Migrants, Refugees and the Stateless in India a glance,’ About Us, United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees—India, accessed 11 February 2020, https://www.unhcr.org/en-in/india-factsheets.html ‡ ‘Chakma Refugees: That Chakmas Are 1L Is Goebbels-Speak: Suhas Chakma,’ The Times of India, September 23, 2017, https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/india/that-chakmas-are-1l-is-goebbelsspeak-suhas-chakma/articleshow/60802048.cms. § Refugees and asylum seekers registered under the UNHCR’s mandate, as of August 2019. See: ‘Figures at a glance,’ About Us, United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees—India, accessed 11 February 2020, https://www.unhcr.org/en-in/india-factsheets.html. | Ibid. ¶ As of December 2014. Other Mandate Refugees in India include those from Somalia, Democratic Republic of Congo, Eritrea, Iran, Iraq, Somalia and Sudan. See: United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees—India, ‘Figures at a glance’ # The exact number of Chins in India is contested. About 4,000 Chins were registered with the UNHCR in June 2018. In August 2018, the UNHCR decided to lift the Chins’ refugee status. See: Sangeeta Barooah Pisharoty, ‘UNHCR to Cancel Refugee Status of Chins of Myanmar,’ The Wire, June 30, 2018, https://thewire.in/ rights/unhcr-to-lift-refugee-status-over-chins-of-myanmar. Δ There were about 20,000 Lhotshampa refugees in India by 1995, scattered across north-eastern India. A 2007 census put the figure at 107,923. See: Rosalind Evans, ‘The Perils of Being a Borderland People: On the Lhotshampas of Bhutan’. In Borderland Lives in Northern Asia, ed. David N. Gellner, (Durham: Duke University Press), 117-40. and (iii) potential statelessness. In reality, these categories overlap significantly. External Military Intervention, Triggering Migration The military invasion of Tibet in 1949 by the People’s Republic of China, and their sustained state repression of Tibetans in subsequent years eventually culminated in an armed uprising against Chinese rule in 1959. The failure of this rebellion, and the ruthless Chinese crackdown that followed, led the Dalai Lama, the Tibetans’ spiritual leader, and his followers to flee to India, where they have remained since. Similarly, the invasion and occupation of Afghanistan by the Soviet Union in 1979 and by the United States in 2001, and the decades of resultant violent conflict, have driven millions of Afghans to seek refuge in neighbouring countries. While Pakistan has been the first choice of destination for fleeing Afghans, thousands have sought shelter in India as well. If we are to set aside the Partition-induced migrants from Pakistan, the Tibetans were the first to seek refuge in India. Following the Chinese invasion of Tibet, a small but steady number had continued to attempt the journey across the Himalayan ranges into the north-eastern state of Arunachal Pradesh, throughout the 1950s. But it was after the failed rebellion of 1959 that India saw a mass influx of Tibetans. The Tibetans, led by the then 25-year-old Dalai Lama, were given a grand reception by the Indian government 37