The Indian Govt Should Understand That Refugees Don't Leave Their Homes Unless They Are Forced To

Ever since Union home minister Amit Shah introduced the Immigration and Foreigners Bill, 2025, the refugee community has started feeling anxious and stressful to an unimaginable degree. They have already been living precarious lives and now they are suddenly being thrown into an abyss from where they do not know how they will come out.

The Bill addresses the problem of foreigners who come into India without valid travel documents and this category includes migrants, tourists who have overstayed their visa, asylum seekers and refugees recognised by the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) as well as refugees who are not recognised by it.

The problems of migrants and refugees are different in many ways. Migrants come to India in search of jobs and economic opportunity but refugees come to India because if they stayed on in their country they could be arrested, detained, tortured or executed. They are not seeking to live in the country and do not want Indian citizenship.

Impact on refugees who have taken shelter in India from war and conflicts

Here, I am writing about the specific problem of refugees who have taken shelter in India from war and conflicts, suffering personal tragedies and trauma. How will the Bill impact them if it becomes law?

First of all, we should never forget that no one leaves their homes, their families and their country unless there are compelling reasons. As Warsan Shire, Somali-British poet who was a refugee has put the experience of being a refugee in these words which resonate across the globe whenever refugees struggle against racism, discrimination. uncertainty and stress:

No one leaves home unless

Home is like the mouth a shark

You only run for the border

When you see the whole city running as well.

These words are true for the refugees and migrants who are living in our country. These include many people from different parts of Africa and Asia. They came to India because they had heard India was a poor, but tolerant and peaceful country.

It is true that India is not a party to the 1951 UN Convention on Refugees and it does not have a domestic law for the protection of refugees. But despite this, India has welcomed refugees and in the case of Tibetans, Tamils of Sri Lanka and the Chakmas fleeing from Chittagong Hills of Bangladesh, the Government gave them special identity cards, even settled them in parts of India.

So, why have the government decided to look upon the refugees as a danger to our national security?

Chapter IV of the proposed law seeks to discourage the trafficking of migrants workers and the issuance of false passports. This should be welcomed if it stops people taking absurd risks to get to countries such as the USA in the hope of a green card. However, the root cause of the problem is the growing poverty in the rural areas and lack of job opportunities.

But refugees, by definition enter the country illegally and without passports or visas. In fact, they do not carry their identity cards so that they can hide their identities from authorities in their own countries.

None of this is to say that there are no genuine national security concerns. If we look at the situation in Northeast, we can see that the growing humanitarian crisis along the Indo-Burma border has had an impact on the ongoing drug trafficking which some people say is actually narco terrorism.

There are reports that the traffickers have built tunnels on the Mizoram-Burma border. The government’s new Bill or the building of a wall will not stop the drug problem.

However, if India was to give substantial humanitarian assistance and rebuild the villages which have been bombed, and people could go back to cultivate their fields, build schools and hospitals, then the refugees would go back. Till the civil war continues, the refugees will continue to pour and the problems of insurgency, drugs and ethnic clashes will only be exacerbated.

One in every 67 persons on the planet are being forced to leave their country

Unfortunately, the Indian civil society has taken little interest in the refugee issue. And yet, we see how all over the world the issue of migrants and refugees has become central to national politics and has led to the rise of the right-wing governments who have cried wolf about the alleged dangers posed by the group they term as “illegal migrants”.

For example, take the issue of migrants in the USA, with Indian undocumented workers being flown back to India in handcuffs and shackles. These undocumented workers posed no danger to the USA and they were barely 2 per cent of the population.

Admittedly, the issue of migrants and refugees has reached a critical stage with one in every 67 persons on the planet being forced to leave their country. According to the UNHCR, there around 122.6 million people have been forced to flee their homes. Among them are nearly 43.7 million refugees, and there are also 4.4 million stateless people, who have been denied a nationality and lack of access to basic rights such as education, health care, employment and freedom of movement.

Criminalisation of migration and cruel treatment of refugees and asylum seekers actually violate the provisions of our Constitution which guarantee the right to life (Article 21) and right to be protected by the law (Article 14) to all persons living within the borders of India and not merely to Indian citizens.

The Government of India had taken some taken initiative to draft a domestic law for the protection of refugees, with the National Human Rights Commission (NHRC) as well as the UNHCR being involved in the process, but they have not yet come up with a draft. India is a member of the executive of the UNHCR and has international obligations to protect refugees and asylum seekers.

There is even a private members Bill introduced by Shashi Tharoor in 2015 which is before the Parliament.

The refugees in India should be treated as a resource for the future so they have good feelings towards India and Indians. But refugees are being denied education, jobs, medical assistance and protection against increasing physical attacks including acid attack, stabbings and beatings by Indians who take advantage of their vulnerability.

Most Indians have welcomed the refugees, rented them rooms and been quite generous, but the newly-introduced Bill will discourage Indians from renting out accommodation to refugees in the future.

We need to build bridges and not walls. Friendship and solidarity ensure greater national security than creating unbearable anxiety and stress on a section of people who have suffered unspeakable horrors and thought India would welcome them.