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Context
Debates over refugees, the right to dissent, or gender violence, suggest that India is becoming a nation devoid of compassion for those who are persecuted.
What is our stance on Rohingya?
- Government in the Supreme Court is defending its decision to deport Rohingya refugees.
- Intelligence agencies say Rohingya are a threat because some amongst them are terrorists and/or criminals.
- The Home Ministry says they are illegal immigrants, and many say that we must put security above concern for refugees.
- Government spokespersons say defensively that India has neither signed the 1951 Convention of the UNHCR (the United Nation’s Refugee Agency) nor its 1967 protocol, and so it is not bound to take refugees.
Risks from Rohingya refugees in India
- That there are Rohingya terrorist groups is proven.
- Some Rohingya have also been guilty of killing Hindus and Buddhists in Myanmar’s Rakhine state.
- India cannot call Rohingya refugees illegal immigrants when 16,000 of them are registered with the UNHCR and are clearly fleeing from the pogrom conducted in the Rakhine state.
- The UNHCR is one of the few stellar non-governmental institutions whose work is a credit to all of the UN.
- The UNHCR’s efforts with Syrian and Rohingya refugees deserve support, especially since the organisation was critical to India’s support for refugees during the 1971 Bangladesh war, and helped ensure their safe return.
- Despite India not signing the convention, the UNHCR has generally praised India as a host country.
- The number of Rohingya refugees in India is estimated to be 40,000 while the UN warns of an exodus of close to a million.
Is there a worsening of Indian polity?
- The shift towards chauvinism is not unique to India’s polity.
- Waves of similar and more extreme chauvinism swept the U.S. and Europe from the 1990s on first in response to refugees from the Balkans war and then to 9/11, and post-9/11 to the rise of Islamist terrorism and refugees from the wars in West Asia.
- India’s own neighborhood has long been communal towards religious minorities, whether they are Hindus in Fiji, Pakistan, Sri Lanka and Bangladesh; Muslims in Myanmar and Sri Lanka; or Christians and Ahmadis in Pakistan.
