Migrants, Refugees and the Stateless in India 1964 and 2013.6 Most of them have sought refuge in India, where they are concentrated in the border states of Assam, Tripura and West Bengal. Thousands of Buddhist Chakma and Hindu Hajongs also fled Bangladesh, then East Pakistan, to India when their settlements in the Chittagong Hill Tracts were submerged due to the commencement of a major hydroelectric project in the region. This movement can be attributed to a combination of religious discrimination and development-induced displacement. The Chakma and Hajong began arriving in India’s North-East Frontier Agency (NEFA), present-day Arunachal Pradesh, in 1964. Between 1964 and 1969, around 15,000 of these refugees were settled across camps in the NEFA, partly motivated by the Indian state’s need to beef up security in its sparsely populated border areas following defeat in the 1962 war against China. Forced migration of Sikhs and Hindus from Afghanistan to India has taken place mainly in three phases: following the Soviet invasion in 1979, the establishment of Taliban rule in 1996, and, more recently, the ongoing civil unrest. In India, New Delhi is the preferred destination for the new wave of forced Afghan migrants, due to access to the UNHCR. There are other sources of refugees in India. The brutal 25-yearslong civil war till 2009 in Sri Lanka was characterised by largescale human rights violations by both separatist Tamil militants and the Sri Lankan state, leading to over 80,000 deaths.7 For the ethnic Hindu Tamils, who sought to flee this large-scale violence, the southern Indian state of Tamil Nadu was the destination of choice by virtue of its geographic proximity, its shared religion, language and culture, and a sympathetic state structure. The Tamil exodus into India began following the anti-Tamil riots in Colombo in July 1983. As the ethno-political situation in Sri Lanka deteriorated in the years following the riots, the flow of Tamils into India continued with varying degrees of intensity for almost three 6 Mohammad Kamrul Hasan, 'No Hindus Will Be Left after 30 Years,' Dhaka Tribune, November 21, 2016, https://www.dhakatribune.com/ bangladesh/2016/11/20/abul-barkat-632-hindus-left-country-day/. 7 ‘Sri Lanka Starts Count of Civil War Dead,’ Al Jazeera America, November 28, 2013, http://america.aljazeera.com/articles/2013/11/28/sri-lankastartscountingthecivilwardead.html. 41