ABSTRACT
Racism defines the Northeast migrant experience of Delhi. For those unfamiliar with the Northeast region, this may seem a moot point. India is made up of diverse peoples from different ethnic lineages, so what makes migrants from the Northeast unique? Different groups in India experience prejudice and discrimination when they migrate and, for more marginal groups, even in their home locations, so why are migrants from the Northeast any different? The answer is race. Northeast migrants are seen as racially different from the Indian mainstream. India contains many communities earmarked as ‘others’ based on religion, caste, and even ethnicity, yet the nationality and origin of these communities are not questioned at every turn. They can ‘blend in’ to the heartland in ways that Northeast migrants cannot. This is not to argue that these ‘others’ do not face discrimination and violence; rather, the experiences of Northeast migrants are distinct and reveal different elements of contemporary Indian society as the distance between frontier and heartlands shrink.
