again may be constitutionally scheduled like another endangered inheritance. We are confronting a challenge to our inherited structural and cultural marginalization.

This is a period of transition. We should not allow preconceived notions and understanding to freeze under a select temperature to make us deficiently thriving. There should be significant changes to understand our history, culture, identity and interest. I have painfully and silently watch enough.

Everyone, here and there, are victims and witness to the abuse of who we are. Everyone has experienced discrimination. It's just that we tolerate them in silence.

It is time we understand the extent to which oppositional practices have driven the assumed interest of our numbered democracy that is aided by the numb and blind but dominant state led strategies that have also attempted to respond to that defined collective when our little presence gets cornered in India's north east.

Oh! thank you silence. I know about the Urban Pind and the dog, but it is just another Indian urban pinch.

Related Article:

• Abusive article with hatred towards people from North East
• AFSPA - A Law review