India's refugee policy vis-a-vis Rohingyas & Chin-Kuki-Zos

Yenning *

With many armed ethnic organizations or EAOs engaged in a sustained and bloody war with the military junta, it has been quite a few years since a serious humanitarian crisis has gripped several regions of Myanmar. The international community is fully aware of this crisis and many agencies and countries particularly the USA have been extending humanitarian aid to the affected people.

The USA has gone a step ahead by openly taking sides of the EAOs. Washington DC has been providing financial aid and logistic support to the EAOs. No doubt, humanitarian aid to people affected by such crisis or wars deserves appreciation and ought to be encouraged by one and all.

At the same time, the whole world needs to know that Manipur, a tiny state in the Northeastern region of India has been grappling with another humanitarian crisis just across Myanmar’s western border. Over 60,000 people have been displaced and living like refugees in their own state for over one year, and so far they have received little attention from the international community.

Any keen observer knows well that the Manipur crisis has a direct link with the Myanmar crisis. Any reading of the Manipur crisis will never be complete without understanding the idea of Zalengam which is being championed by several Chin-Kuki-Zo militant groups operating on both sides of the India-Myanmar border.

Zalengam is a proposed separate nation which would comprise large parts of Sagaing division and the Chin state of Myanmar, the Indian state of Mizoram, and Kuki-inhabited areas of Manipur, and the Bandarban district and adjoining areas of Bangladesh’s Chittagong division.

The idea of Zalengam may sound too ambitious and implausible at the moment but it is very much there in several documents and publications of the Chin-Kuki-Zo militant groups. It is this seemingly untenable political ambition which is driving the Chin-Kuki-Zo militants to fight the military junta in Myanmar, the government of Bangladesh and the government of Manipur in India almost simultaneously.

In India, the Chin-Kuki-Zo militant groups’ demand, at the moment, is limited to creation of a separate administration or an exclusive union territory for the Chin-Kuki-Zo people within the Union of India which apparently is harmless to the interest of India.

It was with this stated objective of creating an exclusive political domain that the Chin-Kuki-Zo militant groups, most of whom are under a suspension of operation agreement with the government of India, launched a pre-planned and premeditated aggression on May 3, 2023 against the Meitei people in Manipur with the help and active participation of Chin-Kuki-Zo EAOs operating across the border in Myanmar.

They chose Meiteis as their primary target because the Meiteis have always been the unshakable champions of the idea of a united, pluralistic Manipur. Not long after the Chin-Kuki-Zo militants launched their aggression, a humanitarian crisis unfolded in Manipur with hundreds of villages burnt down and plundered in different parts of the state, thereby giving birth to over 60,000 internal refugees.

While conveniently overlooking the humanitarian crisis gripping Manipur since May 2023, the government of India has been helping Myanmar refugees with food, shelter and other basic amenities. The government of India has not talked about resettlement of the displaced people till date.

No doubt, any responsible government is morally bound, if not legally, to help refugees in any part of the globe. However, government of India’s response to influx of refugees from Myanmar is unofficial, sectarian and politically motivated.

The Government of India has not ratified the 1951 Refugee Convention or its 1967 Protocol. As such, the question of determining which immigrants should be given official recognition as refugees is a matter of policy and prerogative of New Delhi, and New Delhi is not always willing or ready to harbor refugees within its territory.

Notwithstanding the severe humanitarian crisis facing the Rohingyas a few years back, government of India closed all its borders to thousands of Rohingya people fleeing Myanmar. Those who managed to sneak into India were hunted down and they were either put behind bars or deported back to Myanmar.

Violence in Rakhine state of Myanmar displaced several hundred thousand Rohingyas within Myanmar and driven out some 700,000 of them to neighboring Bangladesh after the military launched a bloody crackdown triggered by militant attacks on security posts in late August 2017. The United Nations (UN) described the violence against the Rohingya community as a “textbook example of ethnic cleansing.”

Although the Rohingya crisis was one of the worst ever humanitarian crises witnessed in the region, India adopted an unfriendly posture, if not totally antagonistic, to the Rohingya refugees in the later phases of the crisis. When the Rohingya crisis first erupted in 2012, India allowed Rohingya refugees to enter the country and did not make it an issue in its domestic politics or in its bilateral relations with Myanmar.

But after the BJP-led NDA government came to power, India drastically changed its approach to the Rohingya crisis. This was followed by detention and deportation of Rohingyas from India. Responding to a petition which sought the release of Rohingya refugees detained for alleged violations of the Foreigners Act, the government of India told the Supreme Court, “India, being a developing nation with the highest population globally, should prioritize its own citizens”.

Interestingly, New Delhi refers to the Rohingya refugees in Bangladesh as ‘displaced persons’, but those in India are seen as ‘illegal immigrants’. The BJP has long championed the issue of deporting Bangladeshi illegal immigrants in India’s Northeast. In its 2014 election manifesto, the party promised to address the issue of infiltration and illegal immigrants in the Northeast region on a priority basis.

However, there seems to be a big difference between the BJP-led government’s Rohingya approach and older ways of managing refugees. In the case of the Rohingyas, the government shut the doors to them, whereas India had often welcomed refugees in other cases. Moreover, no refugees in the past had been seen as posing a “terrorist threat”, whereas the security concern was the key argument of the government in the case of the Rohingyas.

Regardless of how India’s Rohingya approach is viewed, there is a consensus that it is shaped by various factors including diplomatic, domestic political compulsions, humanitarian, security and geopolitical considerations.

Whereas India shut its doors to Rohingyas fleeing Myanmar, New Delhi does not adopt the same posture with regard to Chin-Kuki-Zo immigrants. With regard to the Chin-Kuk-Zo immigrants, India adopted quite a flexible approach, accommodating thousands of these immigrants on its soil, particularly Mizoram and Manipur.

Whereas the Mizoram state government is more than happy to accommodate the Chin-Kuki-Zo immigrants for these immigrants are ethnically related to the Mizo people of Mizoram, they met with a mixed response in Manipur.

While the government of Manipur has no intention to harbor the refugees, the Kuki-Zo people of Manipur have been facilitating influx and settlement of their ethnically related immigrants from Myanmar in border and hill areas of Manipur.

Government of India has not officially endorsed any policy to accommodate refugees from Myanmar yet New Delhi is doing very little to stop the influx of Chin-Kuki-Zo immigrants even after it has acknowledged the hands of these immigrants in waging war against the Meitei people and challenging the integrity of Manipur.

The demography of Manipur has been altered dramatically over the decades as a result of continuous influx and settlement of illegal immigrants in the state. As reported in media, immigrants have outnumbered local people in several villages of Kamjong district as well as in Maring villages of Tengnoupal district.

When the state of Manipur is already battling against a sustained and premeditated Chin-Kuki-Zo aggression, fresh tensions have erupted in these border villages where Chin-Kuki-Zo immigrants are being accommodated.

Despite the political and socio-economic challenges posed by the Chin-Kuki-Zo immigrants to the state of Manipur and the indigenous people, the government of India thinks it expedient not to shut its doors to the Chin-Kuki-Zo immigrants unlike the Rohingyas. What explains New Delhi’s differential treatment of Chin-Kuki-Zos and Rohingyas?

Both these groups of people were fleeing persecution in Myanmar yet India adopted a totally contradictory position with regard to Chin-Kuki-Zo immigrants as compared to the Rohingyas. In another word, India’s refugee policy was quite rigid with regard to the Rohingyas but it was made inordinately flexible when it came to the Chin-Kuki-Zo immigrants.

More often than not, a country’s response to any refugee crisis is largely shaped by geopolitical, economic and strategic considerations while humanitarian considerations have always been secondary factors and India is no exception.

Apart from Meitei civilians and local police, Chin-Kuki-Zo militants have gunned down quite a many Indian armed forces personnel in the course of the violent conflict raging in Manipur since May 3, 2023 yet the government of India thinks it wise to project the open aggression against the state of Manipur as a communal violence.

If it is purely communal violence, why would the Chin-Kuki-Zo militants target and kill Indian armed forces personnel? Chin-Kuki-Zo militant groups operating on either side of the India-Myanmar border need India’s support and endorsement to carve out a separate administration or union territory out of Manipur.

On the other hand, with ethnic armed organizations advancing rapidly in its war against the Myanmar junta, it seems India is under a perceived or real compulsion to maintain a sort of bonhomie with ethnic armed organizations including Chin-Kuki-Zo militant groups to advance its own interests in Myanmar and across the region. It is this bonhomie which is casting a long shadow of doom on Manipur and all her indigenous people.