Nido Tania and Anjel Chakma were not killed by geography alone 

About twenty-five years ago, in Kanpur, a well-dressed man in business suit—tie in place, shoe polished, confidence intact—heard that I was from Assam and smiled indulgently. “So,” he asked, with genuine warmth, “how do you like our India? And how did you come to our country?”

I was fresh out of college. Youth comes with reflexes before it acquires caution. My first instinct was physical and primitive: to punch him on his face. Humiliation has a way of triggering anger before common sense arrives. Luckily for me, reason did intervene immediately. Uttar Pradesh is not the best place for a young “outsider” to act on impulse. Consequences there can be swift and unforgiving. So, I did what millions of Indians, absorbed in their daily drills, learn to do. I smiled politely and replied, “Your country is great, sir. I came by a direct flight.”

He later made sure I was dropped safely at the airport for my flight back to Delhi. In his own way, he believed in Atithi Devo Bhava.

Over the next two and a half decades, that man returned to my thoughts occasionally. I sometimes wondered whether he ever discovered that Assam was not a foreign land, that the map of India did not end where his familiarity did. He resurfaced in my memory again last week, when I read about a young MBA student from Tripura who was killed in Dehradun after allegedly being racially abused.

At first glance, the story appeared grimly familiar. Another episode of India’s uglier instincts surfacing. Another young man from the Northeast reduced to slurs, mocked for his eyes and face, attacked for looking different. For people from the region, such abuse is not episodic. It is routine. It happens in classrooms, markets, rented homes, and public transport. Often, it is dismissed as ignorance. Sometimes as harmless banter. Occasionally, as in this case, it turns lethal.

But the Dehradun case unsettled me for a deeper reason. The accused were not just young men from North India whose idea of India begins and ends somewhere near the Yamuna. One of the accused, now absconding, is from Nepal. Another is from Manipur, a Northeastern state. His surname suggests indigenous hill or Terai ancestry, often linked to Tibeto-Burman or mixed origins. And yet, together, this group participated in a racial assault against someone who apparently did not look like them.

This is where the story stops being simple and becomes disturbing.

If racism were merely about geography or ignorance, this alignment would not make sense. If it were only about North versus Northeast, insider versus outsider, this case would collapse under its own contradictions. So what triggers such incidents that end in violent and tragic consequences?

The narrative pattern, unfortunately, is not new. We have seen it before. Remember Nido Tania? It remains one of India’s starkest reminders of how casual racism can turn fatal. In January 2014, Nido, a 19-year-old student from Arunachal Pradesh, was assaulted in broad daylight in a South Delhi market after being mocked for his hair and appearance. Nido died the next day from his injuries. 

The killing triggered nationwide outrage, exposed deep prejudice against people from the Northeast, and led to the formation of the Bezbaruah Committee, whose recommendations pushed the state to formally recognise and address racial discrimination within India.

And then, gradually, the country moved on.

A decade later, the setting has changed, but the script remains familiar. Anjel Chakma was 24. His father served in the Border Security Force. Like countless middle-class Indian families, his parents believed education was the great equaliser. An MBA degree was not just a qualification. It was a passport to dignity, security and upward mobility. Anjel went to Dehradun with those hopes. He was nearing the end of that journey when an ordinary evening turned fatal.

On December 9, 2025, Anjel stepped out with his younger brother Michael in Selaqui, an industrial suburb of Dehradun. They were headed to a local market. A group of youths, allegedly drunk, began hurling slurs—“Chinese”, “Chinki”, “Momos”—mocking their faces, their appearance, their otherness. Anjel protested. He asserted the simplest truth: “We are Indians, not Chinese.” That assertion was responded to with violence. Anjel was stabbed. On December 26, he succumbed to his injuries.

The police have since arrested three accused. Two minors have been sent to a juvenile facility. One accused remains at large. The case has moved swiftly into national politics. Opposition leaders have called it a hate crime. Civil society groups have demanded legal recognition of racial violence against Northeastern Indians. A petition has reached the Supreme Court seeking stricter laws and institutional safeguards.

But here is the uncomfortable reality we must confront. India does not suffer from a shortage of laws. What it suffers from is a shortage of social introspection. Laws can punish acts. They cannot rewire instincts. They cannot unteach prejudice learned casually at home, in school, among friends, or on the street.

Racism in India is not confined to one region. It is democratically distributed. In North India, every South Indian becomes a “Madrasi”. In South India, every North Indian is casually reduced to “Punjabi”. Biharis have been abused, assaulted and expelled across states. In the Northeast itself, Bengalis and Biharis face resentment and exclusion. No region can claim moral superiority. Every part of India is hostile to someone else.

Not all such hostility ends in murder. But that does not make it harmless. Honour killings are hate crimes. When housing societies refuse to rent to single men, single women or certain religious groups, that is also hate crime. Every humiliation inflicted for being physically, culturally or socially different from the majority belongs to the same moral universe. These crimes often go uncategorised because we normalise them. Only the victims and perpetrators change names.

Yes, every perpetrator must be punished. Yes, laws must be strengthened and, more importantly, implemented without hesitation. But punishment alone will not dismantle prejudice. That work begins far earlier and far closer to home. It begins inside families, in what children hear being said casually. It continues in schools, in peer groups, in neighbourhoods. It is slow, uncomfortable work. It does not lend itself to prime-time television.

There are signs of change, particularly for the Northeast. Social media has given the region visibility. OTT platforms and Hindi films have discovered its stories. Food, music and travel from the region circulate widely online. The idea that the Northeast is part of India is now established, at least in digital spaces. Perhaps the next step must be less cosmetic and more foundational: integrating the social history of the region into school textbooks, not as an appendix, but as part of the national narrative. Political attention has been given. It now needs institutional depth.

When I think back to that encounter in Kanpur, I realise something else. One must choose one’s battles carefully. No racial abuser is transformed by confrontation on the street, especially when emboldened by numbers. Their ignorance does not deserve your life. Their worldview has no bearing on your eventual journey. Life is too precious to be wagered on correcting someone else’s stupidity.

Even if every accused in Dehradun were punished to the fullest extent of the law, Anjel Chakma would not return. A bright young man, carrying ambition, education and possibility, is already lost. That loss cannot be legislated away. It can only be prevented by a country willing to look honestly at itself and stay with that discomfort long after the headlines fade.