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Why #NortheastMatters Does Not Matter

Students, academics, professionals, politicians and activists across the eight northeastern States—Arunachal Pradesh, Assam, Manipur, Meghalaya, Mizoram, Nagaland, Sikkim and Tripura—bombarded the microblogging site with #AchapterforNE and #NortheastMatters campaigns from 6–8 pm.

The campaign tagging @PMOIndia, @HMOIndia, @MEAIndia, @ncert, @cbseindia, @PIBHRD and @DrRPNishank was aimed at pushing the National Council of Educational Research and Training (NCERT) to include a comprehensive chapter on the Northeast.

Twitter storm seeks chapter on northeast in NCERT books, The Hindu, 4 June 2021

A majority of people in mainland India will not be able to pin down the parts of India on this map (Credit: A screengrab from Snazzy Maps)

5 June, Imphal: In yet another episodic reaction to the Indian insensibility towards the so-called Northeast, Twitter saw a drama last evening with a number of people tweeting and hashtagging their tweets with #AchapterforNE and #NortheastMatters. Aimed at drawing the attention of New Delhi, the concerned Twitterati were appealing for including a mandatory chapter on the Northeast region in NCERT textbooks.

THE BOOK BY ITS COVER From 2018 onwards, the National Council of Educational Research and Training (NCERT) has been the only agency to publish school textbooks. Known for its affordable textbooks, the Council also drafts the National Curriculum Framework (NCF) as “a guideline for syllabus, textbooks, and teaching practices for the schools in India”. However, the NCF was severely criticised when it was introduced last time in 2005 for “lacking a firm commitment against a sectarian and narrow vision of education”.

Apparently, petty politics has been a challenge for the NCERT as it has an inclination to tread on the heels of the power that be as much as to publish contentious contents. Yet their latest involvement is somehow different. Unlike the usual controversies of historical revisionism or deletion of certain parts and passages from a textbook that directly involve them, this time, it is about an issue which is not entirely its liability.

In fact, it is not the fault of NCERT but that of India as a nation. It is about the Indian consciousness that has never gained the power, even after more than seven decades of independence, to imagine its communities, for everyone to consider what India is and who Indians are. Simply put, the image of the people of the region is not yet registered in the national consciousness of India and that is the issue today.

BY THE BOOK Once in school, I came across a proverb in one of the NCERT textbooks: out of sight, out of mind, which implies: “if you do not see someone or something frequently, you will forget about it”. Geographically disconnected, historically unrelated, culturally unattached, it is no surprise then that there are missing gaps between the aspirations of people living in different parts of the present-day India, which has also resulted in the inchoate Indian national consciousness.

It is India’s fault, to put it bluntly. It is loud and clear. So, the NCERT can hang loose for some time and wait for the signal from the decision-makers.

However, Indians in the region are willing to literally lose sleep over the issue. For these people, a chapter on the land and the people can teach racist Indians a lesson or two on who Indians are, what India is; while they are also hopeful that this will alleviate the issue of racism in the entire subcontinent; and hence the Twitter storm last evening.

[T]hose who are familiar with the region will know that it is, in the majority of the cases, the Assamese who would initiate a campaign such as #NortheastMatters.

In its report, The Hindu mentioned: “More than 25 students’ organisations across the Northeast lent their support to the campaign”. But for those who are familiar with the region, they will know that it is, in the majority of the cases, the Assamese who would initiate this kind of campaign. It is a convention because of Assam's overall proximity to India and you can identify them by their shrillest call that “we are also Indians” while they watch cricket and Bollywood. Coincidentally, Arunachal has also been in the picture in the last decade or so.

“If we try and educate people, only then, perhaps, racism against the Northeasterners will stop.” It was with this thought that Mayur Kaushik (of Assam and) president of the North East Student Union (NESU) in Vadodara, and its advisor Debonil Baruah decided to have what they call a ‘Twitter storm’

Northeastern students groups plan ‘Twitter storm’... The Print, 4 June 2021

Nearly 147 lakh #NortheastMatters tweets and 141 lakh #AChapterForNE tweets were posted in a span of two hours of the Twitter storm, tagging Prime Minister Narendra Modi, union Education Minister Ramesh Pokhriyal and Union MoS for Youth Affairs & Sports Kiren Rijiju.

Northeast India bombards Twitter, seeking chapter on NE in NCERT books, Arunachal Times, 4 June

The last time when there was such an outcry was following the death of Nido Tania, an Arunchali student and a son of Congress legislator, who was beaten to death in an alleged racial attack in Lajpat Nagar in the capital city in 2014. The latest round of online activism is following the arrest of a North Indian YouTuber, who had apparently called an Arunachali MLA, Ninong Ering and the people of Arunachal, Chinese last month.

Well, with Assam and Arunachal, there are two distinct states already. The point is that, first of all, it is problematic to homogenise a region by using a generic term like the Northeast. From my own experience, the natives are equally responsible for popularising this term and many of them are completely oblivious of the semantic implications. Any way, a section of the region are asserting their Indianness while appealing to mainland India to accept them as one of its own. And nothing can be more naïve than this.

AN OPEN BOOK In 2021, the literacy rate of the United States and France is 99%, Jordan 94%, and that of India, according to the National Statistical Office, is 77%. The figures give a correlation: the level of literacy does not have anything to do with racism. In no way a high literacy rate implies the presence of tolerance. Let's say the US is not a racist country yet the whole world know how it treats the Black people. You know where I am going with France and Jordan. If we go by different sources, regardless of the literacy rate, India is one of the least tolerant countries when it comes to racism.

Systemic racism needs more than just one chapter in a school textbook. It needs not only one textbook but, for that matter, also multiple volumes of books...and more importantly, a careful and thorough study of these books.

Of course, this is not to undermine the role of education, which has been foolproof in building tolerance and the ideas of humanity. In the words of educationists, it helps build new values and attitudes. The problem is in the implementation. Ideation is always different from execution, and in our context, recognition does not always guarantee affirmation. If education was to be taken as a metrics to reduce racism then it must specifically be in the study of tolerance/intolerance, misrepresentation, discrimination and the philosophy of equality.

The study of culture, geography and history has a propensity to glorify and romanticise, and it is usually done with all style and no substance, in a way that is analogical to tourists going to touristy places. And just as we have seen, at secondary and higher secondary school, how much information will the decision-makers include in the textbooks about how many people in the region? Manipur alone has more than 30 officially recognised ethnic groups. It is opening the doors for more pigeonholes. Here, the people behind #NortheastMatters must see the link between racism and stereotypes.

Besides, just consider the real-world story of this region that need to be studied for simple understanding of its people and their lives; for instance, with reference to the effects of legal problems arising from acts like the CAA and AFSPA. Both of these are comparatively a small section of larger issues such as citizenship and insurgency, yet it will take volumes and volumes of literature to explain as well understand the lives of the people because of this kind of legislation.

Saffronisation is another issue which the academia in India has been concerned about. To add insult to the injury, there has also been a rigorous process of Indianisation in the region. That is not the end. What about the languages that are spoken in the region? What about the Ahoms and Kangleipak? The list will go on unabated.

BALANCING THE BOOKS Human beings are different. Genders are different. We simply do not have the power, just like Indians cannot imagine their nationhood, to imagine the human community as one entity. It is just like humans have been programmed to be this way.

Activists, anthropologists, biologists and sociologists would say there is no ground on which we can be defined by our genetic classification. Some of them would go to the extent of saying we have the same blood, the same bone structure and can be traced back to a common ancestor. However, we are a speck of dust on a piece of flying rock (refer to the Pale Blue Dot). We are too small to imagine and see the big picture—too small that, in a country like Congo, two decades ago, the one who can eat you was considered superior. A decade earlier to the reported cases of cannibalism, closer home, the Nagas and Kukis were brutally killing each other, and the Meiteis and the Pangals had a brief encounter of self-annihilation. Often, xenophobia does acquire newer meanings that change from one era to another and from one place to another.

We are defined by our religion, our facial feature, the food we eat, the place we belong to. Often we are also defined by the proximity of supposed commonness. In other words, we are how different we are. The human mind is hardwired to distinguish group identity; and of course, a lack of awareness or even the very nature of conditioning gives rise to issues relating to racism and racialism. By the way, this same reason is also the cause that makes the abstract ideas of nationalism real.

The fact that many people who say we belong to one nation are just the same as many others who say all of us are brothers and sisters.

The only exit to a compartment of racism, at the end of the day, is through power structure. In the world of animals, the food chain dictates who lives or dies first; and for us, it is the politics...the politics of New Delhi to be precise. Overall, political power and economic supremacy define where we stand in this structure.

CLOSING THE BOOK So, eventually, the episodic reaction to any issue is no less than taking painkillers. The NCERT, if we go by its tweets, might listen to the decision-makers and come up with a new syllabus altogether, notwithstanding the fact that a pandemic has been raging on and a public curfew has been imposed across India. But painkillers can have severe side effects on one hand.

On the other, this Twitter storm reeks of juvenile enthusiasm with no clear-cut plans. Besides, one of the critical issues has been the saffronisation of education, of which the NCERT has also been equally blamed for, and perhaps it knows the complicity. And maybe it knows perfectly well that people can be made into a cultural product, and a cog in the machine called India. When it is clear that either ignorance or arrogance informs New Delhi about dealing with the local/native issues, with their sidekicks in the form of submissive state government under its thumb, there is little hope that we will get an amicable solution out of slacktivism.

The only satisfactory solution, as of now, is to get a hold on the political power and economic structure. People recognise us when we assert ourselves and that is only possible when we have, among other things, the agency and privilege of exerting soft power.

P.S.

One of the strengths of new media is its immediacy. A day after the two-hour storm, the NCERT tweeted:

1. Depiction of North East in NCERT’s Publication: A book on North East India - People, History and Culture has been brought out in 2016. @EduMinOfIndia @DrRPNishank @SanjayDhotreMP @ssrivastava66 @ap_behera @KVS_HQ @CommissionerNVS @cbseindia29 @niostwit
— NCERT (@ncert) June 5, 2021

And just a day before the No-Racism-With-One-Chapter-in-NCERT-Textbooks campaign, the ABVP had scripted a drama of its own:

Two girls from Manipur and Mizoram had been very fortunate to be hosted by so many people. Have the girls returned home are still being hosted by ABVP. https://t.co/XYrWXFTeYr
— Gogoideo গগৈদেও (@gogoideo) June 4, 2021