As an Indian-Nepali – or an Indian-Gorkha, the term some others prefer – I have often found it easier to shrug my shoulders and walk away from racist encounters where I am called "chinky", "chowmein" or "Chinese" than from those occasions when I am mistaken for a Nepalese. I use "Nepalese" deliberately to mean a citizen of Nepal, as opposed to "Nepali", which denotes a much broader cultural and linguistic connection that transcends any single national identity. As someone born and raised in Sikkim, and although of Nepali and Bhutia-Lepcha descent, my Indian-Nepali heritage forms an important part of my cultural identity. I suppose being called "chinky" somehow binds me to the collective racism faced by other people from India's Northeast – it unites all Northeasterners, considered outsiders to mainland Indian culture, and in effect contributes to an alternative version of Indian citizenship where it is okay to not "look Indian". Being taunted as a Nepalese, on the other hand, can be an especially isolating experience: it singles out me and other Indian-Nepalis, and leaves us alone to defend our rightful sense of belonging to India, usually through reiteration of our loyalty to and many sacrifices for the nation.
This was already, always, an ordeal. Then, recently, a verdict from the Supreme Court of India left us grappling yet again to defend our history and our legitimate place in Sikkim – and, in effect, in India.
This January, the court passed judgement in a long-running case where the Association of Old Settlers of Sikkim, and Sikkimese women married to Indian men of non-Sikkimese descent, had asked to be exempted from paying income tax, like other bonafide Sikkimese. The court ruled in their favour, and in its justification for extending the exemption it observed, "there was no difference made out between the original inhabitants of Sikkim, namely the Bhutia-Lepchas and the person of foreign origin settled in Sikkim like the Nepalis [emphasis mine] or persons of Indian origin who had settled down in Sikkim generations back."
The court ruled that the definition of "Sikkimese" under India's Income-Tax Act Section 10 (26AAA) "shall also include all Indians, who have permanently settled in Sikkim prior to the merger with India on 26.04.1975 irrespective of the fact that whether their names have been recorded in the register maintained under the Sikkim Subjects Regulations, 1961 or not." The earlier exclusion from the income-tax exemption of "Old Indian settlers, who have permanently settled in Sikkim prior to merger of Sikkim with India" was deemed to violate the right to equality under the Indian constitution, and so struck down.