Vijay Nagar assault: People from Northeast continue to bear the brunt of ‘culinary differences'

Indian Express

2 days ago

We grew up in an India that celebrated unity in cultural diversity. Besides different clothing and cultural practices, each region of India has its unique culinary flavours, cooking styles, spices, ingredients and tastes. However, this diversity often becomes a means of social exclusion.
The recent incident from Vijay Nagar in Northwest Delhi — a shop called the 'North East Shop' was vandalised by a mob on suspicion of selling beef — illustrates how food often becomes a tool to assert and impose cultural hegemony. The shopkeeper was beaten up, but the police, instead of taking action against the violent mob, sent a sample of the meat for testing to determine whether it was beef. Northeast Indian people have been at the receiving end of such attacks for years.
The Vijay Nagar case brings back memories of the racist killing of Nido Tania in 2014. Tania, a 20-year-old from Arunachal Pradesh, was murdered in an allegedly racist attack in Delhi's Lajpat Nagar area. His only crime was his 'difference'. The otherisation of Northeast Indians begins with physical features, but it extends to their cultural practices.
It is very difficult for people from the Northeast region to find accommodation in metropolitan cities like New Delhi. One of the primary deterrents is the prevailing perception of their food culture. Their foods are marked as 'impure', 'dirty' and 'smelly'. Consequently, they are often forced to live in segregated localities.
Spaces like Humayunpur and Vijay Nagar are relatively safer and allow them to express and practise their culture more freely. But attacks like the latest one have the potential to make even these spaces unsafe.
Films like Axone (2019) depict how cooking specific dishes like axone (a fermented soybean product that has a strong smell) can cause trouble for Northeast tenants. In 2007, the Delhi Police brought out a booklet highlighting how migrant food habits could foment civic order issues. Fermented food, especially, was treated as a law-and-order issue.
Even after being otherised for their food practices, they carry the burden of being assimilated — as if it is their responsibility to soothe mainstream society's cultural anxieties. Both casteism and racism work together to make them feel like aliens.
Moreover, Northeastern foods — rarely considered 'Indian' — are categorised as 'tribal' or 'ethnic' and are ignored in public functions, social ceremonies, and ritualistic celebrations. They are also often missing from the menus of hostels and canteens of central universities. They are only available in spaces that are earmarked as 'Northeast Hostel', 'Northeast Dhaba', etc.
Policymakers in recent years have tried to include Northeast people in the mainstream imagination. There has been an increasing focus on the region's history and culture, including the revision of syllabi. But can we really talk about inclusivity if we keep demeaning and attacking the region's food and cultural habits? Incidents like what happened in Vijay Nagar only reinforce the existing racism in India. They instil fear in the minds of people selling and buying food items that are seen as 'different'. It ruins any and all efforts to make India inclusive.
The writer teaches Sociology at the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT), Guwahati