What Indians need to know about the Rohingya Refugees

On May 8th, this year, the Indian Navy allegedly threw 43 Rohingya refugees into the sea. These refugees who were living in Delhi were detained, blind folded, and flown to the Andaman and Nicobar islands. From there, they were transferred to an Indian Navy ship on the pretext of biometric data collection and taken near an island in Myanmar, from where they were thrown into the sea with only life jackets, including women, children, and the elderly. The United Nations has launched an inquiry into this, calling it an “unconscionable, unacceptable” act. The case was brought before the Supreme Court, but they expressed scepticism about the claims and refused to pass interim orders. 

When the news came out on May 15th, many Indians in the social media comment box expressed a deeply troubling display of a lack of empathy, with many celebrating and justifying the act with communal and xenophobic undertones, reflecting a disturbing normalisation of cruelty and violence. 

Many comments refer to the Rohingyas as illegal, Bangladeshis, infiltrators, and terrorists, either dismissing their refugee status or being unaware of it, linking their identity solely to their Muslim religion. The comments also include nationalist slogans like “Jai Shree Ram” and “Bharat Mata Ki Jai” and dismiss human rights concerns as anti-national and neo liberal nonsense. 

The hurls and abuses are even projected against the respective media houses, blaming them for advocating for giving asylum to them. Ironically, none of the articles request it, but rather report the human rights violation. But these netizens are projecting their assumptions into them, equating empathy with opening the borders.  

Most of them don't know who the Rohingyas are, except for their religious identity. This article explores their prehistory, the factors that drove them from their homes, and how they became the world’s most persecuted minority. Due to the word limit, the article cannot include everything about them, but it has ensured that it does not cherry-pick information. 

Rohingya are the ethnic Muslim minorities from the Rakhine state (formerly Arakan) of Myanmar, formerly known as Burma. They trace their lineage in the region to the 15th century, when thousands migrated here. During the colonial rule of British India in the 19th and early 20th century, the British encouraged the Bengalis and other native Indians to migrate and settle in Burma to work in plantations and paddy fields. But Rohingyas were culturally and linguistically different from them. Burma had a Buddhist majority, who were oppressed by the colonial rule, and so the British preferred the Muslims for administrative positions. Hence, the anti-colonial, Buddhist nationalist Burmese people started using the “us vs them” rhetoric against the Rohingyas, who were ethnically, linguistically, and religiously different from them. 

During World War II, the Japanese occupied Burma and drove the British out. The Burmese nationalists welcomed the Japanese, and together they oppressed the Rohingyas for their pro-British stance, resulting in intercommunal violence between Buddhist Rakhines and Rohingya Muslims. 

In 1945, the Japanese left, and in 1948, Burma gained its independence from the British. At this point, Burma fell under the military junta, under the control of General Ne Win, who carried out several operations against the Rohingyas. The majoritarian sentiments rose amongst the Buddhists during the 1971 Bangladesh Liberation War when many Bangladeshis were forced to seek refuge in Arakan, leading to a protest against them out of fear of being outnumbered. Subsequently, the Military expelled over 200,000 Muslims back to Bangladesh, including the Rohingyas. 

In 1982, the Burmese enacted the Citizenship Law, which recognised 135 ethnic groups as citizens, since they had settled in Burma before 1823, while Rohingyas were excluded, thereby becoming illegal. This became impossible for the Rohingyas to prove their lineage in the region, as most people did not hold any legal documents before the independence in 1948. Since then, they have been labelled as Bangladeshis, and the government refuses to acknowledge them as Rohingyas, even though they have been using this term for centuries, making them stateless.

Further, in between 1991 and 1992, the Military started oppressing Rohingyas in the pretext of ‘Operation Clean and Beautiful Nation’, including the denial of rights such as freedom of movement, approval of marriage, and restriction on education, forcing over 250,000 to flee to Bangladesh. Around the same time, the junta began issuing them White Cards, which would identify them as temporary residents. But that, too, was revoked due to pressure from Buddhist nationalists. 

In 2012, there was a widespread fear amongst Rakhine Buddhists that they would soon become a minority. In June, a massive riot broke out between Rakhine Buddhists and Rohingya Muslims following the rape and murder of a Rakhine woman allegedly by Rohingya, and Muslims of all ethnicities were targeted. Soon, it turned into a pogrom where the police and the military either stood with the rioters or took no action, and the government even allegedly supplied knives and free food to the rioting Rakhine men. Villages were burned, and 140,000 people were displaced, which the experts called the beginning of state-sanctioned apartheid. 

In 2017, there was retaliation from Arakan Rohingya Salvation Army (ARSA), a Rohingya insurgent group, which targeted police checkposts and military outposts. In turn, the military launched a brutal clearance operation, involving the burning of the entire villages, mass executions, rapes, often in front of their families and throwing infants into fire or water, which, according to the UN, is a textbook example of “ethnic cleansing”.

Since then, Rohingyas have been migrating to neighbouring countries of Bangladesh, India, Thailand, and Malaysia. Almost a million of them are in Bangladesh, which has limited resources and land to host them. Many live in the crowded camps of Cox Bazar, which is the world’s largest refugee camp. Children here have no access to education, and everyone is at risk of diseases due to poor sanitation and water contamination. 

While fleeing persecution from Myanmar and the dire conditions of the refugee camps, the Rohingyas rely heavily on boats. These boats are often poorly maintained wooden vessels, crowded with women, children, and the elderly. The Coast Guards of the nearby countries, including India, Thailand, and Malaysia, often fire at these boats approaching their maritime borders to scare them away. As a result, there are instances where these refugees are stranded at sea, usually dying due to dehydration and lack of healthcare, while some make it to the coast, either unnoticed or detained, and others drown at sea. One thing is certain here: Myanmar is not an option. When your house is on fire, you reach out to the nearest or safest house. Not the friendliest or the house that follows your religion. 

Indian law considers them illegal and not as refugees, since India is not a signatory to the 1951 Refugee Convention. Nationalists commonly cite this status to demonise the Rohingyas. According to the government, they’re a national threat. However, being illegal doesn't inherently make anyone a criminal. They're illegal because of their stateless, undocumented status, not because they’ve committed any crime. Similar sentiments were echoed by some Indians when the Trump administration deported Indian nationals in a flight to Amritsar, with the immigrants handcuffed and their legs chained, without access to food, water, or a toilet, earlier this year. This notion seemingly stems from a nationalist idea where India belongs to Indians, America to Americans, and Bangladesh to Bangladeshis, oversimplifying a complex history shaped by migrations.

Migrations are inevitable. They’re the foundation of civilisations. History has proven again and again that the world progresses when human beings migrate from one place to another in search of better opportunities, financial gain, and to escape persecution, war, disasters, pandemics, and other forms of adversity. The world as we know it came into being with the exchange of cultures, languages, labour, and resources. No nation, society, or religion was formed in a vacuum; they’re a result of the intermixing and intermingling of societies. 

The Indian Government passed the Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA) of 2019, aiming to provide citizenship to certain minorities from the neighbouring countries of Pakistan, Afghanistan, and Bangladesh, excluding Muslims. When experts and activists cited this as discriminatory, the most common justification against it was, “Muslims don’t face persecution in Muslim countries”. What about the Rohingyas, the world’s most persecuted minority? Why was Myanmar excluded? What about Ahmadiyya Muslims of Pakistan? And Non-Pushtun Muslims of Afghanistan? Why only these three countries? India's other neighbours, including China and Sri Lanka, also have minorities facing persecution, such as Uyghur Muslims and Tibetans in China, and Eelam Tamils in Sri Lanka. 

The biggest irony of anti-immigrant polices, especially when they’re rooted in religion, is the fact that some of their own Gods and Prophets were refugees themselves. Abraham, Moses, Jesus, Buddha, Sri Ram, and Sri Krishna were all forced to migrate out of their place of birth. In today’s world order, they would likely be turned away at the borders.