Rohingya not entitled to refugee status, says brief concept note on ICHR seminar

Rohingya children at a camp in Delhi.

At a time when the Rohingya crisis in Myanmar is being debated — including whether India should indeed deport them or adopt a humanitarian stand — the Indian Council of Historical Research (ICHR) is organising a seminar on Wednesday to flesh out the difference between “refugees” and “illegal infiltrators”, seeing Rohingya Muslims as an example of the latter.

“Victims of religio-ethnic cleansing from the neighbouring countries that were part of eternal Bharat since time immemorial but got separated from us in 1947, are entitled to shelter and rehabilitation in India, but illegal infiltrators from outside India are not,” says a brief concept note on the seminar accessed by The Hindu .

“Rohingya are certainly not entitled to the refugee status. We have another category of refugees — who are internally displaced — like the Hindu community from our own Kashmir Valley, unfortunately now refugees in their own land!”

The note also says: “Study on refugees, or ‘forced migration’, is an established academic discipline in various countries, but somehow, it has yet to receive that kind of acceptability in India. As against this, there is the issue of illegal infiltration, and the two cannot be clubbed together.”

Governor of Tripura Tathagata Roy will inaugurate the seminar at the Nehru Memorial Museum and Library (NMML) and Indian Council of Social Science Research Chairman BB Kumar will deliver the valedictory address.

The speakers will include former Foreign Secretary Kanwal Sibal, Gen. G.D. Bakshi, Jawaharlal Kaul, Jitendra Bajaj, Jayanta Kumar Ray — who has researched Pakistan and east Pakistan, now Bangladesh — and retired police officer R.K. Ohri.

ICHR member Saradindu Mukherji told The Hindu that the idea was to draw a brief historical outline of India’s refugee policy from Independence to the present day. He, however, sought to draw a sharp distinction between the refugees of Partition and the 10-million refugees who came from East Pakistan around 1971 on the one hand, and the present Rohingya refugees.

“Lahore and Dhaka were very much part of India, but were given to Pakistan. The Hindus there did not want Pakistan. India was duty-bound to give them shelter. Similarly, we were duty-bound to give shelter to the largely Hindu refugees in 1971,” he said. “But Rohingya are from Myanmar and are not India’s responsibility. There is also a security threat as they are being radicalised and have links with Pakistani terror groups.”