India’s Citizenship (Amendment) Act international migration, not only in south and southeast Asia, but also in the Middle East and Europe. The reorganisation of Europe and the collapse of imperial powers was marked by a ‘wave of decolonisation’ in South Asia, Southeast Asia and parts of the Middle East. 39 Persons rendered ‘stateless’ by the vagaries of postwar European politics wended their way to ‘newly homogenous countries’ — particularly Germany as well as Israel and other Middle Eastern countries. 40 These tussles around citizenship and refugee rights, though contemporaneous with the drafting of the Convention relating to the Status of Refugees (‘Refugee Convention’), were largely separate from it. 41 How the ‘refugee problem’ was understood in South Asia in the wake of decolonisation may explain this. Most historical literature on Partition has uncritically termed those who migrated across the borders as refugees. Nevertheless, if the term is understood stricto sensu to mean a stateless person, this is not how those who migrated saw themselves. 42 On the contrary, they believed themselves to be full citizens of their adoptive nations — much like exiled Germans at about the same time — though their earlier domicile now stood at odds with their nationality. This, as we shall see, was mirrored in official discourse. Both India and Pakistan initially viewed the drafting of the Refugee Convention with great interest. 43 Indeed, the official Indian representative announced her Government’s intention of cooperating with the UNHCR were the definition to be a broader one — ‘consistent with its own national citizenship laws’. 44 Nevertheless, the Refugee Convention’s Eurocentric approach and lack of interest in South Asia prevented what could have been a more forward-thinking approach to refugee status — not whether persons were formally ‘citizens’, but whether their inclusion into the refugee regime could ensure their access to basic resources. 45 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 For an account of this, see Tim Harper and Christopher Bayly, Forgotten Wars: Freedom and Revolution in Southeast Asia (Bellknap Press 2007). See Philip Ther, ‘The Integration of Expellees in Germany and Poland after World War II: A Historical Reassessment’ (1996) 55(4) Slavic Review 779. For an account of the process in Germany and Poland, see Tara Zahra, ‘“Prisoners of the Postwar”: Expellees, Displaced Persons and Jews in Austria After World War II’ (April 2010) 41 Austrian History Yearbook 191. For a recent work that focuses on the German ‘expulsion’ from Czechoslovakia (which, along with the massive, forced migration of Germans from Eastern Europe, was contemporaneous with the Partition of India), see RW Douglas, Orderly and Humane: The Expulsion of the Germans After the Second World War (Yale University Press 2012). Pia Oberoi, Exile and Belonging: Refugees and State Policy in South Asia (Oxford University Press 2006) 25–26. The terms sharnarthi and panahgeer were used in the Indian and Pakistani sides originally (Panahgeer, a Punjabi term deriving from Urdu, was used on both sides of the border, whereas sharnarthi was used much more on the Indian side). See Zamindar (n 13) 8. Indeed, newspaper reports and governmental bodies also referred to persons emigrating as ‘refugees’, and the issuance of a ‘refugee card’ marked the beginning of rehabilitation from the East. Pia Oberoi, ‘South Asia and the Creation of the International Refugee Regime’ (2001) 19(5) Refuge: Canada's Journal on Refugees 36, 37. ibid 39. Sucheta Kripalani, the Indian delegate, said that ‘[t]he [P]artition refugees were not stateless … but statelessness was often a lesser hardship than lack of food, clothing, shelter and work’. Agreeing with this analysis, the Pakistani delegate examined this argument further by claiming that statelessness ‘was the least of the privations to deal with which the IRO had been set up’. See also Provisional Summary Record of the Two Hundred and Sixty-Third Meeting Held at Lake Success New York on Tuesday 15 November 1949 at 10:45am, UN Doc A/C.3/SR.263 (15 November 1949). 215