By the 2019 elections in India, the Rohingya refugee crisis had made headways into the national
political thinking and the narrative surrounding the issue hence metamorphosed into one of ‘save
ourselves’ instead of ‘save them’, courtesy to the ruling party’s incendiary campaign to portray the
Rohingya as a potential threat poised to strike, if the country and its people are not wary.
Since the start of the Covid-19 pandemic, Rohingya refugees in India were increasingly targeted as
the sources of the virus and thereby being denied access to medical services. Terms such as ‘Corona
Bomb’ were used and there was an intense crackdown on the camps in the aftermath of suspicions
that the refugees have been responsible for triggering the spread of the virus by attending the
Tablighi Jamaat (a religious gathering), held in early March 2020.
At a session with the MHA on August 2021, where the government was questioned on The Home
Ministry’s blunt response to this, the reply was that “no such campaign against the Rohingya has
been brought to the notice of the central government.”12
Any response pertaining to identifying solutions to the refugee crisis, and addressing long term
goals, has been invariably centred on the ‘state’, negating the ‘individual’. Such an approach
disregards the core issues driving the Rohingya to seek refuge in India, as well as their experience
fleeing a state sponsored sustained campaign of ethnic cleansing, and, additionally, whitewashes
the actions of the Myanmar government.
12 Lok
Sabha Unstarred Question No. 1414 (11/2/2020). There is substantial evidence proving the large amount of online
hate that the Rohingya face. For example, see https://www.nytimes.com/2019/06/14/technology/facebook-hate-speechrohingya-india.html