Ankita Konwar, the wife of Milind Soman, recently opened up about how belittling it is when people call out names just because you are from a particular place or the way you look.
Manipur-based Mirabai Chanu recently won a silver medal at the Olympics and fitness enthusiast Ankita Konwar wondered if that’s what it would take for the people of the Northeast to be recognised as part of the country. Ankita took to her Twitter to call out the racism that still prevails in India.
“It is not going to change by just one person. I’m just trying to make it a point that these things exist in our society,” says Konwar, 29, who hails from Assam.
Talking to a news portal, she further explained what nudged her to speak, “I know people who call out individuals from Northeast as ‘chinki’; I’ve corrected them many times. Now, I see them coming out and say, ‘We’re so proud of you. When you see a post like that, you’re like, ‘Oh wow, now you think that we’re a part of India”, but when I’m there with you, then you don’t think so’. It’s only when somebody is winning a medal that you can be a part of the country, so what about the rest of us then.”
Her tweet curbs from her personal experiences, which continues to happen to date, “(Even today) people just come on my page and post comments like corona, Chinese, or chinki. It’s hurtful,” rues Konwar.
Ankita describes a personal experience where talks about how airport officials just refused to believe that she was an Indian citizen, despite her showing them her passport.
“There have also been incidents when you are looking for a place to rent, and when you go to meet them, You are from the northeast, maybe you are a drug addict or maybe you will party too much, let’s not rent out the place to you. I don’t know who made these things, but we all have been putting up with this,” she tells us.
When asked about how she feels about people who disagree with her, she questions, “What’s there to disagree when somebody is sharing their experience with you? That doesn’t count. Your disagreement has nothing to do with what I’ve faced my entire life. You can’t come and tell me what I’ve lived was a lie. We can’t close our eyes to things that are happening in front of us. How long will you be sweeping it off? You’ve to be courageous to face the flaws in the system in the country.”
“It’s just so demeaning when you’re going out on the roads, and people look at you in a certain way, comment on your clothes, the way that you talk, call you names, just because you’re from a particular place, or the way you look,” she added.
As the conversation about racial slurs starts she hopes one day nobody has to go through the racial injustice that people from the Northeast have been through.