When Northeast women become “Others” in Andhra Pradesh
The recent Kakinada nursing college violence raises concern over the safety, dignity and social inclusion of Northeast women, as unresolved disputes risk becoming local-outsider conflicts
By Prof Ajailiu Niumai
Last week’s violence involving students from Northeast India and local students at RK Nursing College in Kakinada, Andhra Pradesh, raises questions that go far beyond a single altercation. At its heart lies a larger concern about the safety, dignity and social inclusion of young Northeast women who travel thousands of kilometres from their homes in pursuit of education and professional mobility.
The incident, which unfolded on 21–22 August, reportedly began with the theft of a mobile phone belonging to a Rongmei Naga nursing student. She had left it for charging in the hostel while taking a shower and was preparing to travel home the next day. The phone was later recovered without its SIM card and charger. The alleged offender was said to be a local student.
Missing Belongings
The episode, however, did not emerge in isolation. Thirty-one students from Manipur, Nagaland and Assam, including Rongmei, Zeme, and Maring Nagas and Meitei students, expressed frustration over repeated instances of missing belongings. Some students claimed that, during earlier journeys home for holidays, items from their luggage had gone missing and were subsequently found among the belongings of other students. Yet, according to them, these grievances were not subjected to a transparent institutional inquiry.
When the students requested their teacher to file an FIR over the 21st August case, their request was declined. Tensions escalated into an argument. Subsequently, some local students allegedly contacted their parents, following which a group gathered outside the college with sticks and stones. Police personnel, including women constables, arrived to control the situation. Six Northeast girls were injured during the confrontation.
The Northeast students alleged that they were pressured to pack their belongings and leave the college, prevented from recording the events, and attempt to physically separate them by the police. The police reportedly maintained that they needed to appear strict towards the Northeast students to calm the local people. The Northeast women reported that they were denied breakfast and lunch on 22 August and were left deeply traumatised.
The immediate question is what institutional failures allowed unresolved grievances to accumulate to the point of confrontation?
If belongings were repeatedly reported missing, were proper inquiries conducted? Was CCTV footage examined? Was there a functional grievance-redressal mechanism through which students could safely register complaints?
Racialised exclusion
For many students from Northeast India, migration to other parts of the country involves a social transformation. At home, an individual may identify as Meitei, Naga, Mizo, Khasi, Garo, Assamese or through another distinct ethnic or tribal identity. Outside the region, however, these complex identities are often collapsed into a single, homogenising category—the “Northeasterner”.
Physical appearance, language, food habits and cultural practices can make regional identities unusually visible. This is where the idea of racialised “othering” becomes important. Racialised exclusion does not always take the form of explicit abuse or acts of violence. It operates through everyday stereotyping, ridicule, suspicion, exclusion or differential treatment. This does not mean, however, that every disagreement involving a student from Northeast India should automatically be described as racism. Such conclusions must be based on evidence.
Migration without belonging
Students from Northeast India are increasingly moving across the country for education and employment. Yet mobility does not automatically produce inclusion. For them, a hostel is not merely a place of accommodation. It is her temporary home. The college, therefore, becomes not only a site of learning but also an important structure of care, authority and protection.
The young women involved in the Kakinada episode are not merely students. They are also migrants, women and members of ethnic communities whose identities become particularly visible outside their home region. These social locations intersect to create specific forms of vulnerability.
A student who is far from home may worry not only about theft or physical violence, but also about retaliation, academic consequences, loss of accommodation and the absence of local support networks.
A local student may have access to family, friends, language and social networks that a migrant student does not possess. Recognising such differences is not a demand for “special treatment”. It is a recognition that formal equality does not always produce substantive equality. Treating unequal circumstances as though they were identical can itself reproduce inequality.
The response to conflict cannot simply be to ask migrant students to “adjust”, remain silent or leave. At the same time, local students should not be collectively blamed merely because of their regional identity. Collective blame would reproduce the same logic of “othering” that we seek to challenge.
One of the dangers in situations such as this is the rapid transformation of an individual dispute into a conflict between “locals” and “outsiders”. Once this happens, individual responsibility can disappear into collective identity. An incident of this nature can become a regional conflict. This is why educational institutions must intervene early, fairly and decisively.
In this case, North East Connect Association (NECA) Hyderabad intervened to support the Northeast students, who lacked immediate local support.
The reported assurance by the Superintendent of Police that no student would be forced out of the hostel, along with the warning that action could be taken against the institution if the matter was not properly addressed, is therefore significant. The temporary relocation of the students and efforts to resolve the situation may provide immediate relief, but the larger question remains how the institution can ensure that such insecurity does not recur.
Education must also provide protection
The Kakinada episode should prompt a broader examination of private professional institutions that actively recruit students from across India. Families send their daughters far from home because they believe education will provide dignity and a better future. Institutions that enrol students from distant regions have a corresponding responsibility to ensure accessible grievance redressal mechanisms, non-discriminatory administrative procedures and protection against intimidation.
Students cannot be treated merely as enrolment numbers or sources of institutional revenue. Educational institutions must create systems that take these unequal conditions seriously. A “Northeast Cell” should be formed in every colleges/universities in South India, like Delhi University.
The immediate requirement in the Kakinada case is a transparent investigation, and those found responsible for violence, theft or other wrongdoing must be held accountable through due process. Racialised exclusion is not always produced through acts of hatred. It can also be sustained through silence, indifference and an unequal willingness to listen.
The young Northeast women who travelled to Andhra Pradesh did not leave home to become symbols of a regional conflict. They travelled in search of education, professional opportunity, dignity and a future.
The real test of an inclusive India is not whether people from different regions can enter the same classroom. It is whether they can live there with dignity, security and the confidence that, when they face injustice, the institution will listen to them and protect them.
(The author teaches at the University of Hyderabad)
