A nation perennially on the move cannot afford to turn on migrants. In that light, the lynching of Anjel Chakma, a student from Tripura, in Uttarakhand is not just a crime—it’s a grim verdict on the erosion of civic conscience. That the state’s chief minister felt compelled to personally assure Chakma’s family of justice and remind the country that Uttarakhand has “traditionally welcomed students from across India” exposes the fragility of the national compact. A young life was not lost to chance or misfortune, but to suspicion shaped by identity, appearance and the dangerous normalisation of othering.
Incidents reported in recent weeks confirm that this was no isolated rupture. In Odisha’s Sambalpur, 19-year-old Jewel Sheikh, a migrant labourer from West Bengal, was lynched on the suspicion that he was an “illegal Bangladeshi immigrant”, a claim later dismissed by the police. In Kerala, long held up as a model of social progress, Ram Narayan Baghel, a construction worker from Chhattisgarh, was beaten to death within days of arriving in the state. Across states and contexts, the script barely changed through 2025. An ‘outsider’ is identified, a rumour is weaponised and a mob steps in where the law retreats. To dismiss this as fringe violence is to wilfully ignore the pattern. This is a systemic failure of governance and civic restraint.
The violence is especially grotesque because it collides head-on with India’s economic reality and constitutional guarantees. India runs on migrant labour—last year, 60 crore Indians were identified as internal migrants. States such as Kerala depend on them for nearly a quarter of their workforce. The contradiction sharpens further when we look at Indians in the world. According to the RBI, Indians constituted 6 percent of all global migrants in 2024, a number that has nearly tripled since 1990. In a country where remittances sustain lakhs of families, we cannot be violent on those seeking jobs or education in another state.
We loudly celebrate our demographic dividend. Yet, within our own borders, those who move for education or work are denied safety, dignity, the right to equal opportunity and sometimes life itself. Mobility is not India’s threat; mistrust is. At the very least, the country must guarantee that no one should die for where they come from.