Manipuri Beauty Lin Laishram who represented North East on a global podium speaks on systematic racism in Bollywood, adds that she was stalked by two men who called her ‘coronavirus’, to the point of physical aggression.
Lin Laishram, a notable presence in Bollywood, with movies like Om Shanti Om, Axone, and Mary Kom lining her career, recently opened up about why Bollywood and the northeast don’t go together. An international model originally hailing from Imphal, Lin Laishram got her first recognition by the Elite Modeling Agency, Mumbai. She was often seen in events like Wills Fashion Week; New York Bridal Week. She starred in Vishal Bharadwaj’s Rangoon opposite Saif Ali Khan, Shahid Kapoor and Kangana, Prashant’s Nair’s Umrika, and Life of Pi fame Suraj Sharma and Adil Hussain. Laishram is also a well-known trained archer from Tata Archery Academy in Jamshedpur.
She was a junior national champion in 1998 nationals held in Chandigarh and also owns a jewelry line called Shamooo Sana in March 2017. However, the actress, says that people from the northeast barely have anything to relate to where Bollywood is concerned, as there is hardly any representation. The only rare times, she said, are when north-eastern people are depicted wearing tribal garb and speaking gibberish, limiting that representation to a very stereotypical vision. As a result, there aren’t many casting opportunities either.
Further, she reiterated how the Indian audience isn’t open to accepting her as any other Indian who isn’t north-eastern, as opposed to other Indian actors playing north-eastern characters. Lin rose to fame after her role in the movie Mary Kom, starring Priyanka Chopra.
With the pandemic giving rise to crimes against people from the North-East, Laishram also spoke about the racist attacks she had to encounter during this time, and how she was followed by two men calling her “coronavirus” while she was coming back from after dropping her parents off at the airport. “I felt helpless and angry because there were a lot of people from the North East suffering in different ways. They were denied groceries, some girls were spat on the road, and students were thrown out of their PGs and hostels. It was sickening to believe that we will be treated in such a manner in our own country,” she adds.
Laishram also spoke about her racist encounters in the industry, mentioning how north-eastern actors are only approached to play stereotypical roles like a spa girl, prostitute, or waiter. “Not that playing these characters demeans an actor but its how we are seen and typecast. It's little knowledge about our culture that bothers us.
When it comes to playing an achiever from the Northeast a non-North Eastern person is chosen as seen in Mary Kom. On the other hand, why not cast people from Northeast also as normal Indians in all walks of life which we are,” she said.
Lin states, “I admire Priyanka for her hard work, she really put in a lot of hours in order to look like Mary Kom but I always felt that casting is an important step in film. I believe in authenticity and inclusivity, so a girl from Manipur or the North East could have been surely cast to represent us.”
The casting had received backlash previously as well, with Priyanka Chopra being cast to play boxer athlete Mary Kom, a Manipuri lady. She also restated the need for Bollywood to be more inclusive in its casting and stories to showcase Indians from all regions and walks of life. On inclusivity in the industry, Lin said, “The latest example of great inclusivity is The Family Man 2. In the show, people are cast from Tamil Nadu and speak Tamil, representing their local culture and ethnicity, and it has been so widely accepted and appreciated. So, if south Indian culture can be accepted then why not North Eastern?”
Amid the constant ups and downs, Lin says that she chose to become a Bollywood actor without giving much thought and will continue to keep striving.“I didn’t know I would have a different set of struggles because of my looks. Forget having a godfather in the industry I never had seen or heard of a Manipuri actor working in Bollywood before me. It's been a decade in the industry. The mantra is to keep striving and hoping that things will change for the better,” she signs off.
As early as 1935, Jyotiprasad Agarwala, an iconic playwright in Assam, produced the first film in North East India. Joymoti, released in 1935, marked the birth of the film industry in Assam and the North East. But since then, movie-making has not really created any significant stir in the region, except for two states – Assam and Manipur, both of which have a regular filmmaking tradition.
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