Locating Pakistani nationals in India: challenges and responses

Abstract

Ever since the partition of the Indian subcontinent, there has been a flow of migrants from Pakistan to India. Since the second Indo-Pak war, Indian states, specifically Rajasthan and Gujarat, witnessed a large number of cross-border intersections. Within Rajasthan, Jodhpur has become an area of high concentration of Pakistani nationals. This could be attributed to the fact that Jodhpur has an international railway station which is connected to Karachi via the Thar express. Secondly, Jodhpur is one of the demarcated permissible cities mentioned on the visas of Pakistani nationals. There is presence of Pakistani nationals in other districts of Rajasthan as well such as Jaisalmer, Bikaner, Barmer, and Ganganagar. Coming mostly from rural areas of Punjab and Sindh, these migrants belong to Bhil tribes Meghwals, Suthars, Lohars, among others. The reasons for migration from Pakistan to India is to escape discrimination on the basis of religion, class, caste, and culture as also to access wider employment opportunities. In India, along with issues of unemployment, irregular nature of jobs, less wages, poor living conditions, their main concern is to get Indian citizenship. India is not a signatory to the international regime of UN Convention on Refugees, 1951. However, the refugee framework developed by India is guided by the local context. The geographical contiguity, porous borders, and the history of Partition has led India to adopt a policy that doesn’t strictly adhere to internationally accepted definition of refugees. India’s policies, on the contrary, are favourable to persecuted religious minorities only from three neighbouring countries. Indian policies are thus guided by South Asian refugee framework against the backdrop of India’s partition. The paper, thus, analyzes migrations from Pakistan to India at these two levels – challenges of migrants and responses and policies of the Indian government.