Expert Speak Raisina Debates
Published on Oct 23, 2017
Treat Rohingyas as in case of Sri Lankan Tamil refugees

Independent of what the Supreme Court may rule on the Centre’s fiat for deporting all Rohingya refugees now in the country, the security concerns attending on the same flowing from larger neighbourhood tensions should not be overlooked, either. As the court has indicated through its obiter dicta during the hearings thus far, there may be cause for the Government to take a case-by-case decision in the matter, what with the Central agencies being adequately equipped and qualified to delineate the ‘good refugees’ from the ‘bad’ in such matters.

India does not have a refugee law, as is being advocated by the West all along. Nor is India a signatory to the UN Convention in the matter, signed in December 1951, close to two years after the nation gave itself a Constitution that underscored freedoms and fundamental rights (for all ‘citizens’). Both decisions were conscientious. Though UN affiliates like the Office of the High Commissioner for Refugees have been constantly calling for an Indian law on refugees, there has always been international acclaim and appreciation for the way a ‘poor nation’ has been accommodative to the huge flow of refugees, in legal and physical terms.

Apart from ‘refugees’ from Burma (now: Myanmar) and Sri Lanka’s Upcountry Tamil community, who had Indian origins, India has also famously housed millions of war-refugees, first from then East Pakistan (now: Bangladesh) and again, Sri Lanka (but not necessarily of original Indian stock, so to say).

Even today, close to a hundred thousand of Sri Lankan war-refugees, all of them Tamil-speaking, are housed in Government-run camps all across Tamil Nadu or in private homes of their own choice and making, in a roughly 2:1 ratio.

Neighbourhood first?

It is in this context that the Centre’s position/decision on deporting Rohingya refugees has created a lot of furore. Questions remain if in a country like India, identifying individuals or groups of such refugees from within a multi-ethnic, multi-linguistic, similarly-featured people and isolating them, could be successfully carried out, without hurting legitimate citizens in the process, some of whom already feel alienated and distanced from and by the State.

Not taking a case-by-case decision as a group and at the same time giving the impression that the Centre’s position on the Rohingyas could well be applicable to ‘all-comers’ in the future could cause more problems than solving the present one. In regional terms, such an approach can go against Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s early clarion call on ‘Neighbourhood First’, which already seems to have been all but forgotten.

On the domestic front, the religious identity of the Rohingyas can play devil in confusing political perceptions for policy-making, or could be seen as such.

 

Any unthinking application of the Centre’s current position could also hurt the large number of ‘internal migrant labour’, especially from the East and the North-East, whose features, languages and dialects are often misread and misinterpreted, at times wantonly, leading to further alienation.

Truth to be acknowledged, even with Aadhar Card and all, there is no knowing if the Government has a fool-proof, fail-proof system to identity and isolate non-citizens from internal migrants in ‘interior areas’. It is even more troublesome along the border areas even where local public opinion may be against the influx. Going beyond the obvious, the ‘Assam agitation’ of the eighties was as much over the alienation from the Indian Centre as about the ‘foreigners issue’, involving Bangladeshi refugees, especially from the war years of the early seventies.

All this is not to ignore increasing international concerns over humanitarian issues of the refugee kind, which again is influenced by political considerations of their own kind. On the Rohingya front, for instance, it was very clear even during the Myanmar elections the last time round, Opposition National League for Democracy (NLD) led by Nobel laureate, Aung San Suu Kyi, was ambivalent at best on the ‘humanitarian aspects’ that the West was tom-toming vis a vis her long house-arrest under the military junta.

In power now, the ambivalence is gone. Suu Kyi and her Government are as forthright as is possible under the circumstances to shun the Rohingyas, as they continue to fear majority Buddhist backlash in electoral terms and otherwise.

 

The West wants the Rohingyas in but do not want to deny that they cannot be branded jihadis with a sweeping hand. India is caught in between, but the Indian concerns on both the humanitarian and terrorism fronts are real. It has to become more realistic, a balance of both.

Greater consequences

The Centre’s security concerns flowing from the ‘refugee’ issues are real, but cannot be sweeping, either. If nothing else, it still has to be seen as playing fair by all kinds of refugees. For instance, aspects of the continuing refugee-centric, if not refugee-induced politics in Tamil Nadu have greater consequences for the Indian Nation – but no one in Delhi seems to be as concerned about it all as they are about the Rohingyas just now.

There is then the growing tendency for the ‘trans-national government of Tamil Eelam’ (TGTE), located in the West, to get involved in Indian affairs. The latest one is for the so-called sports ministry of TGTE conducting sports events in Tamil Nadu, with the participation of their self-styled ‘parliamentarians’, who continue to have periodic sessions in some part of the world or the other, with the full knowledge and possible blessings of western governments.  At the height of the ‘anti-NEET protests’ in Tamil Nadu recently, TGTE instituted a scholarship in the name of Anitha, the aspiring-medico who committed suicide as she could not clear the national-level exam.

It is not just about the rump LTTE’s possible hopes of and aspirations for a ‘greater Eelam’, including parts of Indian territory, which should be of concern for the Union, while addressing the ‘Rohingya refugee’ issue just now – but it should also concern ‘Kashmiri secessionism’ that has been a live issue since Independence. The Centre has since commenced negotiations with NSCN-IM on the ‘Naga issue’ without telling the nation what it is all about. Selectively-leaked media reports talk about ‘shared sovereignty’, which again has not been denied, either.

Then there are unilateral ‘referendums’ for an ‘independent’ Catalonia in Spain and those in Iraq, for a separate Kurdistan. India has since reiterated its commitment  to a “stable, peaceful, democratic and a united Iraq that is able to settle its internal affairs amicably through peaceful process of dialogue and other constitutional means, which serve the interest of the people of Iraq”. This has also been consistent with the Indian position on the ethnic issue in neighbouring Sri Lanka, all along.

Yet, all such issues and developments have consequences for the Indian nation, where we now also have a revived discourse on ‘cultural nationalism and constitutional nationalism’ adding to an avoidable confusion and contradiction that the nation can ill-afford, now or ever.

 

There is also the continuing failure of New Delhi’s elite of all types and kinds to sweep all aspects of alienation from the Indian Nation that they do not understand – nor care to understand – as being motivated, and are aided and funded by foreign forces.

This year’s massive Tamil Nadu protests on Jallikattu bull-taming and NEET are a case in point. The truth lies in between, and ideological branding alone does not help, whether they pertain to the Naxal issues in the North and the East, continuing from the anti-development protests that the present-day ruling BJP had supported while in the Opposition, or some other local concern.

The Union of India thus cannot view or review the Rohingya refugee issue in isolation, either as a security concern or as a humanitarian problem. There are elements of both and in abundance. The long-tested approach to the Sri Lankan refugees in Tamil Nadu camps is a good way to look at the problem – of housing the genuine refugees in insulated camps, and isolating possible/identifiable trouble-makers in ‘special camps’ as was the case with known LTTE cadres, especially after the ‘Rajiv Gandhi assassination’.

The Union of India thus cannot view or review the Rohingya refugee issue in isolation, either as a security concern or as a humanitarian problem.

 

The views expressed above belong to the author(s). ORF research and analyses now available on Telegram! Click here to access our curated content — blogs, longforms and interviews.

Contributor

N. Sathiya Moorthy

N. Sathiya Moorthy

N. Sathiya Moorthy is a policy analyst and commentator based in Chennai.

Read More +