Uttarakhand’s Racist Violence Exposes India’s Pretence of National Unity

Racial Attack on Tripura Student Shows the Country’s Failure to Protect Its Own

December 29, 2025

The killing of Angel Chakma, a young Chakma student from Tripura, after a brutal racist attack in Dehradun, Uttarakhand, points to a deeper problem in how India functions as a country. On paper, all citizens have equal rights under the law. But in real life, many people do not feel accepted or safe, even though they are legally Indian. This gap between legal citizenship and a sense of truly belonging in society shows how the idea of India as one united nation often fails in everyday life.

The 24-year-old MBA student from Tripura was attacked on Dec. 10 while defending his younger brother Michael in a market area. A group of six people arrived on motorcycles and scooters and began abusing Michael with racial slurs, calling him “Chinese,” as reported by Hindustan Times. When Angel stepped in to protect him, the attackers turned on him. They used knives, a metal bangle called a kadaa, and other blunt objects to beat him severely, breaking his neck. Angel was taken to hospital, where he remained for 17 days before dying from his injuries. The attack led to protests in Tripura, arrests in Uttarakhand and public calls for justice from the Chakma community and political leaders.

However, officials in Uttarakhand have focused only on arresting the accused, without addressing the deeper problem behind the attack.

At the heart of the issue is that India continues to operate with a two-tiered imagination of identity, meaning there are two different ways people are seen as Indian. On one level, constitutional nationalism says everyone is equal under the law, no matter where they come from or what they look like. But in practice, ethnocentric majoritarianism dominates, where being part of the majority, often meaning North Indian, Hindu, Hindi-speaking and upper-caste, sets the standard for being accepted as truly Indian.

Angel Chakma’s last words, “I’m Indian, not Chinese,” show the pressure many people from border regions feel to prove they belong. Instead of being seen automatically as Indian citizens, they face suspicion, racism and violence. This constant need to assert one’s Indianness reveals a failure in how the Indian state imagines its people, especially those from the Northeast and tribal border communities, who are often racialised and excluded in public life.

This kind of structural racism, where discrimination is built into everyday systems and social attitudes. The violence against Angel Chakma began with racist insults and the idea that he and his brother did not “look Indian.” This shows that many people still lack a basic understanding of India’s internal diversity. What is often seen as “Indian” continues to be influenced by the viewpoint of the dominant group. In this way of thinking, anyone with a different language, appearance or culture becomes vulnerable to exclusion and even violence.

What happens next shows institutional complicity, meaning that official systems quietly allow injustice by failing to act. Angel’s father, Tarun Chakma, a Border Security Force jawan posted in Manipur, said the police did not file a report until student groups stepped in and pressured them. Across the country, there is a repeated pattern where institutions like the police or local authorities respond slowly or unwillingly when the victim is from a tribal group, a border region or a minority community. This delay in action sends a message to attackers that the system will not seriously punish them, making it easier for such violence to happen again.

What politicians and police officers say in public often makes things worse. In this case, the senior police officer in Dehradun, Ajai Singh, described the attack as a misunderstanding. This kind of statement follows a long pattern where officials avoid talking about the racial nature of violence against people from the Northeast. Instead of calling it a hate crime, they describe it as a small fight or confusion.

Across the country, a clear pattern has emerged. Violence based on identity, such as caste, religion, or ethnicity, is often described as a local issue with no wider meaning. For example, Dalits are attacked for standing up for their rights, Muslims are lynched over rumours of cow slaughter, and people from the Northeast are beaten and insulted with racial slurs. Each case is treated as if it happened on its own, even though the pattern is visible. Officials often avoid using terms like casteism, Islamophobia and racism. By avoiding these words, the state protects the public image of the majority as fair and neutral.

India’s public culture also plays a role in this problem. For many years, popular media, school textbooks, and political messages have erased or exoticised the Northeastern states like Nagaland, Mizoram, Manipur, Meghalaya and Tripura, creating ignorance and fear about people from these states.

Unless people learn to see all regional, ethnic and racial identities as fully Indian, the promises made in the Constitution will have no real meaning in daily life. Until the civic imagination expands to include all regional, ethnic and racial identities as fully Indian, constitutional guarantees will remain ornamental.

The students protesting in Tripura, and the groups like the Tripura Chakma Students Association, are demanding precisely this reckoning. They are asking for a state that sees them, protects them and holds perpetrators accountable not just in court but in the public narrative.

The Indian state’s failure to prevent racial violence against its own citizens, and its institutional reluctance to confront it directly, reveals a deeper crisis of national identity. Angel Chakma’s death is a result of that crisis, and unless it is confronted at every level, from police procedure to school curricula, more such tragedies will follow.

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