| Publication |
2008.
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| Summary/Abstract |
Ideas of 'the refugee' in India, long integrated with concepts of the nation through the partition experience, have significantly contributed to India's lack of formal refugee legislation. The present article argues that the resultant vague conceptual basis-or 'script'-for refugee treatment has allowed India to deal relatively successfully with refugee situations of great variation and huge scale in the past when refugees were largely integrated into an existing narrative of 'minorities', a vital component of India's national identity and political landscape. However, recent pressures from within and from the international community to standardise refugee treatment and introduce a formal refugee law have combined with political events of recent years to disadvantage some refugee groups. This article seeks to understand the changes in refugee treatment in India today and focuses on Tibetans, who appear to suffer increasingly from association with a changing narrative that links refugees, penetration by outsiders, and threats to national security, arising partly as a result of the activities of refugee Tamils from Sri Lanka, and non-refugee incomers from Pakistan.
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