ROHINGYA CRISIS: GLOOMY PRECEDENT FOR REFUGEES SEEKING TO STAY IN INDIA
▶ It has taken 50 years for Buddhists and Hindus fleeing Bangladesh to have their citizenship rights recognised
As 40,000 Rohingya refugees struggle for permission to remain in India, two other groups of refugees now have a tenuous hold on Indian citizenship, fully half a century after arriving in the country.
The home ministry announced last week that 100,000 Chakmas and Hajongs – Buddhists and Hindus who fled to India from Bangladesh in the 1960s – would gain citizenship, in the wake of a 2015 supreme court order. At present, the two communities live in the north-eastern state of Arunachal Pradesh.
The struggles of the Chakmas and Hajongs, and the complications that have quickly beset their new citizenship, offer a grim preview of what might await the Rohingya in India.
The Chakmas and Hajongs lived in the Chittagong Hill Tracts in East Pakistan, before the region declared its independence as Bangladesh in 1971.
As minorities in a Muslim-majority nation, the groups became victims of religious violence and fled across the border to India.
These migrations, which occurred between 1964 and 1969, involved about 15,000 people.
Subsequent generations swelled their numbers, but the government resisted granting citizenship or any associated rights to Chakma or Hajong children born in India.
The refugees did, however, gain access to basic state services: education, health care and subsidised food rations. To sustain themselves, they took odd jobs or farmed meagre plots of land that were allotted to each family.
In permitting the refugees to stay, India was fulfilling its obligations under international law, even though it never signed the United Nations’ 1951 Refugee Convention, said Nafees Ahmad, a scholar in human rights law at South Asian University in New Delhi.
“This is just something that the committee of civilised nations subscribes to – that you don’t send people back to places where their lives may be in danger,” Mr Ahmad said.
When the Chakmas and Hajongs originally settled in India, they were installed in a region called the North East Frontier Agency (Nefa), which was administered directly by the government in Delhi.
In 1972, however, as Nefa acquired its own government and was renamed Arunachal Pradesh, local political objections to the refugees grew.
Parties and student unions claimed that the “outsiders” had been imposed upon Arunachal Pradesh, and that they were being given valuable state assistance that would be better directed to the indigenous tribes who had lived there for centuries.
A series of lawsuits, filed by the committee for citizenship rights of the Chakmas of Arunachal Pradesh, claimed that the refugees were being persecuted by state authorities and locals, and that formal citizenship would ensure they were not turned out of the country.
In 2015, the supreme court, issuing a final verdict in the case, gave the government three months to complete citizenship formalities.
“They [should] not be discriminated against in any manner,” the two judges on the bench wrote in their ruling.
But objections out of Arunachal Pradesh continue.
Last Monday, Pema Khandu, the state’s chief minister, wrote to the home ministry about the decision to grant citizenship to the refugees.
“I reiterate that the people of
my state are not ready to accept any infringement on the constitutional protection bestowed on the tribals of Arunachal Pradesh,” he said.
Being a member of prime minister Narendra Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party, Mr Khandu’s letter received a speedy response. On Tuesday, Kiren Rijiju, India’s deputy home minister, said that the supreme court’s order might not be implementable after all.
“We need to inform the supreme court that Chakmas and Hajongs have entered illegally and stayed in settlement camps,” said Mr Rijiju, an MP from Arunachal Pradesh.
The fact that these groups have been allowed to stay for so long, however, is telling, Mr Ahmad said.
“We have let in plenty of Hindu and Sikh refugees from Pakistan and Bangladesh, and Tamil Hindu and Christian refugees from Sri Lanka,” he said.
“But with Bangladeshi Muslims or Rohingya Muslims, they belong to minority groups that are not politically powerful within the country.
“If the Rohingyas are turned out, the perception will be that the state discriminates on the basis of religion.”