Refugees in their own country....

The images of my fellow north-east people in Bangalore railway station in my screen made me shudder, and the voice of the newscaster keep repeating that all those people clamouring for a tiny little space inside the already packed Assam bound train are running away from an ‘unknown enemy’ when she didn’t use the word ‘rumours’.

The image brought me to tears, but the words used by the newscaster made me angry.  The more appropriate words would have been unwanted, failed, discriminated, abused, exploited, prejudiced, despised, refugees in their own country!

Can 30000 people who had already left the southern cities of India for their home in the north-east be such fools to run away as soon as they heard some random stupid rumours?  Are they saying that these people are not able to assess their own situation and their own security taking in to account the attitude of the police and the people in authority?

Have their lives in mainland India has ever been secure, equal and devoid of discrimination that they would need a rumour to leave it?  The attitude and treatment of the police and the people in authorities towards the north-east has never been free of prejudice.  We have been always discriminated and every move we made, every piece of cloth we wear, every parts of our body are judged, commented, whistled, hooted, and mocked every single day.

Or maybe there is more than just a rumour, if not a direct threat?  How about a group of people, who had thrown up their hands and given up, because of the constant discrimination they faced, and are waiting for a trigger to go home, even before the rumour spread?

The congress government at the central has kept ‘assuring’ that they would trace the source of the rumours and take stern action.  Why not start with the illegal Bangladeshis immigrants who have occupied the indigenous tribal land in Assam?  What did/does the central government said about them? Not a single word!