{"title":"The Refugees’ Imperial Past","authors":"R. Kapoor","doi":"10.1093/oso/9780192855459.003.0002","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780192855459.003.0002","url":null,"abstract":"Set in the early twentieth century, this chapter focuses on the position of Indians within the transnational British Empire in the age of the nation-state based order of the League of Nations. It discusses the inequalities of Indian subject-citizenship within that empire, even as the British influenced key decisions of the League of Nations. The questions of self-determination, of minority rights, and of refugees are revealed to be inextricably intertwined, particularly in discussing the situation of India both within the empire and in its anomalous position at the League of Nations under British aegis. It thus exposes the tensions over the lack of Indian people’s equal rights under British rule, even as rights, assistance, and bureaucratic recognition that exceeded that of these citizens of the British Empire were extended to those called ‘refugees’, paving the way for the postcolonial nation-state’s policies.","PeriodicalId":400774,"journal":{"name":"Making Refugees in India","volume":"1 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-01-20","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"129437724","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Conclusion","authors":"R. Kapoor","doi":"10.1093/oso/9780192855459.003.0007","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780192855459.003.0007","url":null,"abstract":"This conclusion understands the aftermath of an idea of the refugee that was reliant on a notion of self-determination that was not just limited to national independence but which aimed at transforming a hierarchical international order. Even as the emancipatory potential of self-determination dimmed, the prioritisation of the national pulpit has continued—even as the idea of who naturally belongs to the nation is undergoing a shift with recent citizenship laws—with impact on both humanitarian practice and the enjoyment of individual rights. India’s case is thus revealing of a wider trend, the right to asylum and the position of refugees subject to nation-state needs and desires, and ad hoc treatment used to break down rights that should accrue to all people. It thus asks if the question of refugees rests, above all else, on the collective identity of those receiving and offering assistance to them.","PeriodicalId":400774,"journal":{"name":"Making Refugees in India","volume":"9 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-01-20","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"129733790","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"A Nation-in-Exile in the Age of Non-Alignment","authors":"R. Kapoor","doi":"10.1093/oso/9780192855459.003.0005","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780192855459.003.0005","url":null,"abstract":"The arrival of Tibetan refugees along with the Dalai Lama in 1959 saw India reframe its understanding of the refugee away from that of the citizen figure of Partition to one more closely resembling the international, UN, one, even relabelling ‘returning’ diasporic Indians from Burma as repatriates where they had previously been called refugees. The Tibetans were granted partial rights by India, as part of that state’s sovereign right to grant asylum, effectively turning the decision into a matter of Indian sovereignty rather than trying to paint this as an international censure of China’s violation of human rights in the bipolar atmosphere of the Cold War. In keeping with a non-aligned stance, India’s leaders debated the place of human rights as self-determination for the Tibetan people, with a resulting impact on how humanitarian aid offered by the international community, for a group that met the UN definition even though India rejected such recognition, was handled. The relationship both with China and with Burma, in the handling of the ‘refugees’ and the ‘repatriates’ reflected the Cold War and regional tensions inherent in the Afro-Asian bloc as anti-colonial solidarities were transformed by postcolonial state-building.","PeriodicalId":400774,"journal":{"name":"Making Refugees in India","volume":"22 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-01-20","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"126333596","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Refugees to (Re)Build the Nation","authors":"R. Kapoor","doi":"10.1093/oso/9780192855459.003.0004","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780192855459.003.0004","url":null,"abstract":"The rehabilitation of refugees after Partition was formative for the Indian state, connected with issues of citizenship, of politics and parties, of Kashmir and Hyderabad, and the very development of the Indian state. This chapter explains how refugee rehabilitation was intrinsically intertwined with the Nehruvian state’s efforts to (re)construct the Indian state after the events of the 1940s, while actions in the name of these same refugees became a way to challenge the Nehruvian vision too. The Indian government exerted more control over the refugees than any other citizens, recovering as both the state and the displaced were from the loss of Pakistan. The contradictions of establishing the secular, planned, developmentalist state in a place where the two-nation theory and ethno-religious division had recently caused a mass migration left the refugees of Partition as the site at which the tensions of Indian citizenship, state-building, and consolidation played out.","PeriodicalId":400774,"journal":{"name":"Making Refugees in India","volume":"22 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-01-20","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"122217239","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Ten Million Reasons for Self-Determination","authors":"R. Kapoor","doi":"10.1093/oso/9780192855459.003.0006","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780192855459.003.0006","url":null,"abstract":"This chapter explores India’s rejection of the 1971 East Pakistan refugee crisis as an extension of the unfinished project of Partition, instead placing it as a political issue of self-determination for the people of East Pakistan and the violation of their collective rights even as the UNHCR-led international community focused on apolitical humanitarianism. Despite a massive fundraising effort and coordinating international and transnational aid agencies, the UN operation ‘Focal Point’ failed to address what India saw as Pakistan pushing its ‘internal matter’ onto India, constituting a demographic and economic aggression against Indian sovereignty. In insisting that all the refugees return, India was indicating an end to the Partition project in embracing the East Pakistanis displaced across the border as refugees in line with international definitions, even as the international community saw this as an India–Pakistan matter. India’s prioritisation of a political solution was, in a way, its understanding of how the international community could intervene meaningfully in refugee crises even as secession posed a challenge to sovereignty worldwide and assistance became increasingly oriented towards material assistance.","PeriodicalId":400774,"journal":{"name":"Making Refugees in India","volume":"48 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-01-20","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"130380878","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Resisting an Alien Invasion of Principles","authors":"R. Kapoor","doi":"10.1093/oso/9780192855459.003.0003","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780192855459.003.0003","url":null,"abstract":"This chapter examines the anti-colonial nationalist led Indian government’s decision to remove itself from international humanitarian bodies and covenants addressing refugee relief and rehabilitation in the 1940s, as a result of the experiences of the Second World War. Instead, all aliens, regardless of their circumstances, were flattened into a single umbrella category by legal instruments like the 1946 Foreigners Act. The decision rested on a particular understanding of how the self-determination and the rights it guaranteed were in tension with a more universalist notion of human rights adopted in the 1940s. It thus explores the nature of rights, humanitarianism and the establishment of the self-determined nation-state in India, and how the figure of the refugee was caught in between these, at the immediate moment of India’s transition from colony to nation-state.","PeriodicalId":400774,"journal":{"name":"Making Refugees in India","volume":"1 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-01-20","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"131237913","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}