Will India’s Supreme Court slam the door on Rohingya?
India probably has the most porous borders, so why is it trying to pack up Rohingya from across the country?
Sometime later this morning the Supreme Court of India will hear a petition submitted to it by two Rohingya men who have questioned the Modi government’s order to deport 40,000 Rohingya who entered India illegally.
They went on the run ostensibly to escape persecution and possible death in the ethnic cleansing currently being orchestrated in Rakhine district of Myanmar.
Most of India is impervious to this odd decision in a country that, according to the Minister of State for Home Affairs, Kiren Rijiju, hosts 20 million illegal Bangladeshis and does nothing about it. The main reason for this is that Myanmar is behind a bamboo wall, a mystery in itself and there is no nexus between that country and the Indian mindset. Ergo, there is not much consternation over their plight.
The decision by the highest court will on either count be problematic. If the bench accepts the plea and freezes the deportation it is egg on the face of the Modi administration and focuses attention on the insensitivity of the decision to send these people packing. Government agencies can then engage in harassment by silently defying the court verdict, thereby creating bad blood and setting the tone for activating the seed of another terrorist group.
If the court decides that there is just cause to remove these people who have now been in India over two years, their dispatch is not going to be easy. While the centre has managed to glean a fair amount of ground support by waving two red flags in the nation’s face it is also at fault. National security and terror recruitment are both sellable commodities and tend to camouflage the humanitarian aspects of caring for these cornered men, women and children.
When they entered India, they were placed in Jammu and Kashmir and Hyderabad and then they filtered into various parts of the country. That in itself wasn’t very smart and now making an issue of possible terror recruitment seems futile.
Add to this the fact that the 11 Rohingyas who are in a Manipur jail officially awaiting deportation these past five years haven’t gone anywhere because Myanmar refuses to recognise them and one appreciates how impossible it is going to be to round up 40,000 Rohingya from across the country, none of them with passports (Myanmar does not issue them this document) and then have Yangon accept them.
Regardless of the decision in court today the exercise has no hope of succeeding and yet, the shrillness of the ‘fear’ that is being associated with their presence
Why is the BJP government so determined to be hostile in a nation that is known for its graciousness and tolerance? Never have refugees been turned away with such hardnosed resistance. It is certainly not to please Myanmar with whom India has a very distant relationship
is exceptional. The Modi government has stated it will expel even those Rohingyas registered with the UN refugee agency even though it is a violation of Article 21 of the Indian constitution which calls for the protection of life and liberty of anyone on Indian soil. If these people face extermination then Article 21 can apply against the principle of refoulement ... sending human beings to a place where they face imminent danger.
By nature and by history Indians have not been a harsh people and India probably has the most porous borders in the world even more than the Mexico-US Rio Grande ‘fifty yard’ dash across the riverbed.
Bangladeshis cross at will and there is no strategic or long term planning to patrolling these frontiers. Manipur’s border with Myanmar is practically an open road. But the link being ‘sold’ to Indians is that these 40,000 men, women and children who are now in the cross hairs are easy candidates for terror outfits and a risk India cannot take. On the face of it this is an issue worthy of attention. But when measured against the ground reality the perceived risk is severely diminished.
The roguish antecedents of the Rohingyas is much like the prejudice to the Romas and gypsies in Europe. That unfair suspicion for ‘no good’ nomads endures.
Whether they are grist for the terror mill no one can say for sure, but certainly if they are on the run from their reluctant hosts then these 40,000 become that much more malleable to being co-opted by recruiters. India must be very careful post the Supreme Court decision in ensuring it does not paradoxically hasten the very situation it wants to avoid.
And while on this subject, these wretched and beaten civilians are not our major threat. The enemy has been within the gates for years. As early as 2008 the security advisor National Security Advisor M K Narayanan had said that over 800 terror outfits were operating in India and 33 per cent of India’s districts were adversely affected by terror activity. The SATP (South Asian Terror Portal) has listed 180 terrorist groups that have operated within India over the last 20 years. A few more are not going to be making much of a difference.
So why is the BJP government so determined to be hostile in a nation that is known for its graciousness and tolerance? Never have refugees been turned away with such hardnosed resistance. It is certainly not to please Myanmar with whom India has a very distant relationship. Think of it. If the terror angle was actually the issue why would they have been placed in bulk in a ‘no can go’ area like J and K.
The only possible explanation is that the Modi government knows it is stuck with these 40,000 and will have to absorb them. Carting them across to a country that will not acknowledge their existence at a time that it is killing them makes the return journey a non-starter.
Consequently, the centre is generating this froth to stop more refugees coming in. The message then is the Rohingya are not welcome, India will stop you entering under national security considerations. Even if it goes against the Indian tradition of opening its doors to all. Bikram Vohra is former Editor of Khaleej Times