Jahanara, a 19-year-old, likes makeup, listening to Bollywood music and sharing recipes on social media. She also studies, helps her mother cook and clean, and takes care of her younger siblings. She also helps younger Rohingya children with their studies, since schools have been shut down in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic.
So, what makes her different from any other 19-year-old?
When she was nine, she had to flee her home country with her parents after witnessing her neighbours being hacked to death by Myanmar’s military junta and villages being razed by fire. Ten years and two countries later, she had to watch in horror as the authorities bulldozed their makeshift tents in a camp in Delhi.
Similar predicaments arise in Amina’s life as the local authorities in Nuh, Haryana, forcefully evicted her family ten days before her Class 12 board exams. “The police visited our camp and beat up my brother because we did not get our biometric verification done in Haryana,” says Amina. Since they had left Myanmar, all she remembers is flitting from place to place but belonging nowhere.
Amina shares her aspirations of being a doctor and her love for books. Born in a society where women spend most of their lives within the four walls of their home, Amina wants to travel the world and find a place where she can belong.
With the refugee protection situation for the Rohingya community deteriorating fast across the country, they have fallen victim to hate speech, arbitrary detentions and forced evictions. The mainstream media and the international community witnessed in silence India’s recent unsuccessful attempt to deport a 14-year-old Rohingya girl to conflict-laden Myanmar, a country from where almost a million Rohingya have fled over the past to escape persecution from the military-led regime. The case of some 150-detained Rohingya in Jammu who are to be deported because the Supreme Court refused to grant them relief raises questions on India’s humanitarian obligations towards those who have sought asylum in the country. Further, the Solicitor General’s fear of India becoming the capital for all ‘illegal migrants’ of the world reflects India’s apathy in dealing with the Rohingya situation.
It makes us step back and wonder, what makes a country – which is a signatory of the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women, Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination, the International Covenant on Economic Social and Cultural Rights, the Convention on the Rights of the Child and several other humanitarian treaties – so hell-bent on deporting a minor to a country which has a long history of bloodshed and has currently launched a military coup against its civilians?
Like Jahanara and Amina, there are countless others who’ve not only fled persecution in their home state but also have managed to overcome the socio-cultural barriers that are placed upon them on account of being a Rohingya woman. In the Arakan State, the fear of mass incarceration, rape, abuse and torture prevented them from going out and forced many to drop out of their schools as soon as they attained puberty. India so far had provided a space wherein even if they are disenfranchised as a community, in lieu of certain constitutional safeguards that the country offers, these women have, to some extent, been able to access certain spaces and rights that were denied to them in their home country. However, with the question of deportation and detainment looming large, all such freedoms might get cancelled.
We must introspect on how much value we still have left for the words drafted in the Indian constitution. Do the words “equal protection” before law not just to the citizens but to ‘any person’ hold no significance in today’s India? What then makes the largest democracy in the world forcibly return the survivors of genocide to Myanmar and wash its hands off the dire repercussions?
The Centre’s recent obsession with the Islamophobia-fuelled detention centres and the passage of the Citizenship (Amendment) Act (CAA) sparked nationwide anti-CAA protests with Muslim women spearheading and coordinating them across the country to assert their constitutional rights. It showed us how the stereotypical image of a demure and compliant Muslim woman had undergone a radical change.
Likewise, the Jahanaras and the Aminas of the world show us how young Muslim Rohingya teenagers challenge the social norms and push back against the state power in their own minute ways. Like any average teenager, they have disputes and disagreements with their families in wanting to go out, in their quest to keep up with pop culture and as far as their dreams of seeing the world are concerned. And like everyone else, they win some battles and lose some – but when two mighty nations armed with age-old traditions coalesce to conspire against them, do their dreams stand a chance in taking flight?
Or do they perish within the barbed walls of detention facilities?
Madhusree Jana and Samanwita Paul are doctoral students at Jawaharlal Nehru University and their work focuses on feminist issues related to displacment and statelessness.
Featured image credit: Reuters/Cathal McNaughton