Hajara Najeeb
On the night of 28 May, around 40 to 50 people gathered outside a shop run by John in Vijay Nagar, Model Town, in North Delhi. Some of them went inside the shop and assaulted the 44-year-old shopowner, Chaman Kumar, locally known as John, accusing him of selling cow meat.
In a video shot by the assailants and shared through social media, Chaman Kumar is seen getting dragged out of the shop, thrashed and hurled abuses by the crowd, while his wife and children bear witness to the whole incident.
The couple, originally from Manipur, has been living in Burari since 2013. Their shop is one of the few shops owned and operated by North-Eastern people in Vijay Nagar, which is predominantly inhabited by students of Delhi University.
The shop was visited not only by students from the North-East but others.
Reportedly, the mob carried a bag of marinated meat with them, which they alleged was cow meat being sold by Chaman Kumar. The police have now sent it for a forensic lab test, the result of which is awaited. However, there is no clarity or confirmation regarding whether the meat was seized from the shop.
“The police reached the location forty minutes after the entire incident,” says Simran, a PhD scholar in Delhi University, a Students Federation of India (SFI) activist and a witness to the whole attack. When she reached the site after hearing the commotion, the mob raised communal slogans like “desh ke gaddaron ko goli maaro saalon ko” and right-wing slogans like “ek hi naara, ek hi naam – jai shri ram, jai shri ram”.
“This happened right in front of me while I was with a friend. We tried to restrain the crowd from attacking him. But they were aggressive”, Simran told The Observer Post.
The mob were asking the religion of the students who were trying to stop the assault. “They were asking to check our bags and houses, saying that cow meat will be found there too,” Simran added.
As soon as the mob learnt that one of the SFI activists was from Kerala, they made her show her bag to prove that there was no meat. Some people among the mob also followed her back to her house.
As soon as the Police reached the site, they took Chaman Kumar to the Model Town station. Subsequently, he was released late at night.
Anjali, President of All India Students Association (AISA) in Delhi university told The Observer Post that Chaman Kumar has returned to his home in Burari and is frightened to come back.
However, no FIR has been registered against the attackers as of now. When the student activists raised the demand of filing an FIR during a protest in front of Model Town station the next day, on 29 May, the SHO allegedly denied saying that the “law will take its own course”.
Various student groups, including AISA and SFI, took out a rally on the same day in the area against the continued xenophobia.
According to Simran, the people in the mob were activists of the Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP), the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) and the Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad (ABVP).
“When the Pahalgam attack happened, there was a rally in Vijay Nagar calling for the genocide of Muslims. The same people were present in the rally and the attack”. In that rally also, slogans like ‘Sanatan ekta zindabad’ were raised along with the burning of Pakistan flags,” she said.
Racial Segregation in Vijay Nagar
Vijay Nagar is a residential colony close to Delhi University’s north campus. In close proximity to the University, it has been an area bustling with students from all across India.
However, multiple incidents of xenophobia have been reported in the area recently.
“It has grown very unsafe in recent times,” says Simran. With continuous cases of eve-teasing and harassment, the area has taken racial and religious lines to these crimes – “when a north-eastern person gets eve-teased, it takes a very intense racial slurring,” Anjali said.
This form of segregation is exhibited through racially motivated surveillance and monitoring.
“We have to be scared of the smell that our food produces,” says Linda, a final year undergraduate student of the History department of the Delhi University who comes from Manipur. A resident of Vijaynagar, she says that the first thing that the people of north-east would check when they are looking for potential flats is whether the landlords are fine with dietary practices traditional to north-eastern states.
This has led to the marginalized communities living among themselves. This is true in the case of Linda. She lives in a Paying Guest facility which is predominantly inhabited by people from the North-East. “Coming to Delhi, my food choice was a big concern. So, living here was a conscious choice,” Linda said.
She also says that racially motivated micro-aggressions are common in the area as well as inside the University. “Racist jokes are common among the closest of friends,” she shared. These incidents have built up into bigger events like this assault. During the pandemic, a Manipuri woman was spat on and called “corona” by a man on a motorcycle in the same area.
This kind of racial abuse is subjected to not just North-eastern students but also to South Indian and Kashmiri students. Gargi, a Malayali undergraduate student of Mathematics in Delhi university recalls an incident where a paying guest facility owned and lived by Malayalis was attacked when one of the inmates talked with a male friend outside the building.
“They started banging the doors and threatened to enter,” she said, adding that they used abusive language, including allegations that the “outsiders are running sex rackets here.” This incident, even though reported to the Police, did not result in any action.
Students’ Protests following the Incident
Besides the rally on 29 May, All India Students’ Organisation (AISA) organised a public meeting on 31 May against the racist and xenophobic attacks in Vijay Nagar. Students and faculty of the Delhi University spoke at the event, highlighting the importance of resisting such attacks on a mass scale.
The speakers pointed out how food was used as a means of daily policing, profiling and propagation of hate towards marginalised groups. “Food policing has cost the identity for many migrant students and workers of their places of living,” said Seikhongam, a PhD scholar from Delhi University who hails from Manipur.
(Hajara Najeeb is a Delhi-based researcher)
