Making Refugees in India

Making Refugees in India explores how India, as one of the first postcolonial states, rewrote global practices surrounding refugees during the mid-twentieth century, refusing to sign the 1951 UN Refugee Convention. This decision was part of the postcolonial effort to address the inequalities of British empire subject-citizenship and promote self-determination. India's approach to refugees was strategically ambiguous, revealing a consistency in addressing inequity across former colonies. The book highlights contrasts in Indians' and Europeans' rights in the British empire and World War Two, refugee rehabilitation during Partition, the arrival of Tibetan refugees, and the East Pakistani refugee crisis. Ria Kapoor argues that the refugee was constitutive of postcolonial Indian citizenship and that assistance to refugees depended on their potential to threaten or support national sovereignty.

Format: Hardback
Length: 272 pages
Publication date: 03 February 2022
Publisher: Oxford University Press

Offering a comprehensive historical account of India's refugee regime, Making Refugees in India delves into how one of the pioneering postcolonial states during the mid-twentieth century wave of decolonization rewrote global practices surrounding refugees. Signified by India's refusal to sign the 1951 United Nations Refugee Convention, this decision extended far beyond the Partition of India, encompassing the so-called Wilsonian moment and extending into the 1970s. By placing the refugee within the postcolonial endeavor to address the inequalities of British empire subject-citizenship through the fullest realization of self-determination, India's strategically ambiguous approach to refugees reveals a startling consistency when viewed in the context of postcolonial state building and anti-imperial worldmaking.

The anti-colonial call for self-determination, as the source of all rights, is revealed in this work to be in tension with the universal human rights that focused on the individual. The figure of the refugee felt this irreconcilable difference most intensely. To elucidate this, this work explores contrasts in the rights of Indians and Europeans in the British empire and during World War Two, refugee rehabilitation during Partition, the arrival of Tibetan refugees, and the East Pakistani refugee crisis. Ria Kapoor finds that the refugee was constitutive of postcolonial Indian citizenship, and that the assistance permitted to refugees depended on their potential to threaten or support national sovereignty, allowing Indian experiences to be included in the shaping of universal principles.

Weight: 438g
Dimension: 143 x 224 x 23 (mm)
ISBN-13: 9780192855459