Why is Northeast India so different from the rest of India?

Why do the people from north-east India have a different fashion/ dressing sense?

How do Indians view people from the North East part of India?

If you search for people from North East India and stumble upon such questions on a leading Q&A site don’t be surprised. They are just the true reflection of the knowledge (rather the lack of it!) people in most parts of India have about the region. In fact, even the vast majority of Indians who have gone to the elite institutions of the country won’t be able to name the eight states and their capitals, let alone knowing about the local people and their culture. It won’t be wrong to say that there is a certain bias against the people of this region that often results in prejudice and wrong perceptions. What is even more saddening is to see the kind of efforts that have been made to connect with people from this region.

Mainland and Beyond Chicken’s Neck

For anyone who has grown up in North East, there were a few terms that are part of the common discourse ‘Mainland India’ and ‘Step Motherly Treatment’. While the region which is connected by a mere 30-kilometer corridor near Siliguri known as the Chicken’s Neck, either side of this corridor seems like two different worlds. With more than 98% of the region’s boundaries shared with foreign nations little efforts were made to overcome the feeling of alienation that people have. Poor infrastructure, minuscule investments, lack of job opportunities meant that this region became the hotbed of insurgency and secession. Little was done to stall this besides sending in the armed forces and developing erroneous notions about people. This meant that the people of this region never found themselves fully accepted in the greater Indian society.There is no better way to understand these sentiments than to look back at the events around the Sino-India War of 1962 where the region was left alone to fend for itself in the midst of Chinese aggression. It is alleged that the then Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru made a radio broadcast saying “My heart goes out to the people of Assam” in what was seen as a betrayal of the region when they were faced with the toughest event as a part of the Indian Union. This instance has been cited as the greatest examples of step-motherly treatment that this region faces from the mainland nation.

They Aren’t ‘Pirated Chinese’

There are numerous stories of how people from the North East often need to face derogatory comments in the mainland especially in the states of North India. From being asked to produce their passports at airports to being called names the list of prejudice is endless. Some find it hard renting rooms given the amount of misinformation that goes on about their ‘lifestyle’ and ‘food habits’. A young student in Delhi University was once asked by one of his teachers which place he came from, he replied Imphal. This followed the next question ‘which country’? And the witty guy opened his diary and pointed the state of Manipur on India’s map much to the embarrassment of the teacher. Once the class was over he told his classmates he was no ‘Pirated Chinese’ and as Indian as any of them. While one may dismiss this as a one-off incident, ask any North Easterner and he/she would say it is a part of his daily life in most parts of India.It isn’t that the government or other stake holders haven’t made efforts to bridge this gap but with little success. Why so? Because fundamentally all these efforts had one thing in common, they looked at people from this region as ‘aliens’ who needed to be handled in a special manner! From asking universities to include North East studies in academics to bringing ‘special’ laws to deal with cases of crime against people from this region these efforts only created the notion of ‘Us’ and ‘Them’. What if no such efforts we made and people from this region were accepted as much Indians as someone from Maharashtra, UP or Haryana. Perhaps there would be no reasons to pen this piece.