A real prejudice

in Bangalore,Richard Loitam,a 19-year-old Manipuri boy,was allegedly bludgeoned to death. Students from the Northeast have organised protests around the country and there is fear of reprisals against outsiders in northeastern states. As the political stakes rise,the minister of state for rural development,Agatha Sangma has also spoken up,saying that such discrimination was an unavoidable reality in Indian cities.

As public officials,Mukul and Agatha Sangma should know better than to weigh in with their generalisations about group discrimination before these cases have been investigated. Mukul Sangma is personally invested in this case,but that must not tempt him to assign motives before they are proved. Whether the victims are from the Northeast or anywhere else,the reason for their deaths should be established at the end of the inquiry,not assumed at the beginning.

The fact of differential treatment of migrants from the Northeast,though,is a point that could not be ground in enough. Thousands of students move to colleges in big Indian cities every year,because of the paucity of options at home. Universities should be the great cauldron of integration where diverse groups mix,where profitable social networks are forged. But by all accounts,students from the Northeast are still socially segregated,treated differently for looking different. The prejudice runs deep. Whether it is access to housing or protection by the police,migrants from the Northeast have it demonstrably harder. While legal protection is welcome,the only lasting solution is more contact. Migrants from the Northeast must come,in greater numbers,to work and study and live in these hubs of opportunity until their presence becomes as mundane as that of anyone else in this variegated nation. Personal experience is the best and only lasting way to bust a received idea about a group.