The 'nowhere people'

India, or ‘Bharat’ as we are being asked to call her, upholder of the principle of ‘Vasudaiva Kutumbakam’ (‘This world is one family’) for centuries, which takes pride in welcoming refugees from neighbouring and far away countries, is facing a disturbing reality.

Today, political paranoia and hyper-securitisation of the asylum debate is igniting violent local hostility towards refugees from other countries living on Indian soil, and in the case of Rohingyas from Myanmar, is rendering them homeless again in their country of asylum, particularly in Jammu and Kashmir.

On April 30, the Sri Lankan Coast Guard intercepted a boat led by two suspected Indian traffickers, carrying 30 Rohingya refugees (which included 16 children all below the age of nine, one being four-months-old and another just a 15-days-old infant) who had been living in India for the past four years, with official refugee status that was due to expire in June this year.

The stateless Rohingya Muslims, denied citizenship under Myanmar’s 1982 Citizenship Act following their persecution by the majority Buddhist community in the Rakhine state of Myanmar, have for years been given shelter in India. However, today, these “Nowhere People”, are being forced to flee again. Why does the Indian state no longer want to give shelter to them?

In the late 18th century, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (1770–1831) introduced the concept of the ‘Other’ as a constituent part of self-consciousness (preoccupation with the self), which complements the propositions about self-awareness (capacity for introspection).

Phenomenologically, the concept of `self’ requires the existence of the `other’ as the counterpart entity required for defining the self. Today, in India, the condition of the Rohingyas - being hounded, deported and threatened to be killed - point towards an acute paranoid positioning of a state attempting to define itself by ostensibly removing the `other’.

According to the Ministry of Home Affairs, the number of Rohingya Muslims living in India range from 40,000 to 50,000 out of which 5,500–8,000 have been taking shelter in J&K for five to seven years. But last month, in a high-level security review meeting called by the Union home secretary and attended by the top officials of J&K, the need for an urgent security assessment and review, with regard to ‘illegal Rohingya settlers’ and Bangladeshi nationals in Jammu and Samba districts and a mechanism to detect, arrest and deport them, was discussed.

All done ostensibly amidst ‘intelligence inputs’ that they could become a potential security threat as Rohingyas could be exploited by militants and other such elements. What must be noted here is that, in reality, Rohingya Muslims have not been found to be linked to any terror activity.

Jammu and Kashmir Chief Minister Mehbooba Mufti, replying to a written question of BJP MLA Sat Pal Sharma in the Legislative Assembly, estimated the number of these refugees living in Jammu and Samba districts to be 5,743. But she stated that while 17 FIRs have been registered against 38 Rohingyas for various offences including those related to illegal border-crossing, “no Rohingya has been found involved in militancy-related incidents”. Yet security agencies fear that they may be “more prone to radicalisation than other Indian Muslims” and could “pose a threat” in future.

Rohingyas in Jammu are suddenly finding themselves at the receiving end of deeply contested and religiously motivated state practices, defining who will and will not be a member, or even guest, of the Indian nation-state. The UNHCR has recognised 14,000 Rohingya Muslims in India as ‘refugees’; however, the Government of India does not accept this status accorded by the UNHCR.

They are thus merely considered as foreigners who have entered the country illegally, which is read as a violation of the Foreigners’ Act, thereby making them liable to be categorised as ‘illegal migrants’ and subject to detection, arrest, prosecution, and deportation. This sudden escalation of the securitisation of the Rohingya presence in the state must be deeply interrogated.

Deporting Rohingyas
The J&K Panthers Party has put up hoardings, bearing photographs of party chairman Harsh Dev Singh and other political leaders in Jammu, asking the residents to ‘clean’ the city of Bangladeshi Muslims and Rohingyas. Even though the Jammu Chamber of Commerce and Industries has backtracked on its threat to kill Rohingya and Bangladeshi refu­gees living in Jammu after the warning triggered an outrage in the state, it has persisted with its call for deporting them.

State president of Shiv Sena Dimpy Kohli and other party leaders have made an appeal to the people of Jammu, especially the Hindus, to “wake up” and “unite” to “save the history, culture and identity of Dogras”. Why such acute polarisation of citizens and non-citizens?

This crackdown most visibly has a political objective and a religious angle too, as Rohingyas are concentrated in Jammu and Kathua in the Jammu region, where the BJP won maximum of seats in the last state Assembly elections, when the party had also aggressively projected and promoted the rights of people of Jammu, who are largely Hindu.

Thus, yet again on the grounds of religion, there are emerging radically divided political imaginaries within the state and its idea of citizenship — of who its members are, and who the ‘outsiders’ are. The hapless Rohingyas Muslims are today again being targeted for their religious identity under the garb of national security.

In a game, those who suffer are those who become its pawns; here, it is the Rohingyas. If deported, they face the grim situation of being thrown back into the very institutional ordering that had forced them to flee. They are being told in very clear terms that they remain the Other.

(Velath is Faculty and Roy Post-Graduate Researcher at the Master’s Department of Political Science, St Joseph’s College (Autonomous), Bengaluru)