Migrants, Refugees and the Stateless in India Deploying Citizenship to Redefine the Secular State Abhimanyu Suresh & Sajjad Hassan Introduction South Asia’s amalgam of political, ethnic and religious dynamics have caused several streams of cross-border movement of people over the ages. In a region where an oppressed minority community in one country might often be the oppressing majority in another, South Asians of many faiths and ethnicities have often sought shelter in the relatively safer shores of their neighbouring countries, resulting in a bevy of displacements. The template for this was the great Partition of 1947, creating the independent nation-states of India and Pakistan. This was accompanied by a mass (and in Punjab and the rest of the western borders, state-enforced) exchange of populations across the divided borders—Muslim minorities from India to Pakistan, and Hindu and Sikh minorities from Pakistan into India—although this was by no means an exhaustive exchange. Since Partition, in India, Pakistan and now Bangladesh, and across the rest of South Asia, cross-border displacements have continued, with a recent count putting the figure at 50 million refugees in the region.1 By virtue of its geographic spread, its promise of economic opportunity, a diverse population and, compared to the rest of the region, an inclusive and stable polity, India has attracted a large number of refugees and migrants from different faiths and backgrounds over the years. But lately, majoritarian advances in India are influencing its stance on letting them in by welcoming 1 Partha S. Ghosh, Migrants, Refugees and the Stateless in South Asia (New Delhi: SAGE Publications, 2016), 1-2.