Refugees and Human Rights

In the post-World War II period refugee problem emerged out to be one of the biggest problems before the international community. India has also experienced it at a large scale. Factors such as rise of religious nationalism, ethnicisation of politics, state terrorism, anarchic majoritarianism and above all state’s refusal to conform to norms set by the international refugee regime, rendered the refugees stateless and subjects for inhuman treatment. On the other hand, historical forces like religious, linguistic or ethnic nationalism and regional economic disparity continue to generate refugees in the eastern and north-eastern regions of India. Faced with unfriendly state, both in the country of origin and the country of adoption, the refugees struggle to find the ways and means for a healthy living, and wherever possible they make efforts to put up an organised movement for their ‘human rights’. Written against this contextual backdrop, the articles in this volume are historical, social and political narratives on the major refugee groups in the eastern and north-eastern states of India, like Bengali refugees, Tibetan refugees, Bhutanese refugees, Chakma refugees and Arakanese refugees. The authors explore the genesis of each of these refugee groups and the areas of human rights violation in their treatment. Another feature of the book is the ‘critical angle’ from which the authors review the shifting, ad hoc and confusing stands of the state machinery in India in the treatment of various refugee streams. The inadequacies of the international regime for the protection of the refugees in India have also been examined. The effort to locate the refugee problem in the frame of international relations theory and globalisation ideology has added analytical flavour to the volume. The book would interest the students and scholars across the social science disciplines, the planners and the administrators alike.  The