India & Rohingya

India is tying itself in knots over its knee-jerk policy towards the Rohingya refugees. What was a clever bit of statesmanship — taking a hard line on Rohingya refugees because some of them may have radical links — is now coming unstuck. Myanmar’s de facto Prime Minister Aung San Suu Kyi with whom India had hitched its Rohingya policy has made a volte face. She is now willing to accept the return of her fellow citizens who had fled to Bangladesh and India because of a severe army crackdown. New Delhi’s subtext behind turning its face to a community described by the UN as the world's most persecuted minority is their faith. In line with this approach, the Modi government grants citizenship only to non-Muslims. But in a neighbourhood where an all-inclusive approach is the best option, it took shelter behind Suu Kyi’s stance towards the Rohingya.  

The anti-Muslim element in the government’s calculation was all too salient as could be gauged from the vituperative campaign launched against the Rohingya refugees by its ideological fellow travellers in Jammu. This was poor strategic thinking, if at all. The hostility to the Rohingya knocks the bottom out of PM Modi’s purported empathy with the (Muslim) people of Balochistan and Gilgit who may not be inclined to “thank him” anymore after seeing New Delhi's approach to their fellow faith travellers from Myanmar.

India under the present government has embarked on a purely transactional approach to foreign affairs. Its obligation to stay on the right side of the Myanmar junta to keep the Chinese at bay is understandable. Sans a moral compass, it is beginning to look more like the Chinese approach. The problem is this policy is not helping India garner greater influence. Rather India is painting itself as a self-serving giant unwilling to share the trauma of its neighbours, putting a question mark on PM Modi’s assurance to even-handedly share the country's prosperity with the region. India needs to shed its faith-based hostility to the Rohingya in order to implement PM Modi’s homily: all stakeholders should get together to find a way out in which unity and territorial integrity of Myanmar is respected.