It seems our intellectuals and liberals would stop at nothing short of ensuring complete rehabilitation of Rohingyas in India. Perhaps, if they had it their way, they would roll out the red carpet all the way from India to Rakhine state in Myanmar to facilitate the entry of Rohingyas into India. One doesn’t mean to belittle the severe humanitarian crisis that the Rohingyas are grappling with, nor can one pooh pooh the sufferings of innocent people who’ve been hounded out by the Myanmarese, but it is incomprehensible to understand why India of all the 195 countries in the world is expected to shoulder the burden of the Rohingyas. It is baffling to hear the UNHRC high commissioner, Zeid Ra’ad Al Hussein attack India for its threat to deport the Rohingyas from its territory. Perhaps, he is unaware of the concept of illegal immigrants or of security threats that India faces from illegal migrants that have made India their home. Either way, it is easy to treat the comments of UNHRC Commissioner with the disdain and contempt they deserve. What is more interesting is how the global intellectuals’ industry and their Desi henchmen have latched on to the idea of castigating India for not doing enough for the Rohingya refugees.
On a different note, Islam today is the world’s second largest religion, accounting for nearly a quarter of the world’s population. Of the 193 countries, as many as 50 are Muslim majority. Many among these are avowedly Islamic, following Islamic jurisprudence, law and one assumes sympathy and brotherhood towards fellow Muslims. Not long ago, the Syrian civil war and the ensuing refugee crisis rocked the world. Syria, a Muslim majority country, is located in the heart of the Muslim world, surrounded on all sides by Muslim nations. A large percentage of Syrian refugees found shelter in European nations, after having been dealt with in a not so humanitarian way by regional powers such as Saudi Arabia or UAE, who shut their doors to fellow Arab refugees. At the same time, these nations were at the forefront of demands for rehabilitation of refugees in European and other countries around the world. The devil, almost literally in this case, was quoting scripture. The impact of Syrian refugee crisis is far too obvious and much too recent to be forgotten. The refugees struggled to acclimatize, they struggled with European social mores and some turned into prospective or active terrorists. The rape endemic in parts of Germany and Scandinavia was attributed to the refugees. And yet, native movements such as AfD in Germany or right-wing movements in other parts of Europe were termed as racism, nazism and other epithets, even by nations that had turned their backs on the refugees. With this example fresh in mind, no wonder, nations are unwilling to look at the Rohingyas with a lens of humanitarianism alone.
Rohingyas are believed to be ethnic Bengalis who arrived in Rakhine centuries ago. Their behaviour in Myanmar has been suspect. They tried seceding from Myanmar to become a part of Muslim East Pakistan at the time of India’s partition and subsequently ran an insurgency against the Myanmarese state. It is only now, when the native Rakhine Buddhists have started reacting and that the Rohingyas are at the receiving end, that the humanitarian crisis has broken out on the world scene. Bangladesh, the country of origin for many Rohingyas has refused to accept the refugees, citing population pressures and prevailing economic situation. In spite of commonalities in terms of religion and culture, Bangladesh is unwilling to accommodate Rohingyas, believing them to be a security threat. Perhaps, this is true. Impoverished Bangladesh can’t accommodate Rohingyas because of its own troubles. In that case, why not have the Rohingyas accommodated in the more affluent Muslim nations viz. Malaysia, Indonesia, Saudi Arabia, UAE and others. Given the universal brotherhood of Islam, the refugees wouldn’t struggle to acclimatize in their new adopted lands. Countries such as India, which have refused to accept Rohingyas could even arrange for transporting the refugees to their new homelands, a sort of a ‘Sin tax’ for having failed to meet its ‘humanitarian obligations’.
In 1947, India was partitioned along religious lines, much to the discomfort and unwillingness of its Hindu population. A dedicated homeland for Muslims was created which was slowly emptied of its Hindu/Sikh population. Bangladesh, in spite of its overt secular-ness has continued with the same policy of ‘encouraging’ its non-Muslim minorities to either assimilate/convert or emigrate. Given that India is the only abode of Hinduism (other than Nepal) in the world today, why should India be expected to act in a way that is detrimental to its own native population. As much as our Mainstream Media would like to deny it, Rohingyas are a potential source of fundamentalism and terrorism in the country and should be deported. India has no obligations towards illegal immigrants that are no more than a burden on its resources and its people.
