Calling an Indian 'chinky' is not content. Twelve years on, racial abuse still needs its own law

In a video that spread on social media on 20 October, an Instagram creator calls a young man from Tripura “chinky”, “China president” and “Michael Jackson”, for the entertainment of strangers. Two days later Delhi Police arrested Amir Shokeen at Karol Bagh, and on Saturday a court gave them five days to question him.

The arrest is right, and the reaction from Tripura was swift and cross-party. Tipra Motha founder Pradyot Kishore Manikya Debbarma called the clip an “insult to the people” of the state. The CPI(M)‘s Jitendra Chaudhury, Leader of the Opposition, asked for “immediate, strict, and exemplary action”. But an arrest in one viral case is not a policy, and the country has had twelve years to make one.

Dehradun, ten months on

Last December Anjel Chakma, a 24-year-old MBA student from Tripura, was attacked at Selaqui near Dehradun after he and his brother were taunted with slurs. He reportedly told his attackers, “We are not Chinese, we are Indians.” He died after 17 days in hospital. Five people were arrested. Uttarakhand Police said the clash was not racially motivated, and his father said officers had at first refused to file an FIR, calling it a minor matter.

That is the pattern people from the Northeast describe again and again: the abuse, the delay, and then an argument about whether the abuse counts.

A report gathering dust

After Nido Taniam, a student from Arunachal Pradesh, was killed in Delhi in 2014, the Bezbaruah committee asked for a specific law against racial abuse or, failing that, an amendment making racial discrimination a distinct offence. It wanted such offences investigated within 60 days and tried within 90, by special police squads and designated courts.

Neither the law nor the amendment came. The new Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita, activists say, does not fill the gap. “If someone is spat on and called ‘corona’, what do you invoke? There is nothing,” said the activist Alana Golmei. Delhi got a special police unit for the North Eastern Region and a helpline, 1093. Bengaluru, Pune, Hyderabad and Dehradun, where many young people from the Northeast study and work, have nothing similar.

The fair objection

Shokeen says the clip was scripted, that the man in it is a friend and that both were joking. There is a real worry, too, about the police jailing creators for offensive videos; such powers are easily turned on satire and dissent.

But a joke whose whole punchline is a man’s face is still a slur, and a slur repeated to millions teaches millions that it is acceptable. A narrowly drawn offence, aimed at abuse or harassment of a person because of race or origin, would protect comedy better than the current habit of stretching general laws to fit whichever case goes viral.

What should be done

First, Parliament should enact the offence the Bezbaruah committee proposed, defined tightly enough that it covers abuse of people and not arguments about ideas.

Second, every city with a large northeastern population should have a unit like Delhi’s, with a helpline and named officers in police stations.

Third, police must register complaints of racial abuse at once. A station that calls them minor should have to explain that in writing.

Fourth, platforms that pay creators should stop paying for videos built on racial mockery, and act on complaints in hours, not after an arrest.

People from the Northeast should not have to say “we are Indians” to be treated as Indians. The law can at least stop asking them to prove it.

The reporting behind this view

• 2014year the Bezbaruah committee asked for a law against racial abuse
• 17 daysAnjel Chakma spent in hospital before he died in Dehradun, December 2025
• 1093Delhi's helpline for people from the Northeast; most cities have none