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ABSTRACT
Contemporary India has witnessed a rise in racism discourse, central to which are people from North-East and Himalayan regions, collectively referred to as ‘Northeasterns’. This has recentred ‘race’ and racism as being a theoretical-political problem of contemporary India itself. However, existing literature shows that there is stark under-theorisation of ‘race’ and racism in Indian context. Drawing from ethnographic research and applying the racialization approach, this paper argues that ‘race’ in India is a postcolonial-neoliberal construct, whereby colonial ‘Mongoloid’ is reconstructed into neoliberal ‘Northeastern’, such that ‘race’ in India acts as a layered mode of constructing identity and difference. It further argues that the ‘Northeastern’ category emerges as a result of exclusion from the ‘Indian’ category, which itself is racialized along Hinduised-Aryanised lines, such that racism is a product of a postcolonial centre-periphery power-relation between India and its North-East; thereby making way for critical ‘race’ scholarship in the Indian context.
Acknowledgments
I thank my supervisors, Prof. Alice Bloch and Dr James Rhodes for their constant intellectual and moral support. I thank Dr Sunil Pradhan and Dr Rashida Bibi for the informal feedback and the anonymous peer reviewers for all the valuable comments and insights on this paper. I am thankful to all the participants in Delhi, without whom this paper would have been impossible.
Disclosure statement
The author declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
Notes
1. This paper uses the term ‘race’ and ‘Northeastern’ within quotation marks to imply their socially constructed nature rather than denote their ontologically fixed status.
2. Rai, ‘Beyond The Language Of Colour, Through The Lens Of “Race”.’
3. Parameswaran and Cardoza, ‘Melanin On The Margins: Advertising And The Cultural Politics Of Fair/Light/White Beauty In India.’
4. Baber, ‘“Race”, Religion And Riots: The “Racialization” Of Communal Identity And Conflict In India.’
5. Paola, Maira, and Winant. (Citation2019). Global Raciality: Empire, Postcoloniality And Decoloniality.
6. Baruah, Beyond Counter-Insurgency: Breaking The Impasse In North-East India.
7. Wouters and Subba, ‘The “Indian Face,” India’s Northeast, And “The Idea Of India”.’
8. The Indian Himalayan Region (IHR) classified by the Government of India includes the states of Uttarakhand, Himachal Pradesh, Jammu and Kashmir like Ladakh, hill districts of West Bengal like Darjeeling, and the North-Eastern states (Smith and Gergan Citation2015). This paper uses the term Himalayan informally to refer to individuals from these regions who are not from the North-East but are racialized as ‘Northeasterns’ in Delhi.
9. McDuie-Ra, Debating Race In Contemporary India.
10. Haokip, ‘From “Chinky” To “Coronavirus”: Racism Against Northeast Indians During The Covid-19 Pandemic.’
11. Bora, ‘The Problem Without A Name: Comments On Cultural Difference (Racism) In India.’
12. Syiemlieh, On The Edge Of Empire: Four British Plans For North East India, 1941–1947.
13. Mackenzie, The North-East Frontier Of India.
14. Haokip, ‘Conceptualising Northeast India: A Discursive Analysis On Diversity.’
15. Kikon, ‘From Loincloth Suits To Battle Greens.’
16. Bora, ‘Between The Human, The Citizen And The Tribal.’
17. Baruah, In The Name Of The Nation: India And Its North-East. Baruah conceptualises the power dynamics between India and its North-East through the centre-periphery metaphor.
18. Choudhury, ‘State In India’s North-East: Where Is The State?.’
19. Baruah, ‘Nationalizing Space: Cosmetic Federalism And The Politics Of Development In Northeast India’.
20. Haokip, India’s Look East Policy And The Northeast.
21. McDuie-Ra, ‘Beyond The “Exclusionary City”: North-East Migrants In Neo-Liberal Delhi.’
22. Alexander and Knowles, Making Race Matter.
23. Rattansi, Racism: A Very Short Introduction.
24. The Human Genome Project that started in the 1990s also concluded its findings in 2000 stating that the biological basis of ‘race’ is reductive and pseudo-scientific (McCann-Mortimer Citation2004).
25. Balibar, ‘Is There A “Neo-Racism”?.’
26. While some may argue that there exist pre-colonial conceptions of ‘race’ in India such as the Kiratas of classic Sanskrit literature, this is a debatable hypothesis. Since ‘race’ as a modern concept not only involves social categorisation through biological and/or cultural signification, but more importantly is characterised by its political function of management and governance of these social categories to maintain unequal power-relations, in the context of India, such a socio-political conception of ‘race’ was indeed introduced by the British colonial regime. However, if there does exist a pre-colonial conception of ‘race’, which may have racialized socio-political implications in modern, postcolonial context, then the racialization approach would be a useful way to examine this, which further highlights the need theorise the complexities and layers of ‘race’ and racism in the Indian context.
27. Mahmud, ‘Colonialism and modern constructions of race’.
28. Thapar, ‘The Theory Of Aryan Race And India: History And Politics’, 6.
29. Risley, The People Of India. Risley’s racial classification is a classic example of colonial racialization.
30. Beteille, Andre. ‘Race and descent as social categories in India’, 454.
31. Warner, ‘American Caste And Class.’
32. Myrdal, An American Dilemma: The Negro Problem And Modern Democracy.
33. Cox, Caste, Class, And Race.
34. Gupta, ‘Caste, Race, Politics.’
35. Natrajan and Greenough, Against Stigma: Studies In Caste, Race And Justice Since Durban.
36. Beteille, ‘Race And Caste.’
37. Omvedt, ‘Hindutva And Ethnicity.’
38. Das, ‘“Is Caste Race?” Discourses Of Racial Indianization.’
39. McDuie-Ra, Northeast Migrants In Delhi: Race, Refuge And Retail.
40. See above 7.
41. Smith and Gergan, ‘The Diaspora Within: Himalayan Youth, Education-Driven Migration, And Future Aspirations In India.’
42. See above 10.
43. Golash-Boza, ‘A Critical And Comprehensive Sociological Theory Of Race And Racism.’
44. Garner, Racisms.
45. Murji and Solomos, Racialization: Studies In Theory And Practice.
46. Hall, Race, The Floating Signifier. Hall’s conceptualisation of ‘race’ as a floating signifier has been widely used in contemporary critical ‘race’ scholarship.
47. Goldberg, Racist Culture.
48. See above 43.
49. Gans, ‘Racialization And Racialization Research.’
50. Fanon, Black Skin, White Masks.
51. Banton, The Idea Of Race.
52. Omi and Winant, Racial Formation In The United States: From The 1960S To The 1990S.
53. Bora, ‘The Problem Without A Name: Comments On Cultural Difference (Racism) In India.’ Bora advocates Omi and Winant’s concept of ‘racial formation’ to examine racism in India, which is very similar to racialization.
54. Anthias and Yuval-Davis, Racialized Boundaries: Race, Nation, Gender, Colour And Class And The Anti-Racist Struggle.
55. Phillips, ‘Institutional Racism And Ethnic Inequalities: An Expanded Multilevel Framework.’
56. Song, ‘Challenging A Culture Of Racial Equivalence.’
57. Barot and Bird, ‘Racialization: The Genealogy And Critique Of A Concept.’
58. Goldberg, Sites Of Race.
59. Wouters and Subba, “The ‘Indian Face,’ India’s Northeast, And ‘The Idea Of India’.
60. Garner (Citation2010). Racisms: An Introduction.
61. See above 39.
62. Saxena, Kashika. (Citation2012). ‘Call A Northeastern “Chinki”, Be Jailed For 5 Yrs – Times Of India’. The Times Of India. https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/life-style/spotlight/Call-a-Northeastern-Chinki-be-jailed-for-5-yrs/articleshow/13,848,316.cms.
63. Hall, Race, The Floating Signifier.
64. See above 47.
65. Anthias, ‘Race And Class Revisited – Conceptualising Race And Racisms.’
66. McBeth, ‘Layered Identity Systems In Western Oklahoma Indian Communities.’
67. See above 7.
68. Anderson, Imagined Communities.
69. See above 25.
70. Ramaswamy, ‘Visualising India’s Geo-Body: Globes, Maps, Bodyscapes.’ Through the discursive map of India, Ramaswamy vividly explains the Hinduisation-Aryanisation of India as an imagined nation.
71. Jayal, Citizenship And Its Discontents.
72. Mignolo, ‘DELINKING.’
73. Baruah, In The Name Of The Nation: India And Its North-East.
74. See above 39.
75. See above 7.
76. See above 39.
77. Bora, ‘The Problem Without A Name: Comments On Cultural Difference (Racism) In India.’
78. Balibar, “Is There A ‘Neo-Racism?’
79. Bonnett, “Multiple racializations in a multiply modern world.
80. Bacchetta et al. (Citation2019). Global Raciality: Empire, Postcoloniality And Decoloniality.
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Rohini Rai
Rohini Rai is a sociologist who recently completed her PhD research titled, ‘Northeastern Delhi: Race, space and identity in a postcolonial, globalising city’ from the Department of Sociology at the University of Manchester, UK. She is currently a postdoctoral researcher at the Centre on Dynamics of Ethnicity at Manchester. Her research and teaching expertise include ‘race’, ethnicity and migration, global racisms, postcolonial theory, decoloniality and urban sociology. She is also an urban ethnographer and specialises in qualitative research methods.