India for Indians only?

India for Indians only?

Recently I came across the debate that was happening in India which I found extremely surprising. The country of Myanmar got its independence in 1948 and implemented a new law that only people who have been living in the country for the past 50 years with proof will be granted citizenship. Some speculations suggest that this law was made to merely target the Rohingya muslim minority in order to consider them as illegal migrants.The country of Myanmar is a democracy but the military executes more power. A recent instance of violence that triggered the military is when 12 security officers were killed by the Rohingya militants, but there is no compelling evidence supporting the occurrence of this instance. Following this, as the UN calls it ‘Ethnic cleansing’ started taking place and the military in the 2016 started taking siege of the city there were staying in. Hence,the Rohingya refugees recently migrated in larger numbers to India and Bangladesh due to the fear of persecution.

Situation in India:

In the past seven years approximately 40,000 Rohingya muslims have been living in India. India’s policy has always been to welcome and host refugees who fear persecution and under the non-refoulement law cannot deport them back to their country unless the situation in their home country is resolved. However, the government of India decided to deport these refugees back to the state of Rakhine, Myanmar as they believed some of the illegal migrants were affiliated with Pakistan terror organizations and other extremist group and hence pose a threat to national security. Withal, no evidence supporting this claim has been made public yet. I mentioned ‘surprising’ in the first sentence of the blog because almost all the government officials are in favor of deportation of so called ‘illegal’ migrants. Hence a petition was filed to the Supreme court of India in order to question this (in my opinion an inconsiderate) decision by the government. In September 2017, the media was predominantly dominated with the news of Rohingya muslims in India and if and why they should be deported.

I am Indian and have lived in India for ¾ of my life hence I am naturally biased in favor of some of these accusations on the Rohingya minority. That being said, I do not agree with the decision of deporting all these 40,000 refugees back as many of them have started a new life here. I found it startling that India did not sign the UN convention relating to the stating of Refugees so is not legally bound to follow it. Nevertheless India has accepted about 20 million of Bangladesh refugees and has been following the refugee convention in the past years.

The Supreme court came to a conclusion that the refugees must not be deported but it didn’t pass a formal order yet. The petitioners were asked to inform the supreme court incase they saw witnessed any deportation. I was glad to hear this decision, but it definitely made me question if the the Rohingya muslims would be able to live in peace and be able to integrate into the society as India has a history of religious tension between the majority Hindu and minority Muslim population. In addition most of them have settled in the eastern and northern part of India where the local citizens are not very tolerant of these Rohingya muslims and even more now as they have the support of the government. On the other hand I also partially agree with the government as these people did enter India without documentation but never appealed for seeking asylum yet. The next court hearing is on November 21 and concrete decisions are yet to be made. Can India have a balance between national security and human rights with regards to deciding the fate of these ‘illegal migrants’?

• The Husky