GUWAHATI: A Meghalaya woman wearing traditional Khasi attire was allegedly kept out of the Delhi Golf Club because she looked 'Nepali' and her dress was a 'maid’s uniform'.
The woman, Tailin Lyngdoh was wearing a jainsem, sarong-like traditional attire worn by Khasi women from Meghalaya.
The incident, which occurred on Sunday, triggered outrage on social media with a section of users calling it an act of “racial discrimination”.
Lyngdoh was a governess who worked for an Assamese doctor Nivedita Barthakur and was invited to the club along with Barthakur as guests of a member.
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Barathakur has spent many years in London and Abu Dhabi. For the past one year, she has been working with the Assam government as an honourary advisor dealing with health policy.
Barthakur told New Indian Express that gatekeepers at the club stopped Lyngdoh and sought to escort her out as she apparently looked 'Nepali' and dressed like a 'maid'. "Despite my protest they kept on arguing and we left the club feeling humiliated," she added.
Barthakur wrote on her Facebook page, “Today, Tailin Lyngdoh, an extremely proud Khasi lady who has travelled the world in her jainsem from London to the UAE was thrown out of the Delhi Golf Club because her dress was taken for a maid's uniform!” The doctor said in the Facebook post that the gatekeepers did not even bother to apologise and the room was full of figures from the Delhi elite "who make their maids and nannies wait outside in the heat lest they pollute their surroundings, and I bet many of them were civil servants and keepers of the Constitution. It was so appalling at many levels: that a citizen of India is judged on her dress and treated as a pariah."
Barthakur added that Lyngdoh never had to face such discrimination abroad.
Reacting to the incident, Shillong-based activist Agnes Kharshiing said, “It's another example of racial discrimination against people from the Northeast. This is a punishable offence.” Writer Patricia Mukhim wrote, “How disgusting is this! Can the Meghalaya House in Delhi take action?”