The killing of 24-year-old student Anjel Chakma in Dehradun has forced India to confront an uncomfortable truth it has long avoided: racism exists within its borders, and it kills. Chakma, who was from Tripura in India’s Northeast region, was attacked in December after he and his younger brother were allegedly subjected to racial abuse while shopping for groceries. Seventeen days later, Chakma died from his injuries.

According to his brother, the assault began with racial slurs that framed the two as outsiders. The situation escalated quickly. His brother was struck with a metal object, while Chakma was stabbed in the head and back. The violence was sudden, brutal and devastating. For many Northeastern Indians, however, it was also painfully familiar.

Chakma’s death was not an isolated act of violence. It was the culmination of everyday racial hostility that Northeastern Indians face across the country, especially in mainland cities where their appearance, accents and cultures are marked as “foreign.” What happened in Dehradun reflects a broader pattern of racialization that India continues to deny.

A pattern, not an outlier

For many from the Northeast, a region with distinct ethnicities, cultures, languages and physical features that often differ sharply from those of Mainland Indians, daily experiences of name-calling, mocking of physical features and assumptions of being “foreign” or “outsiders” create a sense that Mainland Indian spaces aren’t fully welcoming to them. 

These acts are often dismissed as ignorance or prejudice, but their persistence reveals something deeper. Racism in India is not accidental; it is structural.

Chakma’s death is one among several high-profile tragedies. In 2014, Nido Tania, a 19-year-old student from Arunachal Pradesh, was beaten to death in Delhi in 2014 following an altercation in which he was targeted with racist abuse. His death sparked protests and national outrage. Activists demanded legal reforms and recognition of racism as a serious crime.

Yet more than ten years later, little has changed. Chakma’s killing shows that the promises made after Tania’s death were never fulfilled. The same demands for accountability, legal recognition and dignity are being raised again, underscoring how slow and superficial India’s response has been.

Law, identity and the limits of “unity in diversity”

India’s Constitution guarantees equality before the law and celebrates the country’s diversity. In practice, however, there is no national law that explicitly recognizes racial discrimination or racially motivated violence as distinct offenses, unlike caste or gender. Hate speech provisions exist, but they are vague and rarely applied in ways that reflect the lived experiences of racialized communities.

After Chakma’s murder, student groups and civil liberties organizations have filed a public interest litigation seeking hate-crime guidelines and urging the courts to recognize racially motivated violence as a discrete constitutional wrong. Even the National Commission for Scheduled Tribes has intervened, pushing police to treat the incident with urgency. 

The debate has revealed two disturbing tendencies: first, official reluctance to acknowledge racism as a motive, even when victims and their communities say it plainly; second, a cultural denial that racism, structurally embedded and socially normalized, exists within Indian society’s own borders. 

Police in the Chakma case have publicly stated that no racial motive has been established so far, claiming that there is a lack of clear evidence in the first incident report (FIR) rather than the lived testimony of the victim’s brother. 

Not an isolated experience: racism beyond the northeast

While Chakma’s death has once again brought to light the violence that people from India’s Northeast face because of their ethnic and racial background, it’s important to remember that this pattern is not limited to one community.

African students, too, have faced similar challenges; in particular, they have reported that they faced racial profiling and harassment in Indian cities.

The similarities are striking. In both cases, visible difference becomes a marker of exclusion. Skin color, facial features and cultural unfamiliarity are used to justify dehumanization. These experiences reveal that racism in India operates through a hierarchy of belonging, where citizenship alone does not guarantee safety or dignity.

Addressing racism against Northeastern Indians, therefore, cannot happen in isolation. It requires confronting how race, identity and power function more broadly within Indian society.

Why an antiracism law matters

The absence of a clear legal framework for racial discrimination has serious consequences. When racial motives are downplayed, victims and their families are made to feel that their experiences are insignificant. Prosecutors are left with blunt legal tools that fail to capture the specific harm caused by racial violence. Society, meanwhile, receives the message that racism is not serious enough to warrant dedicated protections.

A specific antiracism law would not be symbolic. It would acknowledge patterns of harm and provide law enforcement and courts with clearer standards for investigation and accountability. Just as India has developed legal frameworks to address caste-based and gender-based discrimination, it must do the same for race and ethnicity.

Beyond law: toward cultural inclusion

Legal reform alone will not end racism. Chakma’s death also exposes a cultural failure to recognize Northeastern Indians as equal participants in the national community. While the region is formally part of India, its people are often treated as peripheral, exotic or foreign.

This exclusion is reinforced through media representation, political rhetoric and everyday social interactions. Jokes that reduce people to stereotypes create an environment in which violence becomes easier to justify. Over time, this normalizes the idea that some lives matter less than others.

Education, responsible media coverage and political leadership are essential to reshaping these narratives. Equality must extend beyond constitutional language into social reality.

Chakma’s killing is a test of India’s commitment to its own ideals. If unity in diversity is to mean anything, it must include legal recognition of racism and a willingness to confront uncomfortable truths about who is considered fully Indian.

Justice in this case is not only about punishing those responsible. It is about acknowledging systemic blind spots and ensuring that no one is made to feel like an outsider in their own country. Without that reckoning, tragedies like Chakma’s will continue to repeat themselves.

[Kaitlyn Diana edited this piece.]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy.

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