Where are you from? It sounds like an ordinary question. In the Northeast, however, it can sometimes carry a second question: Who are you? And behind that can lie a third: Do you really belong here?
We are from the Northeast, and Bengali is our mother tongue. Over the years, we have learned that identity here can be more complicated than the address written on an official document. One can be an Indian citizen who has lived, studied, worked and built relationships in the region for years. And yet find one’s linguistic identity interpreted as evidence of being an outsider.
From Itanagar to Aizawl, Bengalis can be found everywhere in the Northeast. They run small businesses, drive vehicles, teach in colleges and universities, and work in banks and insurance companies. Yet they remain on the peripheries. It is almost as if they must survive on the sidelines to avoid antagonising the majority there.
A powerful narrative has long persisted— that Bengali speakers in the Northeast, both Hindus and Muslims, are Bangladeshis. And almost every part of the region has, from time to time, witnessed violence against Bengalis.
The 19 August vandalism of statues of Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose and Swami Vivekananda in Shillong by activists of the Khasi Students’ Union (KSU) — during a rally demanding greater regulation for migrant workers, among other things — seems to be a continuation of this very trend.
Vehicles coming from Guwahati with Assam registration numbers were also targeted, but it would not be an exaggeration to say that, over the last four decades or so, Bengalis have borne the brunt of anti-non-tribal violence in Meghalaya more than any other community.
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How Bengalis became ‘outsiders’ in Shillong
The presence of the Bengali community in Shillong goes back to the colonial era, when the British made the town the administrative capital of Assam. Bengali babus were brought in to work as clerks and officers in the administration, while others taught in newly established schools and colleges and built businesses. In effect, Bengalis were the engines of Shillong’s growth.
During Partition, most of Sylhet, then part of Assam and home to a large Bengali population, went to East Pakistan. Many Bengalis fled to the Northeast as refugees escaping communal violence.
The initial dominance of Bengalis in the administration and other walks of life had created a wedge between the community and others even before independence. The influx of many more Bengalis after Partition further worsened this sentiment. This was despite the pivotal role Bengalis had played in establishing schools, colleges, tea gardens, government offices, banks and other institutions in various parts of the Northeast, including Shillong.
The 1979 riots against Bengalis in Shillong reportedly saw the exodus of about 20,000 Bengalis from the town. In 1987, the rape and murder of a pregnant woman, Gauri Dey, was among the many brutal incidents of violence against Bengalis for which there were no arrests and little public reaction.
Gradually, Bengalis started leaving Shillong after selling off their properties, while such random violence against the community became normalised. Over time, other non-tribal communities, such as Nepalis, Biharis and Assamese, also faced similar incidents in the hill station.
However, what differentiates Bengalis from other non-tribal communities in the region is the perception that all Bengalis are outsiders who have infiltrated the region. Even today, Bengalis, the largest non-tribal community in the Northeast, face bouts of violence across the region.
Several factors can be seen as contributing to this anti-Bengali sentiment: the influx of Muslim Bengalis from East Bengal into the char areas of Assam during the British period, the apparent dominance of Hindu Bengali babus in the colonial administration, and the alleged infiltration of Hindu and Muslim Bengalis after independence.
All of this has coalesced into an abiding suspicion of any Bengali speaker.
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Non-tribal communities matter too
Almost 80 years after independence, such a sentiment does little beyond creating a political binary of ‘outsider versus insider’. Bengalis do not dominate government jobs or businesses anywhere in the region, nor are they politically relevant in any of the states except Tripura. The National Register of Citizens (NRC) in Assam was supposed to settle the question of citizenship, at least within the state, but that closure didn’t come, despite crores being spent.
This othering has alienated many Bengalis from the region. Bengali-dominated places such as Agartala and Silchar have scores of senior citizens staying alone while their children have settled elsewhere. Silchar, in fact, became a refuge for middle-class Bengalis in the 1980s, when victims of anti-Bengali violence came in droves from Guwahati, Shillong, Imphal and Aizawl.
The category of the “outsider” is not necessarily static. Someone who arrived yesterday is not in the same position as a family that has lived in the region for three generations. A person who illegally crosses an international border cannot be equated with an Indian citizen whose family has lived in the Northeast for decades. A migrant worker recruited temporarily is not socially identical to a resident whose children and grandchildren were educated in the region. Yet all of these people are compressed into a single category, defined by the language they speak. Instead of asking, “Who is this person?” the social question becomes, “What language does this person speak?”
Not everyone who experiences such othering has the capacity to speak about it publicly. We can write this article because education has given us the social confidence to do so. Both of us can contextualise our experiences, conduct research, and enter the public conversation, given our societal privilege. But many people do not possess those resources. Many families that have lived in the region for generations may have learned that silence is safer than insisting that they belong. Their experiences remain invisible because they lack the communicative power to make those experiences visible. This is where the problem becomes larger than ethnic identity. It becomes a question of voice, representation and social power.
The media often reproduces the same simplification. Public discussions tend to divide people into categories: tribal and non-tribal, indigenous and migrant, local and outsider, Indian and Bangladeshi. The danger is that collective identities become substitutes for individual judgment.
Indigenous communities must have the right to protect land, culture and political representation. But such protection cannot require the permanent suspicion of every person who does not belong to the dominant ethnic group. Non-tribal communities must have the right to demand safety and equal treatment without dismissing the historical experiences that made indigenous protection such a powerful political demand in the first place.
The violence in Shillong should concern us not simply because property was damaged or statues were vandalised. We should pay attention because of the fragile boundary between political mobilisation and social hostility. It raises an important question about migration in the Northeast that remains unresolved, not only as a matter of policy but also as a question of identity.
Tomojit Bhattacharjee is Joint General Manager, Corporate Communications, at Delhi Metro Rail Corporation Limited. Neelatphal Chanda is Assistant Professor of Media Studies at Christ University, Bengaluru. Views are personal.
(Edited by Asavari Singh)