Show empathy for refugees even if India can’t admit allc Swami Vivekananda went to the World Parliament of Religions in Chicago in 1893 and introduced India to the guests assembled from all over the world that he was “proud to belong to a nation which has sheltered the persecuted and the refugees of all religions and all nations of the earth.” Almost half a century later, Jean-Paul Sartre, the French thinker and writer, reflected on the thoughts of a section of people that the mere existence of other members of the species Homo sapiens brings misery to them. “Hell is other people,” he wrote in his play No Exit as a critique of the world of the rich and powerful who can afford to ignore the cries of the other, and instead treat them as hell.Modern nation-states have legally defined their citizenship and have put in place norms on who is eligible to be granted it. Borders are a reality and hence there are laws that criminalise border infiltration. India, too, has followed such global practices; the country may now not be able to qualify for the definition Swami Vivekananda had offered to the world a century and a quarter ago. It is, however, worthwhile to ruminate if India must follow the pattern Sartre has defined — to consider the other as hell. True, India is supposed to be the world’s largest population and the count is only going up. We do not in normal case advocate an influx of people as several Western nations who face debilitating crunch in the number of people in the working age do. Several nations, including the United States under its President Donald Trump, have implemented very strict policies with respect to refugees, whether they are political or economic. The Indian government policy has been not a little ambiguous. While government leaders talk disparagingly about immigrants and refugees, the government has indeed passed a law fast-forwarding the process of granting citizenship to refugees in India who have fled three particular nations in India’s neighbourhood and who belong to six religions. The government has no official policy that the country is not a dharmasala (free shelter) and that it will not accommodate anyone from outside.It is in this context that the Supreme Court’s comment that India is not a free shelter becomes curious. The court’s observation came while hearing a petition by a Sri Lankan Tamil for permission to settle in India. The case of the racist strife in Sri Lanka and its bloody history need no introduction in India; the plight of the Sri Lankan Tamil refugees has been discussed in this country at least for the last three decades. The court is very well within its right to consider the case of each individual and decide accordingly but such policy-inducing statements emanating from the courts of justice may not square with the pattern of thinking in civilised societies. There has to be an exchange between the urgings of the philosophical soul of this country and the constraints of realpolitik and it will be best left to the politicians to design the policy. The judiciary positioning itself against the lone man with no place to go is not the ideal sight, however far India has travelled from Swamiji’s description.
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