The year 2025 ended with nationwide protests demanding justice for Anjel Chakma, a 24-year-old youth who was pursuing an MBA in Dehradun. According to news reports, on December 9, 2025, Anjel was out on a routine errand with his brother, Michael Chakma, when they encountered some local men hurling racial slurs at them because of how they looked and the language they spoke.The brothers protested and the altercation quickly escalated. Anjel was repeatedly stabbed and sustained serious injuries, to which he succumbed after fighting for his life in hospital for 16 days. His last words were, “I’m not Chinese. I’m an Indian.”Anjel Chakma was from Tripura, one of the seven northeastern states that have been constitutionally recognised as part of India for a considerable length of time. I am also from Tripura, and as many of my peers from the state would corroborate, we have all had to explain where Tripura is at some point during our stay in any so-called mainland state of the country we call our own.Also read: Whose Life Counts? Anjel Chakma’s Death and the Idea of India TodayFellow citizens have asked us whether it is somewhere in Assam. I have personally been asked by a civil services aspirant whether Tripura is in South India because its name resembles Trivandrum or Thiruvananthapuram. As Indian citizens from Tripura, these questions are not nearly as baffling to us as the confidence – and lack of embarrassment – with which they are asked. The shameless ignorance about the Northeast prevalent in mainland India is not merely a matter of individual negligence; it is a symptom of the systematic exoticisation of the region and its people, layered and deeply entrenched.The demography of the Northeast is as varied as that of the rest of India. Contrary to popular belief, we do not all look the same. Factors such as tribal migration, self-acculturation and assimilation from animism into religions like Buddhism, Hinduism and Christianity have shaped the region’s population.Political events, particularly those related to the Indian state and its foreign policies, have also had a significant impact, resulting in states like Tripura and Assam hosting substantial non-indigenous populations. In Tripura especially, Bengali settlement began as early as the mid-fifteenth century.Historian Anindita Ghoshal writes: “Historically, the Hindu rulers of Tripura’s Manikya dynasty had always encouraged the immigration and settlement of non-tribals, especially Bengalis, in Tripura. Rajmala , a court chronicle of the Tripura kings, authenticates the fact that Ratna Manikya (1464–1468) was the first to ‘settle 4,000 Bengalis in four places’ in Tripura. Gradually, the tribal kings adopted Hinduism as the state religion and assimilated Bengali language and literature into their culture.”During the late colonial period, and again during the Bangladesh Liberation War in 1971, Tripura witnessed a massive influx of Bengalis from East Bengal, further complicating the question of Bengali presence in the state. The assimilated socio-religious culture practised by both indigenous and Bengali communities is another reason why the region’s demography cannot be neatly compartmentalised into exclusive categories.Also read: GSI’s Handbook on Northeast India Masks Extraction Behind TechnicalitiesThe shifting of political territories on paper maps has displaced cultures, languages and nationalities of indigenous people and Bengalis alike. As one can see, identity politics in Tripura is complex – making it easier for many mainland Indians to either ignore this reality altogether or to deny us the dignity of an Indian identity.In practice, development, modernisation and knowledge production about the Northeast have largely remained matters of what I can only mock as “the brown man’s burden” – a sympathetic, representative framework rather than a genuine component of nation-building. As young adults, many of us, like Anjel Chakma, are compelled to leave our homes for the so-called mainland to pursue even the most basic of modern livelihoods. In a country that obsessively equates familial duty with physical proximity, we are forced to migrate far away to ensure our families have access to care and opportunity. If we stay back and demand equitable development from the government, we are labelled “extremists”.The systematic ignorance of our demography, cultures, languages and people is excused because we are treated as an exotic anomaly – one that does not fit the acceptable, marketable “image” of an Indian. And because we are “exotic”, we are also perceived as threatening. Among Indians who are blessed with resemblance to that image, we deserve the fate of a snake that appears in broad daylight: either “rescued” and caged, to be safely gazed at in fascination, or mutilated, burnt and killed. That is what we Northeasterners are. On some days we are Bangladeshis; on others, we are Chinese – depending on whether the hate train stops at the junction of language or racial features.Most of us live away from our home states, pursuing some job, some degree, some dream. The banality of the violence that Anjel and his brother faced sends one stark message to Northeasterners: it is we who must remain alert to the “Indian” footstep. For if we are sighted, if we dare to occupy space, the response may arrive in the form of banal, cold-blooded murder – normalised as a reaction to a perceived threat.Bhagyasree Saha is a research scholar at the Indian Institute of Technology, Mandi, and a Bengali from Tripura.