There is a disjuncture between the political South Asia and the socio-cultural South Asia that undermines the strictly territorial imagination of post-1947 ‘nation-states’. The region’s amalgamous demographic profile is a mix of races, religions, ethnicities, languages, and traditions that had been historically characterized by coexistence. Never having undergone ghettoization into clean pockets, the post-1947 borders are arbitrary decisions of local elites and the fleeing British Raj, rather than resembling the actual cross-cutting cultural continuity and historical unity of South Asia. 

The violence 1947 partition of India resulted in forced migration of the Hindus from Pakistan to India and concurrently many Muslim communities to leave India for Pakistan. However, the intermixed demographic profile largely remained diverse despite communal borders post-decolonization, leaving the independent states with sizable minorities. This has kept trans-border identities alive and human flows an issue for post-colonial South Asia, resulting in securitization of the refugee. 

Underlining this securitization is the uniquely South Asian problem of exclusionary identities. As South Asia came to be inhabited by modern nation-states, the underlying problem of defining their respective national identities propped up. While pre-1947 South Asia acted as a meta-region, with a patchwork of British crown territories and princely states without any relation of citizenship vis-à-vis an ‘other’, in line with western liberal models, post-colonial South Asian states established territorial citizenship. Post-colonial self-determination also included the capacity of inclusion and exclusion of members with borders that were political, separating the “us” from “them”, the outsider from the insider, the citizen from the alien. This has created a sense of who ‘ought’ to be and who ‘ought not’ to be co-habitats of the land. 

This is exaggerated by anti-India insecurities that are an outcome of the structural power asymmetry in South Asia, with India looming large in terms of geography, demography as well as economy, critiqued  for its ‘big brother' complex by its South Asian neighbours. Anxieties over intervention and assimilation of smaller neighbors by India has resulted in South Asian states investing heavily in creating national identities exclusive of India. This tendency of exclusionary national identities in South Asia leaves little room for accommodating minority communities and migrants into nation-building.

South Asian refugee of socio political discourse

Thus, the securitization of refugees in South Asia has come to be defined by the insecurities of states over their sovereignty and territorial integrity, viewing any violation of their borders as threat to national security as well as by the need to build exclusionary national identities that largely unites its domestic population and at the same time justifies its borders. This exact motion informs the refugee crisis in South Asia, whereby states have consistently viewed refugees as a matter of national security rather than human security. 

Moreover, as political borders became militarized with the rise of Indo-Pak tensions post-1947, refugees came to be securitized, whereby South Asia produces refugees but refuses to address them. Moreover, acceptance of refugees would mark altruism on part of security states, an out of way consideration for the realist paradigm. South Asia  has witnessed the phenomenon of displaced persons since the early 19th century which has attained a causal nature in lieu of  protracted internal security paradigm that has been prevalent in India, Pakistan, Nepal, Sri Lanka and Bangladesh.

South Asian states have steered clear of accepting formal responsibilities in addressing refugees, with only Afghanistan being a curious signatory to the 1951 Refugee Convention. South Asian states have sought a more voluntary approach to taking in refugees, with geopolitical considerations driving the select acceptability of refugee communities. This has resulted in a lack of uniform policy in the treatment of refugees in South Asia, featuring a flexible approach towards refugees vis-à-vis states with no universal liberal rights-based framework for treatment of the refugee. This is well illustrated by the examples of the hospitable treatment of Tibetan refugees who fled Maoist China for India, and in contrast to India's treatment of Rohingya refugees from Myanmar post-2021 coup.  

There is didactic relationship between human flows as well as regional and domestic political discourses in South Asia, wherein refugees have played an important role in shaping perceptions of the “other” and at the same time, cross-border occurrences have reflected on the treatment of refugees. The presence of Bangladeshi Hindu refugees from the 1971 War of Liberation had continued to foster a close and cooperative relationship between Indian and Bangladesh. Conversely the same refugees, now generational residents in border towns became “infiltrators” in the  Bharatiya Janata Party’s nationalist rhetoric, as against the ethno-linguistic affinities that Indian Bengalis seem to share with their cross-border Bangladeshi brethren. Thus, the South Asian refugee lies in flux, part and parcel of ongoing socio political discourses rather than a stationary agent.      

Peculiarities of South Asian regionalism    

The refugee in South Asia is subject to a compounding marginalization, in terms of social stigmatization, the "outsiders", and as a security threat, the "alien". While the prevailing global perception under the UNHCR holds a multilateral framework of understanding among nation-states to be the most durable solution, the peculiarities of South Asian regionalism poses hindrance. Whereas regionalism in South Asia has  been successful on matters of low politics (like cultural exchange, seed banks, natural disaster management, etc.), these cooperative efforts have not been expandable to security issues, largely due to interstate rivalries in South Asia. 

While the South Asian states securitize, local politics has often scapegoated refugee populations, turning majority insecurities into electoral capital – a fear that refugees’ encroachment  on physical and political spaces, jobs, land, corner welfare resources meted out by the state and place undue pressures on infrastructure; a case in point the rhetoric against Bangladeshi migrants in India. While the ‘refugee’ has been subject to securitization in the western worlds as well, like the securitization of the ‘southern problem’, that is the migration of Latin Americans into USA under the Trump regime, the challenges against South Asian refugees have been exacerbated by the absence of institutional mitigation of this crisis.

The South Asian refugee crisis thus sits at a crossroads between state insecurities, social marginalization, political scapegoating, nationalism, and interstate conflicts in the region. 

(The author is a postgraduate student pursuing M.A. in Political Science at St. Xavier’s College (Autonomous), Kolkata & M.P.A. from Indira Gandhi National Open University, New Delhi. Views expressed are personal. He can be reached at allendavidsimon2003@gmail.com or linkedin.com/in/allen-david-simon )