A few sacks of rice: 

A few sacks of rice: 

Brief overview

The article talks about how Indian government’s stance on the Rohingya issue is imprudent, myopic and untenable from the point of view of security, history and morality respectively.

An imprudent policy from security point of view

• The Indian government has declared the Rohingya to be illegal immigrants not refugees.
• Treating the Rohingya as illegal migrants will diminish rather than enhance India’s security for a number of reasons:

History tells us that radicalisation grows when three conditions obtain:

• Groups are subjected to political violence and marginalisation.
• States lose control over territory partly because their own repression destroys the normal fabric of civil society.
• And other states that side with the repressing state also evoke resentment and become a target.

Example: the Bosnian wars were a trigger of radicalisation in other parts of the world.

• By condoning the Myanmar government’s actions and not assisting the stateless Rohingya, India, in effect, might help create the conditions for greater radicalisation.
• By declaring a whole refugee community as a national security threat, largely on communal lines, India is risking a communal conflict.
• India has also implicitly put all its eggs in the basket of the Myanmar government. This is a mistake as it was the Myanmar government that created the push factor in the first place.
• We will not be able to contain the spillovers across our porous borders if we have alienated communities living on our borders.
• To isolate radical elements, you need a more imaginative refugee policy.
• A proper system of identification, rehabilitation, and possibly reporting in India is required to deal with the situation.
• If we actually had a proper asylum law, and better processing mechanisms for refugees, even the situation of Rohingyas ending up in Jammu could have been avoided.
• In short, there are prudent security reasons, for treating the Rohingya with more dignity and political finesse.

A historically myopic stance

• India has been exemplary in the way it accommodated refugees from Tibet, Sri Lanka, Afghanistan and Bangladesh.
• India aspires to be a great power. Its biggest asset is the way it has been the significant open society of the region.
• India had escaped radicalisation in large part because of its success in democratic incorporation.
• It was not identified with persecutory ideologies of the state or of other states.
• The political construct we have put around the Rohingya weakens the ideological projection that has been India’s greatest security strength.
• Therefore, India is betraying its own historical heritage.

A morally untenable stance

• India has now changed its stance on an important moral principle: The principle of non-refoulement. This principle stops nations from returning people to a country where they might be at risk of severe persecution.
• Even if India is not a signatory to International Refugee Conventions, it takes a very pinched up moral imagination to forcibly send back people who will face persecution.
• There is something disquieting about a country that wants others to have open borders for its rich and privileged, but will not help those who show up at its door because of palpable threats to their lives.
• In humanitarian terms, Indian policy is a pittance.
• This stance is likely to be self-defeating.