Has Mary Kom changed people's views towards people 4m the North East?

Sad truth of India...

One of my closest friends is a Sikkimese..In our first year of college we were talking and she said "you Indians"..given that Sikkim's history is quite different from most of NE, the statement still caught be my surprise..And it made me realize the gap that exists b/w mainland India and the India east of the chicken's neck..And the worst is the clubbing that is done-a Manipuri is as different from an Assamese as a Bengali is from a Punjabi! We need to spread awareness through education right from the school level and bring it into the mainstream..one movie can't do anything-much less change attitudes.

For some reason, people from the North-East are not regarded "Indian" enough. We automatically get enveloped in a sense of "the other" on coming in contact with a North Eastern. Maybe its their Mandarin features or their liberal, carefree attitudes which prevent us from fully integrating them into our psychological map of "India".

I've studied in one of the best Universities of the nation, and I must brag that it was one of the most liberal places I've ever encountered in my life. Anybody could wear anything, behave in any way they wanted and there was no such thing as "ostracisation" or "otherisation". A girl could roam around in hot pants, and there wouldn't be a second public glance, though people would express their opinions in private. We had a lot of North Easterners, and I atleast never got the feeling of them being markedly "different" in the way they communicated or were treated at large by the students or authorities. Now when I read news about North Easterners being subjectednto such racism in the Metros, I find it difficult to imagine putting myself in their (the tormentors') places. Never having been conditioned to "exoticise" the residents of N.E. India, it flabbergasts me and leaves me with a sense of puzzlement.
How I wish the whole of my land were psychological part of the oasis that was my University.