The Politics of Marginalization and Statelessness of the Rohingyas in India

Abstract

The Rohingyas from Myanmar are the world’s most persecuted minority without citizenship. For over five decades, they have faced continuous waves of communal violence, extrajudicial killings and discrimination. Especially, after the global denunciation of the military crackdown in August 2017 and United Nations accusing the country of “ethnic cleansing and genocide”, it is currently estimated that approximately 1.9 million ethnic Rohingyas are refused nationality/citizenship and its foreseen rights, while more than 723,000 Rohingyas have fled Myanmar. The recent deportation of seven Rohingyas by India and Bangladesh, and UNHCR signing an agreement with Myanmar on the return of Rohingya Muslims but without any guarantee of citizenship further tarnishes their identity between the man and the citizen, dumping them into a socio-legal limbo. Thereby, this raises debate over democracy, nationality/citizenship, human rights humanitarian assistance and protection regime for victims of forced migration and denationalization within the nation state paradigm. Based on the ethnographic inquiry conducted among stateless Rohingya refugees living in Delhi, Mewat and Jammu, the chapter looks into the historical and political dimension of the Rohingya crisis, while exploring their refracted and displaced realities and complexities of “everyday life” in asylum. It even contests the dominant discourse of the state and statehood while bringing the focus back to the “illegal-immigrant” transcending the South and Southeast Asian borders and beyond as stateless, refugees, cross-border migrants or simply as displaced persons.