The State of Being Stateless: An Account of South Asia

141 Pages·2017·1.195 MB·English

by  Paula Banerjee, Anasua Basu Ray Chaudhury, Atig Ghosh

The State of Being Stateless
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The State of Being Stateless
An Account of South Asia
Edited by
PAULA BANERJEE
ANASUA BASU RAY CHAUDHURY
ATIG GHOSH
With a Foreword by
RANABIR SAMADDAR
The State of Being Stateless
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First published 2015
eISBN 978-93-86392-57-2
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Dedicated to Professor Ranabir Samaddar,
who is the soul behind this book
Contents
Cover
Title Page
Foreword by Ranabir Samaddar
Publisher’s Acknowledgements
List of Abbreviations
The Grid: The Stateless and the Citizen
Paula Banerjee, Anasua Basu Ray Chaudhury and Atig Ghosh
1. Words of Law, Worlds of Loss: The Stateless People of the Indo-Bangladeshi Enclaves
Atig Ghosh
2. The Remains of Partition? The Citizenship Question of Stateless Hindus in India
Sahana Basavapatna
3. Ordeal of Citizenship: The Up-Country Tamils in Sri Lanka and India
Anasua Basu Ray Chaudhury
4. The Chinese of Calcutta: A Case of Statelessness
Suhit K. Sen
5. The Stateless Chakmas in Arunachal Pradesh
Samir Kumar Das and Anasua Basu Ray Chaudhury
6. Elusive Home-Thoughts: The Unstable World of the Lhotsampas in South Asia
Atig Ghosh and Pravina Gurung
7. Ambiguous Identities: Statelessness of Gorkhas in Northeast India
Anup Shekhar Chakraborty and Subhas Ranjan Chakraborty
Bibliography
Notes on the Contributors
Foreword
With this volume on statelessness in India, one phase of Calcutta Research Group's (CRG's) work in
forced migration studies spanning more than a decade comes to a close. In 2002 it published—though
not first—the most extensive volume on refugees in West Bengal, the institutional practices of their
protection, and the production of the refugee identity (Bose 2000). Within one year or so of that publication it
followed up its work on West Bengal refugees with the first comprehensive account of refugees in post-
Independence India and the history of her asylum practices; in other words, the first account of the post-
colonial regime of care and power (Samaddar 2003). Researching on the edges of ethics, law and history, the
study of refugees in India produced a framework that was distinctly post-colonial and critical, but at the same
time engaging and challenging the dominant paradigms of refugee studies, refugee law and refugee protection
policies. It produced a framework that attracted wide readership, reviews, appreciation, comments, and
encouraged many others to study in that frame. Insights gained from these two researches helped CRG to
undertake the first systematic study of internal displacement in South Asia, the relevance of United Nations
(UN) Guiding Principles, and the relevance of the Internally Displaced Person (IDP) issue to studies on
forced migration (in 2005). The study of the IDPs, attending governmental practices, legal definitions and
their limit, and finally the massive nature of the internal population flows also helped forced migration
researchers to see refugee movements in a new and broader light, beyond the existing international legal
framework or a dominantly cultural framework that limits our understanding to only symbols and identities.
These three studies set a critical, post-colonial mode of investigation that is now part of the valued
methods in forced migration studies. Strong empirical base; historical understanding of issues in question;
critical legal theory; gender-sensitive approach; deploying the concept of border as method of study;
understanding of the epochal significance of issues of colonialism, partitions, borders and boundaries, and
neo-liberal developmentalism, are some of the aspects of this critical post-colonial mode. This mode too
studies subjectivity; this too accepts refugee subjecthood as expressed in literature, songs, music, etc. as
important aspects of study. But in place of sterile and limited textual reading of these subject experiences,
these researches showed how to study subjectivity materially, grounded in historical experiences.
An important stage in the evolution of this critical mode came when CRG published an empirical study of
select camps of IDPs in South Asia with emphasis on mapping the voices of IDPs in camps (CRG 2006). The
report broke many myths on laws, their efficacy and relevance; the comparative roles of development projects
and violence in producing IDPs, etc. The study also helped CRG conceptualise the notion of massive and
mixed flows of populations. These studies also helped CRG to anchor refugee studies firmly in forced
migration studies. The results were seen in CRG's works in the early years of this decade when it undertook
collective studies on two themes: the specific nature of protracted displacement and the governmental
technologies that produce the identity of the migrant. Both these studies are available in book form and
online (CRG 2006; Samaddar 2003). All in all, these CRG studies have deepened our understanding of human
rights and justice.
The present volume on statelessness is to be seen in this perspective of a more than decade-long work on
forced migration. Readers acquainted with its earlier studies will find the same unique method, selection of
case studies, genealogical orientation, and a critical, post-colonial mode of investigation. Statelessness is seen
here less as a positive definition, that is, a definition that sets complete conditions for statelessness. It is seen
here more as refraction of a positive reality known as citizenship, citizenship as an institution that always—to
use the word of a philosopher—‘incompletes' itself. Statelessness has a definition that always even if
unknowingly bases itself on a kind of displacement of a reality—the reality of state, nationality, citizenship.
Therefore, the studies this book offers are studies of permanent incompleteness—a reality that always seems
to fall short of a hyper-reality, and therefore the ideal reality, of citizenship, entitlements, legal protection, full
proof identity, solemn recognitions by courts of law, and the avowals by the State.
In this volume statelessness is more a situation, a condition, or a set of conditions that make what can be
called a limit situation and limit experience, by which we mean situated at the limits, and experience of the
limits of a situation, at the same time limits of an experience and situation we have defined in this case as
citizenship. Such an understanding must at one point of time brush against the positivism of law. It is up to
law (in this case international law) to live up to these refracted, displaced realities, whose function is to tell the
society the limits of the assured knowledge of institutions like border, state, citizenship, rights,
humanitarianism, constitution, etc. If the subject of the State is the citizen, the stateless is the alien.
We can thus say: the citizen is the defence of the visibility of Constitution; the alien is the shadow, its prey.
The citizen exists in the alien as the savage form. Citizen is articulate; the alien inaudible, silent. Yet the more
interesting question will be: What are the ways in which the alien overcomes the two obstacles of inaudibility
and invisibility? To understand this life world of the stateless, forced migration studies will have to adopt the
strategy of interrogating alterity. The same principle of interrogation will be valuable in studying actual
conditions of statelessness in the post-colonial world.
There is no doubt that the study of stateless population groups will become increasingly significant in
forced migration studies. As states once again go to wars, come up and go down in history; countries fight
newer forms of colonialism; newer forms of decolonisation occur; and borders and boundaries play havoc
with settled configurations, the number of stateless population will increase. We may see a reduction of de
jure statelessness, but a rise in de facto stateless population around the world. It may also become increasingly
difficult to distinguish between a refugee group and a stateless group. Newer identity practices imposed by
States may produce stateless condition. If the preceding century was a century of partitions, this century may
become known as the century of stateless people.
Ranabir Samaddar
Director, Mahanirban Calcutta Research Group
Publisher’s Acknowledgements
We acknowledge with thanks the permissions received from the following:
Mahanirban Calcutta Research Group for material from the following papers that have been reproduced
in Chapters 1, 3, 4, 5, 6 and 7:
• ‘A Brief Report on "Mapping the Stateless in India”: 2 Phase'
• ‘A Report on the Tenth Annual Orientation Course on Forced Migration 2012'
• ‘Executive Summary of the Report on "The State of Being Stateless: A Case Study of the Chakmas of
Arunachal Pradesh”'
• ‘Module D: Statelessness in South Asia (Concept Note, Suggested Readings, and Assignments)'
• ‘Statelessness: Concept Note'
• ‘Statelessness: Events and Announcements'
• Anasua Basu Ray Chaudhury, ‘Unheard Voices: The Stateless Chakmas in Arunachal Pradesh', Refugee
Watch Online, 28 February 2011
• Mahanirban Calcutta Research Group and International Committee of the Red Cross, ‘Research on the
Humanitarian Aspects along the Indo-Bangladesh Border'
• Raghu Amay Karnad, Rajeev Dhavan and Bhairav Acharya, ‘Protecting the Forgotten and Excluded:
Statelessness in South Asia'
• Subhas Ranjan Chakrabarty, ‘Silence Under Freedom: The Story of Democracy in the Darjeeling Hills',
in Ranabir Samaddar (ed.), The Politics of Autonomy: Indian Experiences, New Delhi: Sage Publications, 2005
(in Chapter 7)
Astral International (P) Ltd. for Table 5.3: ‘District-Wise Distribution of Chakma Population in
Arunachal Pradesh (in Approximate Terms)'. Originally published in Monirul Hussain M. (ed.), Coming out
of Violence: Essays on Ethnicity, Conflict Resolution and Peace Process in North-East India, New Delhi: Astral
International (P) Ltd., 2005, p. 90.
Abbreviations
AAPSU All-Arunachal Pradesh Students' Union
AASU All Assam Students' Union
ABSU All Bodo Students' Union
ACHR Asian Centre for Human Rights
ACR Arunachal Citizens' Right
AESDU All East Siang District Students' Union
AHURA Association of Human Rights Activists (Bhutan)
AIADMK All-India Anna Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam
AIFB All-India Forward Bloc
AMSU All Mishmi Students' Union
APITRO Arunachal Pradesh Indigenous Tribal Rights (Protection) Organization
BBEECC Bharat-Bangladesh Enclave Exchange Coordination Committee
BDR Bangladesh Rifles
BJP Bharatiya Janata Party
BPL Below Poverty Line
BPP Bhutan People's Party
BSF Border Security Force
CBDP/TSI Community Based Development Programme/Transitional Solutions Initiatives
CCRCAP Committee for Citizenship Rights of the Chakmas of Arunachal Pradesh
CERAK Ceylon Repatriates Association, Kodaikanal
CHT Chittagong Hill Tracts
CIC Ceylon Indian Congress
CID Crime Investigation Department
CPI(M) Communist Party of India (Marxist)
CRG Calcutta Research Group
CWC Ceylon Workers Congress
CYMA Central Young Mizo Association
DC deputy commissioner
DGHC Darjeeling Gorkha Hill Council
DMK Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam
EPIC Electoral Photo-Identity Card
GJMM Gorkha Janmukti Morcha
GNLF Gorkha National Liberation Front
GTA Gorkhaland Territorial Administration
ICCPR International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights
IDP Internally Displaced Person
ILP Inner Line Permit
IOM International Organization for Migration
IPFB Indian People's Forward Bloc
ISLAND Indo-Sri Lanka Development (Trust)
JVP Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna
KSU Khasi Students' Union
KTP Khristian Thalai Pawl
LPC Land Possession Certificate
LSC Land Settlement Certificate
LTTE Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam
LTV Long-Term Visa
MGYA Mizoram Gorkha Youth Association
MLA Member of Legislative Assembly
MMWS Mizoram Muslim Welfare Society
MNF Mizo National Front
MP Member of Parliament
MZP Mizo Zirlai Pawl