Asylum Is the Answer

WHEN THE PIERCING glare of the world began to strip away the barely disguised veneer of bigotry, when Hindus, for once, spoke up as one, Muhammad Yunus, the interim head of the Bangladesh government, went into damage control mode. Acknowledging the rising tide of xenophobia directed against the minority community, Yunus visited a Hindu temple in the heart of Dhaka.

Aware of the power of optics in politics, he surrounded himself with cameras ensuring that they captured him comforting Hindus.

A few days later, when Hindu lives were still being singed by the bigotry of Islamist supremacists in Bangladesh, Prime Minister Narendra Modi weighed in on the issue. Speaking from the ram­parts of the Red Fort on Independence Day, Modi impressed upon Dha­ka the imperative of protecting Hindu lives.

International diplomacy is a highly calibrated exercise in realpolitik. The choice of messenger is as important as the stage chosen to deliver the message.

That Modi chose the Indian equiva­lent of the American annual “State of the Union” address to do some plain-speaking did not go unnoticed in Dhaka.

Muhammad Yunus almost immedi­ately called Modi to personally guarantee he was on top of the situation.

It was awfully considerate of Yunus to pick up the phone, but truth be told, platitudes and stilted photo-ops in starched kurtas at Hindu temples won’t hack it.

Only justice can heal the wounds of Hindus in Bangladesh.

Justice that is done and seen to be done.

But there is no indication that the Yunus-led interim administration is committed to delivering justice.

On the contrary, the state is punishing the guilty selectively. A decision has been taken to only prosecute one set of rioters in Bangladesh.

Those who supported deposed Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina’s bidding will go to jail, but not those who partici­pated in the post-coup retributive bloodletting.

This means that those who attacked Hindus (largely thought to be pro-Hasina) in the aftermath of the coup are unlikely to face judicial censure.

This selectivity cannot just be put down to an extreme case of the victor’s justice.

The interim government in Dhaka is hamstrung by political compulsion. The Hefazat-e-Islam (HeI) is a key constituent that dictates the agenda. HeI proudly flaunts its disdain for progressive secular liberalism. It is accused of hate crimes against Hindus. It is hardly going to acquiesce in any move to prosecute itself or those who share its outlook.

The renewed fear of state-sanctioned annihilation has forced some Hindus in Bangladesh to risk crossing the border into India. Here they have amassed in hordes. Sadly, in vain. India’s border guards have held the line and read them the rules.

India’s stance is incomprehensible. Why shouldn’t ‘Mother India’, who has long cradled the Hindus of Hindustan, also nurture these other Hindu children? After all, for no fault of their own, they were left stranded on the wrong side of the post- Partition cartographic divide. Not a day has passed since they have been reminded of their pariah status in their adopted homeland.

Today, drowning in the bubbling cauldron of sectarian loathing, the harrowed Hindus of Bangladesh are clinging on to the hope that they will be granted asylum by India—ostensibly, the only stable nation within their reach where their identity will not mark them out for slaughter.

Countries around the world routinely grant asylum to specific classes of refu­gees. Israel offers a ‘Law of Return’ to Jews living anywhere in the world, Spain has the ‘Jure Sanguinis’ that allows descen­dants of Sephardic Jews expelled in 1492 to return as citizens, two specific US laws allow that country to welcome Iranian Christians, and Turkey offers citizenship to descendants of the Ottoman Empire. The Modi-led government knows there is precedent. The Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA) was, after all, the National Democratic Alliance’s way of accommodating persecuted minorities from Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Bangladesh. But with its cut-off date and other fussy bureaucratic inanities, CAA is of no use to the tyrannised Hindus of Bangladesh.

What’s needed is a special exemption in law to accommodate Bangladesh’s embattled Hindus. As the self-professed custodian of Indic civilisational values and one that is sworn to the precept Vasudhaiva Kutumbakam (the world is one family), the welfare of Hindus in Bangladesh is the Bharatiya Janata Party-led NDA’s burden to bear.

asylum seekersBangladesh borderHindu minorityIndia-Bangladesh relationsNortheast Indiarefugees