The North Eastern people are usually a bunch of close knit communities. The interaction between boys and girls are quite common; and there is so much of trust between them. Being a close knit community, distant relatives are not discounted. Everybody who is related in one way or the other is sought out and relationship is built. Since many people have big families, through inter-marriages, it usually turns out that an individual has so many relatives. My son has 26 cousins! Cases of rape or other crime are not quite common. Even today many houses in the villages do not have locks. And in a locality or a village, everybody knows everybody. Moreover, when students go to other cities, parents expect that they would look after one another, whether it's between boys or girls. And a students when one is sick or runs short of money, there is so much of interaction and inter-relationship and sharing.
Very often this sort of relationship is alien to the mainland Indian culture. In Delhi most people would not talk to their neighbours who are 100 metres. People cannot trust others easily. Given that crimes involving rape or robbery are common, it's not difficult to comprehend why this is so. But since this is the culture in which many people grow up, when they see boys and girls from the NE interact closely, they interpret this differently. They think that girls are of loose moral character. This interpretation is far from reality. But this faulty interpretation results in NE girls being mistreated often. Girls complaint that very often local boys would ask their 'rate' in the street or try to get close to them.
NB: The North East states of India are Sikkim, Assam, Meghalaya, Arunachal Pradesh, Manipur, Nagaland, Mizoram and Tripura. The border Bhutan, China, Myanmar and Bangladesh. The local people of these states have mongoloid features quite unlike the mainland Indians. The series is being blogged as part of bridging the cultural gap between the NE and mainland India.
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