Migrants, Refugees and the Stateless in India we connected with civil society groups and community-based organisations (CBOs) to access existing accounts and reports. An Overview of the Refugees and Stateless in India There are four types of refugees in India: i) refugees who receive full state protection according to standards set by the Indian government, viz, Tibetans, Tamils from Sri Lanka, and Chakma and Hajongs from the Chittagong Hill Tracts of Bangladesh; ii) refugees whose presence in India is acknowledged by the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), also known as ‘mandate refugees’, viz, Afghans and the Rohingya; iii) refugees who have entered India and assimilated into the local communities, with their presence officially acknowledged by neither the UNHCR nor the Indian government, viz, Chins, Rakhines and Nagas, all from Myanmar, and ethnic Nepalis from Bhutan; and iv) refugees who are religious minorities in neighbouring countries who live in unofficial camps in India.2 Table 1 provides a snapshot of these groups, their locations in India, approximate numbers, and the proximate causes that led them to seek refuge in India. Table 2 details groups in India who are de facto or de jure stateless, and those at risk of statelessness, along with their locations, approximate numbers, and the drivers of their statelessness. Causal Factors and Refugee Movements It is difficult to divide the various refugee and stateless groups in India into neat categories. Scholars have, however, identified several non-mutually exclusive causal factors for forced cross-border migration in South Asia. These include failure in nation-building, inter-ethnic conflict, open or virtually open borders, war-related qualms, developmental and environmental effects, intra-regional and extra-regional military interventions, and statelessness or virtual statelessness.3 Using this typology, we identify the following as the three main causal factors relevant to various refugee and stateless groups in India: (i) external military interventions; (ii) failure in nation-building, resulting in persecution of minorities; 2 Ghosh, Migrants, Refugees and the Stateless in South Asia, 247-48. 3 Ghosh, Migrants, Refugees and the Stateless in South Asia, 1-2. 35