Nation-wide legislation against racial hate
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“We are not Chinese, we are Indians. Tell me, what certificate do we need to produce to prove our Indian identity?” – This is what the two sons of an Indian serving as a head constable in the Border Security Force pathetically asked the killers who came to beat them up over racial hate. In Dehradun, the capital of Uttarakhand, the showpiece state of the Sangh Parivar - which is moving towards a Hindutva order by passing a uniform civil code, banning polygamy and religious conversio - an MBA student from Tripura named Angel Chakma was lynched by a mob claiming that he had foreign facial features. In the evening, Angel, a Chakma from Tripura, an MBA student at Jignasa University in Dehradun, and his brother Michael, who is studying at Uttaranchal University, had gone out to buy food items at a grocery store. A few people surrounded them on the outskirts of the city and attacked them, saying they looked Chinese. The attackers did not accept Angel's insistence that they were Indians. They took revenge by taking out a knife and slashing his neck and stabbing him in the stomach. Michael suffered serious head injuries. Angel died in the early hours of Saturday after battling for life in the hospital for two weeks. This has led to protests among the influential Chakma community in Tripura. Led by the Youth Tipra Federation (YTF) and the Gotra Adivasi Students Federation, they are demanding that the culprits be caught and punished and that strong laws be brought to prevent similar incidents from happening again.
It has been only a week since the lynching of a Chhattisgarh resident, Ramnarayan Baghel, by the rabid mobs in Palakkad, Kerala, after they asked him, "Are you Bangladeshi?" at Attappallam. At about the same time, a genocide is taking place in Uttarakhand, where hatred is burning. It is said that the attackers of the Chakma brothers were drunk. This reason is also being raised in the Palakkad incident. However, that suspicion only increases the seriousness of the issue. If it is that even when drunk people harbour hatred of a religion, a foreigner, and beat them up, it shows how much these embers of hatred burn in the subconscious mind of people. The latest evidence from the south and north that racial hatred in the name of religion, caste, or region in the country is driving people to frenzy and lynchings has been seen in Palakkad and Dehradun. It is also worth noting that two of the six people charged by the police in the incident are minors. There is no doubt that mob lynching is the result of the cadres adopting it as they go along thelines of the rulers and political leadership who engage in deliberate moves to instill and ignite racial hatred. When a hate campaign is constantly waged against a group, its followers and others come to the conclusion that their lives are worthless and that anyone can exploit them. In all these incidents, we see that Bangladeshi, Chinese, and Pakistani suspicions of killing anyone and everyone are justified. The mob violence that took place during this Christmas season proves that Muslims and Christians have become victims of this racial hatred in India on the basis of religion.
The murder of Angel reveals the depth of the ethnic hatred faced by the people of the northeastern states. The tribals say that people from the northeastern region are being abused outside the state by being called Chinese. Tipra Motha Party President Pradyut Bikram Manikya Debbarma reminds the racists that it was the courageous resistance of our patriotic generations that kept China from invading our country. They allege that racial discrimination and hatred against people from the northeastern region have become a regular occurrence in North India. They lament that when North Indians come to their region, the natives there are used to treating them as their own countrymen and welcoming them, but what they get in return is hatred and murder. Chakma organizations demand that this is an attempt to divide the people of the country and that justice be done to counter it. How can one expect justice from states like Uttarakhand, where BJP leaders and ministers, including the Chief Minister, are filling the streets with racist propaganda, hateful statements, and calls? The police, who have registered a case in the incident, are not ready to add sections of racial hatred. The college students who came out to protest the Angel incident have demanded that legislation be made at the national level against atrocities in the name of racial hatred. The situation in the country is such that this very relevant demand must emerge as a mass movement
