There is no justification for being racist about racism. It is by no means an exclusively white problem. And India is a good place from which to begin acknowledging this. At an everyday level, without going to violent extremes, negative perceptions of cultural or linguistic difference, and the prejudice and harassment that they foster, make up the unpleasant underbelly of India's legendary diversity. Different templates of individual and collective behaviour - from political bigotry to bullying, rape and lynching - exist, with regional variations, in the interfaces between different communities. Since Nido Tania's lynching in Delhi almost a year ago (followed by other shocking instances of racist violence elsewhere), people from the Northeast studying or working all over India have come to embody the most visible face of this phenomenon. The Centre has now announced that it is considering amendments to the Indian Penal Code that would make racial discrimination and insults a punishable offence. This would be with special reference to the people of the Northeast, and legal reform will be supplemented by a range of other public measures geared to altering perceptions, attitudes and behaviours in different ways all over the country. All this is not only somewhat along the lines of the Bezbaruah committee recommendations, but also timed to herald the assembly elections in Delhi.

Waking up to the evil of racism, and planning to do something about it, are laudable reflexes - provided that amending the law does not end up being the only concrete change to come out of the entire process. Besides, the complexity of prejudice and violence between communities in India, and its relations with certain modes of national and regional politics, has to be kept in mind, not only by the law-makers but also by the law-keepers. The home minister's own state, Uttar Pradesh, is a living example of how brutality, prejudice and mischief can combine attitudes to caste, religion, gender and class to produce forms of violence and oppression that might defy strictly defined legal categories of 'racial' crime. Singling out a particular victimized community for protection could also risk a kind of segregation, which then becomes yet another form of the very offence that the measures are trying to prevent. What is needed are rigorous self-examination and vigilance, from the highest levels of leadership to the most ordinary spheres of life.