Refugees can be a source of prosperity in any nation where they take refuge. Illegal migrants can also bring prosperity to local communities in nations that they migrate to as well as to countries which they leave behind.
India knows this from its long experience throughout history. So does the United States, where millions of illegal immigrants do not live under the radar, or in squalid detention camps, but are productive contributors to economic activity in towns and cities from coast to coast. South Korea knows this only too well, and the Gulf countries acknowledge this as much.
Therefore, last fortnight’s debate about the fate of a relatively small number — by global refugee standards — of Rohingya refugees in Delhi is in the realm of make-believe, unreal, and even delusional.
It is now forgotten in the wake of the first ‘oil shock’ which transformed Gulf countries beyond recognition into El Dorados in the 1970s, the flood of illegal migrants who flocked there, risking their lives in small boats across the ocean, were from India. They were needed in those desert kingdoms and the sultanates and the sheikhdoms to build those nations into prosperous, modern societies that they are today.
In turn, their remittances lifted millions of families from poverty in India, which was then under severe economic stagnation, and heavy joblessness. Through the 1970s, ’80s, and ’90s, the benevolent rulers in the Gulf repeatedly gave amnesty to these illegal migrants from India. They were not put in detention camps and very few of those who arrived illegally were shipped back to India. For the most part, they were Hindus. Historical memory of this Indian experience was completely missing from all the debates about Rohingyas in India.
Go to Ontario or British Columbia today, and entire townships of Punjabis who arrived in Canada following Operation Bluestar as refugees have sprung up in and around Toronto or Vancouver. These one-time refugees have not only prospered as individuals and families, they continue to do so through successive generations. The industrious Sikhs among them, who fled India decades ago alleging persecution, have created thriving local economies in those towns. Canada’s famously liberal ethos has enabled them to be elected to Parliament and become federal ministers in Ottawa and in several Canadian provinces. This Indian experience was also missing from the recent debates about Rohingyas living in Delhi.
It is true that such refugee populations and illegal migrant and immigrant communities can be fertile recruiting grounds for countries which practice terror as State policy, and for non-State organisations which implement such policies through acts of terrorism. It is also part of South Asia’s historical experience that Khalistanis found willing perpetrators of heinous terror acts — including passenger aircraft bombings — among refugees in Canada who came from Punjab. When civil war was raging in Sri Lanka, overseas Tamil Tiger outfits in Greater Toronto resorted to extortion from both Sinhala and Tamil businesses in their strongholds in the Ontario province. These have been documented in Canada’s official evidentiary hearings.
Fortunately, this does not appear to have happened with Rohingyas in Delhi, who were at the centre of the recent controversy. News reports from Rajasthan, Haryana, Delhi, and Kashmir have also discounted threats of terrorism from such people, who are fleeing persecution back in their home province of Rakhine in Myanmar. In Rajasthan, there is only one case against Rohingyas, which relates to a sexual assault on one of their own. In the hotbed of terrorism in Jammu and Kashmir, the Rohingyas are only minding their business of survival.
The reality is that illegal migration and refugee exodus the world over are there to stay. They cannot be wished away by speeches in parliaments or Houses of Congress, which are often laced with bravado — or by tweets in today’s digital environment. Otherwise, the office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), the global refugee agency formed 72 years ago, would have been disbanded long ago.
India has reservations about the UNHCR, which have a historical context, reinforced by New Delhi’s refugee experience during the 1971 war for the creation of Bangladesh. If India becomes the $5-trillion economy, which it aspires to be, illegal migration inward is certain to increase. As the political and economic environment worsens all around in India’s neighbourhood — Sri Lanka, Nepal, Myanmar, and Maldives are apt examples — refugees can be expected to be a growing headache for the ministries of home and external affairs in New Delhi. The resources of intelligence and security agencies will be stretched.
Like the US, India has a long history of giving opportunities to refugees to prosper, and in assimilating illegal immigrants, who mostly improve their lot, having got a second chance in life, as it were, by moving to India. The demographic changes in the Northeast are proof of the latter.
Only five years ago, Hindus, Jews, and Christians came together at the Consulate General of India in New York to celebrate a moving cinematic tribute to the generosity of what is now Gujarat and Maharashtra in offering refuge to 1,000 Jewish and Christian children from Poland. At the National Day reception at the residence of the South Korean Ambassador in New Delhi, one frequently encountered Koreans who spoke fluent Hindi. These were prisoners of war from the Korean conflict in the 1950s, and their children. They opted to move to India permanently when the armistice talks stalemated in 1953. Their stories of how Jawaharlal Nehru took a personal interest in their welfare for years after they made this country their home tell of an India which welcomed outsiders in need of succour.