‘Bangalore: An Inconvenient Truth’: Hate Crime and the Exodus

Abstract

Two cases from 2012 brought race to national attention and exemplified the shifts in race debates. The first is the death of Loitam Richard in Bangalore. Richard’s death and the apparent cover-up was a catalyst for attention to violence against Northeast communities in metropolitan India from both those arguing that race played a crucial role and those denying it played any role at all. The second is the ‘exodus’. Over a few weeks in mid-2012 tens of thousands of migrants returned to the Northeast driven by fear of racially targeted attacks. The exodus moved race debates from individual cases to consideration of a widespread social malaise and uncovered deep anxieties for Northeast communities, business, and authorities at various levels.