NEW DELHI : The third-year economics student of Delhi University is clearly stumped at the question. "The capital of Arunachal Pradesh?" she asks, head arched in deep concentration. "Err..Nagaland?"
Further afield at the crowded South Extension market, the answers are not any brighter. Mizoram, Manipur, Imphal, Itanagar, Meghalaya, all seem to coalesce into a vague blur for the shoppers at the capital's upmarket South Extension market. Two youngsters argue over Hyderabad being the capital of Arunachal Pradesh. And a software engineer from Patna admits candidly that the northeast has befuddled him since he was a kid. But he is game to hazard a guess. "Aizawl is in Manipur." So where is Imphal then? "Mizoram," he says simply.
The techie has company —Delhi Police had more or less the same idea about Aizawl when it had reported the death of a girl yesterday from "Aizawl, Manipur". The apology issued later by them was even more sensitively phrased: "Please read Manipur as Mizoram."
Most "mainland" Indians don't even pretend to be clued into the geography of the Northeast. For decades, the only brush most have with the northeast is in school geography books or general knowledge tomes. An online survey done two years ago by a collective called North East Image Managers found that 87% of corporates surveyed couldn't name the seven sisters.
Siddharth Kashyap, an Assamese media professional, recalls the commiserations at work after the royal massacre in Nepal in 2001. "Bahut bura hua aapke desh mein," one said. "I have given up now really. Why blame Delhi Police? I see this ignorance as much in a Gurgaon condo as on the streets."
Binalakshmi Nepram, a vocal activist for the northeast in Delhi, has been fighting for greater inclusion of the Northeast in school curriculums. "There is a saying in Bengali that the fish starts rotting at the head. There is rank ignorance at the highest levels of our administration about the northeast. I know every single thing about the Rashtrakutas, Cholas and Chalukyas, so why doesn't the rest of India about the history of the Northeast?"
Nothing one learns in school does much to dispel the stereotype of slant-eyed-insurgent-types-who-eat-dog-meat. Leave aside states or state capitals, distinct tribes, ethnic dresses, food habits would all be consigned to one undistinguishable mass in the minds of many "mainland" folks.
Retired bureaucrat C A Balagopal, who wrote about his days as a young probationer in Manipur in 'On A Clear Day You Can See India', says that: "The Northeast is simply not a part of the national narrative. And at the root of the problem is just one thing—they simply don't look like 'us'."
In the 1990s, film writer Utpal Borpujari recalls in his blogs, Bhabendra Nath Saikia, Jahnu Barua (both Assamese) and Aribam Syam Sharma (who is from Manipur) boycotted a joint press conference at an international film festival because they were amorphously clubbed as 'Northeast directors'. In the decade since, not much appears to have changed despite the increasing number of northeasterners living and working in other parts of the country.
Robin Hibu, an Arunachali who is a nodal officer for the Northeast people in Delhi Police, says he can't blame ordinary people for being blank about the zone. "In my own workplace, there is apathy in the lower levels to people from the Northeast. There is hardly anything about it in school syllabus. And the lack of development in the northeast stops people from travelling to these states. But they need to be exposed to their diversity," says Hibu.
David Boyes, who runs a forum against racism, says that he has no hopes of a quick radical change. "It isn't just about knowledge, it is about attitudes. People don't really want to learn about the northeast," he says.