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Disorder, said Foucault, is often a manifestation of underlying structure. India’s lack of a refugee policy is a good example of this. The absence of a refugee law is not the product of legislative oversight but the means by which the state maintains arbitrariness towards various refugee groups.

The United Nation High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) theme for World Refugee Day 2026, Until Everyone Is Safe asserts that safety is indivisible. It is a claim that sounds philosophical until you place it against India’s non-accession to the 1951 Refugee Convention. For a country born out of partition, an event that triggered one of the largest mass migrations in human history; this trajectory is particularly significant. Surrounded on nearly every side by conflict-affected, refugee-generating countries and territories such as Myanmar, Bangladesh, Afghanistan, Sri Lanka, Tibet etc. India’s evolving approach to refuge, citizenship and belonging deserves far greater analysis than it has so far received.

Illustration: Pariplab Chakraborty.

B.S. Chimni’s calls it strategic ambiguity: By declining to codify refugee protection in domestic law, the state has preserved maximum flexibility, extending protection when it is in alignment with its foreign policy and withholding when it is not. The consequences have been visible across decades. Tibetan refugees have been hosted in structured settlements; geopolitical assets carefully managed to neither fully antagonise China nor surrender the leverage they provide. Tamil Sri Lankan refugees were received across Tamil Nadu in a gesture that resonated with ethnic solidarity and regional politics. Afghan Sikh and Hindu refugees were evacuated to safety as well; neatly aligned with India’s domestic........

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