A Rohingya Comedy of Errors And Sins Of the Father

Who let in so many of the dangerously anti-social Islamic community of Rohingyas into India? That too, most surreptitiously. There are as many as 40,000 in cities like New Delhi, Hyderabad, Jammu. Rohingyas, that Myanmar forcibly expelled as bloodthirsty trouble-makers, and Bangladesh confined to an island?

Myanmar forced as many as 740,000  out of its 1.4 million Rohingyas to flee, initially to Bangladesh. In India, it has long been allegedly a dastardly UPA tale to increase the Islamic footprint with its own set of natural subversives as a pressure group. This, even as the UPA tends to suggest they got in, illegally, but on their own initiative. There are Rohingyas in West Bengal too, and those might have been aided and abetted in their illegal entry by the TMC government that rules the state.

But the Rohingyas in J&K and others in Delhi and Hyderabad were let in as refugees of sorts  while the UPA government was in power,  allegedly under the aegis of Salman Khurshid as Union Foreign Minister. When quizzed on it Khurshid tends to hem and haw with lofty attitudes about refugees, without however being the least bit apologetic.

The latest chapter in the tale has the AAP government of Arvind Kejriwal, renowned for its sympathy towards illegal Bangladeshi refugees including Rohingyas ex Bangladesh, a large number of whom live in North East Delhi the scene of recent bloody riots. The riots were clearly helped and sponsored by certain AAP functionaries of Bangladeshi extraction. Now AAP has been trying to establish 1,100 of the Rohingyas in Central Government owned EWS quarters under Delhi Police guard, as UN designated refugees.

Ostensibly, this was agreed in May 2022, with the collusion of high officials in the Union Home Ministry and the Chief Secretary of the Delhi Government. An astounding, off-policy and totally out-of-character announcement was made on Wednesday 17^th August via a tweet from the Union Urban Development Minister Hardeep Puri. He appeared to welcome and hail the development and called it a decision of the Central Government.

Shortly afterwards, on the same day, there was another announcement, a fairly long one by way of a press conference, that stated the 1,100 Rohingyas were to stay put in their existing refugee camp pending deportation. And that the Home Ministry had issued no instructions whatsoever to shift the to EWS flats under Delhi Police protection.

And thereby probably hangs a tale of confusion confounded. Not only did it suggest a reversal of policy initially with regard to the unwanted Rohingyas, but it shocked many as no such consideration had been shown to Hindu refugees from Pakistan or Afghanistan, or indeed Muslim ones from Afghanistan or elsewhere. 

Was it therefore some very clever misinformation that bamboozled the highly sophisticated Union Minister Hardeep Puri, as well as large sections of the Indian media?

Is someone out to embarrass Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Home Minister Amit Shah on a day when a couple of senior ministers were dropped from the BJP Parliamentary board amid the elevation of several other notables from Karnataka, Telangana, Assam and Maharashtra?

After the brief drama was laid to rest with the BJP’s status quo announcement, Minister Hardeep Puri, promptly if cryptically, endorsed the changed position.

For a brief moment however, it did draw the national attention to the problem of illegal immigrants from Bangladesh, including those that originated in Myanmar like the Rohingyas, and the embedded security threat they pose. Some have even been settled by the erstwhile J&K government including Congress at the centre well before Article 370 was revoked. They were settled in close proximity to military establishments in Jammu. Why? Who wants a separate Kashmir amongst the political classes in India in addition to Pakistan?

It is estimated there are as many as 4 crore illegal immigrants from  Bangladesh who have spread out all over the country.  They are prominent in  Communist ruled Kerala. Many have acquired false papers, even as gently handled protests have stalled the efforts like the NRC and CAA.

The deportation of illegal refugees is a matter long spoken of, that has seen little or no progress on the ground. Sensitivities in bilateral relations with both Myanmar and Bangladesh are in the way. Meanwhile there is elaborate criticism from Human Rights Groups abroad, lobbies inimical to the progress of India in the West, as well as sections of the Indian Opposition who want all these people and more absorbed by India.

That this is not what the Western stance is with regard to more than a very limited number of refugees entering their own countries is conveniently ignored. It is therefore yet another plank to try and weaken India in its quest  to become a developed country by 2047.

Unwanted refugees, Islamic militantcy, insurgency fomented by Pakistan and China, terrorism, Maoist revolutionaries, radical anti-government intellectuals taking advantage of their democratic freedoms and students who think like them, organisations backed by American evangelists, and others backed by billionaire George Soros, those who spread Hindumisia or Hinduphobia, are all part of this plot.

So far India has avoided taking any kind of harsh stance, favouring a relentless gradualism and assiduous diplomacy instead. This has frustrated those forces that have long tried to provoke a more heated response. Both the upper echelons of the Bangladesh government and the Myanmar junta are busy opening new avenues of cooperation with India to our mutual benefit. India is using its forbearance about the refugees to good diplomatic purchase.

However, the stance of eventual identification of illegals, their confinement in designated camps under amed guard, and their eventual deportation, in small batches if necessary, has not been lost sight of.

It is also seen that with increased scrutiny and pressure on illegal refugees and those who help them, including Rohingyas, some are leaving by the same clandestine routes they took to get into the country in the first place. This rather than be incarcerated in illegal refugee camps.

India has long been unique in its foreign policy choices and its ability to wear down its enemies. This may not suit the occidental mind in particular with its penchant of favouring yes or no binaries, but is not that different from the way China thinks, minus the belligerence of course. It may be the way adopted by old civilisations that understand the effects of time and space on a given problem in the long run.

(1,067 words)

August 17^th, 2022

For: Firstpost/News18.com

Gautam Mukherjee