NEW DELHI: The UN’s High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) António Guterres, on a recent visit to India, was lavish in his praise for India’s treatment of refugees. In this season of discontent, where so much has gone wrong and only disgruntlement about public policy is being voiced, his words are a rare acknowledgement of something good in Indian practice.

India has long been a haven for the displaced and threatened from its neighbourhood, many of whom have been assimilated and become a virtually indistinguishable part of the larger society, while others have retained their distinctiveness and historic way of life, in either case able to live here without anxiety about the morrow. India’s borders are famously porous, and many of those who have come under some form of duress have simply slipped through and lost themselves in the vast sea of humanity.

But others have come through deliberate decisions of the Indian authorities, notably the asylum-seekers from Tibet, among many others, who have prospered and thrived in India. It is a record that gives India the right to encourage others to be no less sensitive to the plight of those displaced from their homes.

Currently, the most visible refugee issue in South Asia relates to the Rohingyas of Myanmar. They belong to the Arakan coastal strip which is relatively distant and not easily accessed from Myanmar’s heartland. Unlike the bulk of their compatriots, the Rohingyas are Muslim in religion and have their own language.

Myanmar is linguistically and ethnically very diverse but it has shied away from accepting the Rohingyas, with their distinct ethnicity and language, as people of its own. Officially, the area is known as Rakhine, as is its language, and there is a disputed history about its origins and its inhabitants.

British colonial rule had something to do with it, for immigration into the Arakan was encouraged in the colonial period, to promote settlement in relatively empty lands from more densely populated areas further west. World War II added to the complexity, for Japan conquered the Arakan, and later the British, in a hard fought campaign eloquently described by army commander Field Marshal Slim, took it back.

The fluctuations in centralised authority encouraged ideas of local autonomy, which were fiercely resisted. From the early days of independent Myanmar there has been considerable unrest in the area with periodic rioting and strong repression of the locals.

Many have felt obliged to leave and search for other places to live, some in Bangladesh and others in distant parts of Myanmar. The uncertainty about their status has made it difficult to promote the sort of development activities that are to be seen elsewhere in the country, these too regarded as woefully inadequate, so the Rohingya areas have been left ever further behind, and ethnic and religious issues have only added to their plight.

There has been an overspill of the trouble into the neighbours’ lands, including India. Substantial numbers of Rohingyas have crossed over into Bangladesh in search of security and a better life. From there, some have kept moving and found their way to India, where many Bangladeshis are already resident — this has long been an issue between New Delhi and Dhaka.

So a trickle of Rohingyas has reached as far as India, there to fend for themselves as best they can. Only recently, the UNHCR office in New Delhi was besieged by a group of Rohingyas in a peaceful but determined demonstration that went on for several days and served to highlight the situation of this unfortunate group.

By arrangement with The Statesman/ANN