分类： bharat

Rohingya Crisis In Andaman Sea

These Rohingya refugees were floating in a boat that malfunctioned in the Adaman Sea where the Indian Coast Guard found the refugees exhausted out of hunger and thirst last month. The refugees had set sail from Bangladesh for Malaysia on February 11. The engine of their boat failed mid-journey leaving the occupants adrift in the Indian Ocean.

When they left the massive camp of Cox’s Bazar, Bangladesh’s district bordering Myanmar, there were 90 Rohingya refugees onboard — 56 women, 21 men, eight girls and five boys. Four days later, the boat’s engine failed.

At least eight persons died before the Indian Coast Guard found their fishing boat. They were hungry and thirsty and were suffering from extreme dehydration.

India is feeding the survivors and providing medical treatment to them but it is not planning, at least yet, to take them ashore. India has communicated informed Bangladesh about the Rohingya survivors.

But Bangladesh has refused to take them back. Its foreign minister AK Abdul Momen last week told news agencies that Bangladesh has “no obligation” to take Rohingya refugees back. India has kept the channel of communication with Bangladesh open for the return of Rohingya survivors.

Why Bangladesh refused to take back Rohingya survivors?

Rohingya are residents of the Rakhine province of Myanmar but during a military crackdown in and after 2017, thousands of them fled their homes. Rohingya had been fleeing Myanmar for several years but rioting and military crackdown in 2017-18 saw a sudden exodus in larger numbers.

Bangladesh has been a destination for Rohingya refugees for long. After the latest of spate of exodus, Bangladesh is estimated to have up to 5 lakh Rohingya refugees.

Bangladesh has set up a massive refugee camp in Cox’s Bazar, where the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) is involved in their management. The UNHCR has issued ID cards to Rohingya refugees so that their human rights abuse is minimised.

At the same time, Bangladesh is facing pressure from within to ease the Rohingya refugee situation. It has been trying to de-congest Cox’s Bazar camp. It recently moved thousands of Rohingya refugees to a new and remote island called Bhasan Char in the Bay of Bengal.

This explains Bangladesh’s reluctance in taking back the Rohingya survivors who left the country’s shores last month. On the other hand, India has been cautious about accepting Rohingya refugees due to its own domestic compulsions.

A senior BJP leader admits the farmers had popular support till January 26. That’s why the RSS intervened and nudged the government to find a “middle ground”—that’s how the offer to keep the laws in abeyance came about. “However, the violence has been a self-goal,” he says. Ashwani Mahajan, co-convener of Swadeshi Jagaran Manch (SJM), another Sangh outfit, says the anarchy witnessed on Republic Day is not healthy in a democracy. “The government was being reasonable and flexible. Bringing in lakhs of people in an agitating mode was absolutely uncalled for. The farmers should have acc­epted the offer of suspending the laws. They too have to be receptive and cannot insist on repeal of laws. They lost an opportunity to find solutions,” he tells Outlook.

It’s natural that the BJP, finding itself on the wrong side of a popular protest coming out of the heart of rural north India, is amb­ivalent about the core issues—even if the RSS shares some of the farmers’ concerns. But the government has a point, and has derived a moral advantage in a situation where it was scarce. “The onus now rests with the union leaders to convince the Supreme Court that they were not responsible for the violence in Delhi and that ‘outsiders’ had hijacked their peaceful rally,” says a senior government functionary. The farmer leaders too are aware they have lost an edge they had. Those spearheading the agitation are back at the drawing board, re-strategising, trying to keep a brave front.

Some unions are not keen to get into further confrontation. Sensing that the narrative could be going against it for the first time, the Samyukta Kisan Morcha (SKM), the umbrella organisation handling the protests, insists “the movement will continue peacefully, and further steps will be discussed and decided soon”. They are sticking to the “outsiders” theory and renewing their pledge to “peaceful” means. Yogendra Yadav, part of regular media briefings on behalf of the protesters and active on social media, was all chagrin as he rendered a heartfelt apology for what happened in Delhi. But both those keen to see the movement in a bad light and those on the other side, clearing themselves with conspiracy theories, miss a point. The leadership is actually being led. Just like the anti-CAA protests of a year ago, these are classic leaderless protests. There will be some bad apples and some rosy-cheeked ones who like to be on TV. But this is not about them. Not when the whole orchard is out there.

Every conflict contains within itself the seeds of its own resolution. To see those affirmative signs, one may only need to amend the framing narrative, and enable it to fulfil its own potential. In this case, it’s about the Republic of India and what it says to itself through symbols and metaphors. India is a country that overthrew the most systematic form of oppressive power known to history—colonialism—without war. By doing so, it took power away from an illegitimate holder and restored it to the people. People are not illegitimate. They are the cells and nerves of this body politic. They are the republic. Once we grant that, we will not be detained by saboteurs, by conspiracy theorists, by centrists or rightists or leftists, by media parakeets or sensation-mongers.

Did the Sikh flag known as Nishan Sahib go up at Red Fort on January 26? Yes. Who put it up? There are stories and stories. Whoever did, it came to have a meaning. Did they displace the Indian flag? No. Is it okay for a religious symbol to be fluttering at a site that has come to be adopted by the Indian state as a metaphor for nationhood, despite a complicated and disputed history? Not necessarily. Did India’s new Parliament building project get inaugurated with religious symbolism? Yes, just the other day. A debate over which was more legitimate (or not) is not what India needs. There are more vital issues at stake, to do with livelihood.

The tractor rally on Republic Day came at the end of a two-month-long farmers’ movement—a strikingly durable and cohesive affair, judging by the numerous and disparate actors who are part of it. An ‘actor’ called Deep Sidhu does not describe them. But he took the lead role in producing a situation that became an inflection point for the movement—indeed, for India’s democracy itself. At the end of the day, the Nishan Sahib, the religious flag of Sikhs, was fluttering alongside the Tricolor at Red Fort. The streets of Delhi saw some violence as the police and protesters—children of the same social universe—encountered each other in a drama over the formal procedures of permission or its absence. Unprecedented scenes were witnessed as tractors—the very symbol of India’s green revolution—moved past barricades, attacking police personnel who came in their way, as they moved towards the symbolic heart of New Delhi. Under strict orders not to open fire, over 300 policemen sustained injuries. Many of them got multiple fractures, jumping into the moat from the Red Fort ramparts to escape violent agitators. They put themselves at risk to maintain law and order—vulnerable, and visible, in a way they were not when violence raged in the Capital a year ago. Or visible only in less than flattering ways. That was at the end of the anti-CAA agitation, a remarkably similar episode of India’s citizenry speaking to its government. Being Muslim-led, that was more vulnerable to popular characterisations of ‘anti-nationalism’. An allegation slightly more difficult to sustain when protesters come from the heartland of western UP, Haryana and Punjab.