The crisis of the Chin refugees in Mizoram helps to bring out one of the most striking contradictions of the foreign policy of the Modi government. New Delhi seemingly takes the principle of a neighbourhood first approach seriously, but the way it has responded to the Myanmar military coup in February 2021, and the subsequent influx of ethnic Chin migrants to Mizoram, demonstrates a completely different and disgraceful truth. India under Narendra Modi has chosen to exercise a policy of strategic silence instead of moral courage, which takes sides with a brutal junta than its own people who have a 510-kilometre- long border with Myanmar in its Northeast states.
The Crisis at the Border: Who the Chin Refugees?
As Myanmar is under the military rule of the Tatmadaw that seized control of the country brutally on February 1, 2021, one of the greatest humanitarian disasters in the history of Southeast Asia has begun. The victims of the brutality of the Tatmadaw were the most victimized ethnic minority of the Chin, the residents of Myanmar Chin State. Villages were burned, civilians killed and population displaced through the porous border to the Indian state of Mizoram.
Since 2023 Chin refugee had increased and the number crossed more than 40,000 to Mizoram and the figure is on the increase. The refugees were accepted by the Mizo not due to a government policy but to the ethnic affinity. The Mizo and the Chin are the same ethnicities with a line that colonialists made to divide them. They share the same language, religion, and ancestry. To the Mizos of Mizoram, these were not refugees, but relatives.
A careful report by Human Rights Watch, indicated that the Indian central government not only refused to accept these refugees officially, but it was also requesting the border forces to send them back, which was a violation of the international principles of non-refoulement and put thousands of lives at risk.
Calculated Silence: The Calculated Response of the Modi Government in Delhi.
India has not ratified the 1951 UN Convention on refugees.This is a convenient excuse for the Modi government to wash its hands of any responsibility. However, experts on international law have pointed out that India is not exempted from the principles of customary international law, which prohibit any government from sending refugees back to persecution and death.
The handling of the Mizoram refugee problem by the BJP government at the center can be summarized in three words: absent, evasive, and contradictory. While the Mizoram state government went out of its way to help the refugees, the central government remained mum. The major failures of the Modi government are:
• No announcement of any refugee policy despite the gravity of the situation.
• In March 2021, the Union Home Ministry asked states to identify and deport illegal immigrants from Myanmar, despite the fact that the situation in Myanmar was at its worst.
• No senior BJP leader visited Mizoram to assess the situation on the ground.
• No funding was announced for those districts which were bearing the brunt of this situation.
The Mizoram Chief Minister was quite vocal in defying the Centre and declared, “We will not take any direction of the centre to drive out Myanmar nationals. This shows clearly how the Centre has abandoned the Northeast to its own fate on this very situation.
The Junta Connection: Why Modi Chose Naypyidaw Over Aizawl
The worst part of the Indian position toward Myanmar is that despite the coup it still relates with the military junta in Myanmar. India never sanctioned Myanmar.India did not officially criticize the Myanmar military coup.It also went on selling arms to Myanmar and had normal diplomatic relations with a military junta accused of war crimes against the citizens of Myanmar.
India, according to The Hindu, even took the pains not to use the word coup in its official statement, but instead used the terminology of the military junta itself of a constitutional transfer of power
India’s interests in Myanmar were clear.The Kaladan Multi-Modal Transit Transport Project and the India- Myanmar-Thailand Trilateral Highway pass through military-held territory.The investment in infrastructure in Myanmar is in the tens of billions of rupees, and India had a vested interest in keeping the military junta happy, no matter what the cost in lives of its citizens in Myanmar and he humanitarian catastrophe in its own backyard.
The Free Movement Regime: Another Promise Broken
For decades, there has been a Free Movement Regime (FMR) in place for communities on both sides of the India-Myanmar border. This regime allowed for the free movement of people living within 16 km of the border. It recognized the ethnic and family links between the Mizos, Nagas, and Chins.It has been a civilized and culturally sensitized practice.
In February 2024, the government of Modi announced that it would abolish the Free Movement Regime as it existed and fence the entire India-Myanmar border which is 1643 km long. It did this without involving the northeastern states that would be the most affected by this: Mizoram, Manipur, Nagaland, and Arunachal Pradesh.
The Indian Express suggested that there have been warnings by civil society groups and ex-diplomats that such activities by the government would further alienate the Northeast and lower the credibility of India as an ally of border populations. But the government has proceeded with the decision and this was announced in air-conditioned offices in South Block, which is miles away the life of those to be affected.
Question of moral consistency: The CAA Contradiction.
The BJP administration has never been shy of deploying the religious solidarity to their benefit. Citizenship Amendment Act was enacted on the ideology of a humanitarian policy to give citizenship to persecuted minorities and on the basis of religion i.e. Hindus, Sikhs and Christians of other countries including Pakistan, Bangladesh and Afghanistan.
However, the Chin population is predominantly Christian. They have been persecuted at the hands of a Buddhist-majority military junta. Therefore, if we were to follow the humanitarian premise of the Citizenship Amendment Act, the Chin refugees would be at the forefront to be granted citizenship.
But nothing has been offered to them: no citizenship, no security, no unity, only deportation and border fences, also it’s not a coincidence. This is a government that instrumentalizes the humanitarian discourse, using it when it is convenient to their cause and disregarding it when that is not the case.
Conclusion: The Northeast Deserves Better Than Diplomatic Cowardice
The story of the Chin refugees and Mizoram is not a footnote in Indian foreign policy. It is a mirror, reflecting exactly what the Modi government’s “Act East” and “Neighbourhood First” slogans are worth when tested against reality.
When Delhi had to pick between its own people in Northeast India and a military junta in control of strategic transit routes, Delhi picked the military junta. When Delhi had to pick between international norms of humanitarianism and national convenience, Delhi picked national convenience. When the Mizos in civil society asked for recognition of their ethnic brethren, Delhi bureaucrats overruled them because Delhi bureaucrats view the Northeast not as a community of citizens, but as a buffer state.
Over 40,000 persons are living in abject conditions in Mizoram today. According to BBC News. these persons, including children, continue to ive without legal status, medical assistance, or any means of rescue. They wait not for a solution from Aizawl, which has done its part, but for a government in New Delhi that looks upon them as human beings first, and political factors a distant second.
