This episode explores questions of citizenship, displacement, statelessness, and the ways in which they are related to aspects of race and gender. The discussion includes an examination of the right to belong to a state and the right of people to move across borders in search of security and stability in the context of South Asia and beyond.
Glossary
Who is Hannah Arendt?
(00: 2: 08 or page 1)
Hannah Arendt (1906–1975) was one of the most influential political philosophers of the twentieth
century. Born into a German-Jewish family, she was forced to leave Germany in 1933 and lived in
Paris for the next eight years, working for a number of Jewish refugee organisations. In 1941 she
immigrated to the United States and soon became part of a lively intellectual circle in New York. She
held a number of academic positions at various American universities until her death in 1975. She is
best known for two works that had a major impact both within and outside the academic
community. The first, The Origins of Totalitarianism, published in 1951, was a study of the Nazi and
Stalinist regimes that generated a wide-ranging debate on the nature and historical antecedents of
the totalitarian phenomenon. Source
Who are the Chakma refugees?
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The Chakmas are ethnic people who lived in the Chittagong Hill Tracts, most of which are
located in Bangladesh. Chakmas are predominantly Buddhists, they are found in northeast
India, West Bengal, Bangladesh, and Myanmar.The Chakmas living in India are Indian citizens,
some of them, mostly from Mizoram, live in relief camps in southern Tripura due to tribal
conflict with Mizos. Source
What is the 1951 Convention?
(00:25:25 or page 5)
The 1951 Convention relating to the Status of Refugees, as complemented by its 1967 Protocol, has
justly been termed the “Magna Carta” of refugees. The Convention and Protocol are, indeed, the
culmination of an uninterrupted effort by the international community, started under the League of
Nations in 1921, to ensure the international recognition of some basic rights and of certain minimum
standards of treatment for persons forced to flee their country in order to escape persecution on
account of their race, religion, nationality, political opinion or membership of a particular social
group. The fundamental importance of the 1951 Convention and 1967 Protocol was stressed by the
World Conference on Human Rights held in Vienna in 1993, and has been repeatedly affirmed by the
General Assembly of the United Nations, which has hailed the Convention and Protocol as “the
cornerstone of the international system for the protection of refugees”.The Executive Committee of
UNHCR has also emphasised the primacy of these instruments, and confirmed that they form the
international legal basis for the protection of refugees. Source
S.R Welcome to "Democracy in Question," the podcast series that explores the challenges that democracies are facing around the world. I'm Shalini Randeria, rector and president of Central European University in Vienna and senior fellow at the Albert Hirschman Centre on Democracy at the Graduate Institute in Geneva.
In this episode, my guest is Paula Banerjee, professor at the Department of South and Southeast Asian Studies University of Calcutta. She's the former president of the International Association for the Study of Forced Migration and a member of the South Asian think tank, the Calcutta Research Group. Paula’s research addresses questions of statelessness forced migration, and borders, especially in the context of South Asia. Among her writings, let me mention "Statelessness in South Asia," a volume co-edited in 2016, "Unstable Populations, Anxious States," the earlier volume, "Borders, Histories, and Existences: Gender and Beyond."
I discuss with Paula today concepts and ideas that are fundamental to democratic politics, one could even say pre-requisites, if people are to enjoy the rights and privileges that we associate with democracy. We will talk about citizenship, in this episode, the right to belong to a state and the right of people to move across borders in search of security and stability. We explore questions of displacement and of statelessness with special attention to the historical realities of South Asia. Welcome to the podcast, Paula, it's wonderful to have you with us.
P.B: Thank you so much, Shalini, it's lovely to be here. I'm an avid follower of your podcast and I really enjoyed the episodes.
S.R: Thanks so much. Let me start with looking at the question of statelessness. And let me start with a quotation from Hannah Arendt's classic treatise titled "The Origins of Totalitarianism." And I quote her, she writes, "The world found nothing sacred in the abstract nakedness of being human." Having lived through the personal experience of being a refugee from Nazi persecution, as well as having chronicled the systematic destruction of the European Jews by Hitler's regime, this devastating understatement came at the back of Hannah Arendt's realization that in the absence of rights granted by the state, the discourse of human rights, for example, was ultimately powerless. What really mattered, she argued, was what she called "the right to have rights," the right to be a member of a political community, in other words, the right to be a citizen, which makes the enjoyment of all other rights possible. You have maintained a sustained focus on the notion of statelessness, rather than the positive concept of citizenship and citizenship rights, in your own work on questions of forced migration, on borderlands, and gender in South Asia. Could you speak to us first about why statelessness becomes an important category, the main lens through which to understand some of these questions, and indeed even, as you have argued, in understanding the very concept of citizenship itself?
P.B: So, to me, the whole notion of citizenship actually is poised on another notion, and that is whether the state recognizes you as a citizen. Often, we do not really address our citizenship because it becomes active only when there is a legal issue and you go to the courts. But when it goes to the court, that is often thrown out, as we have seen in the context of India. So, that is why I make statelessness actually the central issue in debates of belonging and not belonging. Because it is very easy for a state to decide that you are not a citizen. And if a state decides not to give you the right, then you have no rights. And this can be decided on issues of race, this can be decided on issues of religion, sometimes even on your sexuality. So, that is why I bring statelessness to the center of the debate on citizenship.
S.R.: So, in the book, which you co-edited a few years ago, titled "The State of Being Stateless, an Account of South Asia," I quote now from your book that, "often people belonging to the same family find themselves in different positions in the grid of citizenship and statelessness. The father can be a full citizen, the mother de facto stateless, a son jus soli citizen, a daughter de juro stateless." This is something which is quite unusual in Western societies. Could you give us briefly a sense of these specific historical circumstances in South Asia that make the question of citizenship such a fixed and a complex issue that the whole bundle of rights, which we call "citizenship rights," can be distributed so unevenly within a family?
P.B.: Yes, you're completely right. Because, you see, South Asia...and this is not just South Asia, I have seen this happen also within Africa, different countries within Africa, we are all post-colonial nations with a huge history of failed decolonization, in some sense. And what happened was that, when the partition lines were drawn, in one of my books, I quote a British bureaucrat saying that "We have drawn the lines without even knowing what is there." And then, you know, the complexity just goes on from there. I think where you quoted, the example of one family having the father as the citizen, the son is not, I think it's an example taken from the Chakma refugees.
Now, the Chakmas were invited to come to India in 1962 but they were never given the citizenship rights. Certain generations were given citizenship, but they were not allowed to transfer their citizenship to their children, who would later promise naturalization. And then, you know, if we look at other histories, for example, let's talk about Sri Lankan history, till 2003, women were not allowed to pass their citizenship to their children. So, what happens when a Sri Lankan woman is a refugee and has a child in the camp, maybe somewhere in South Asia, maybe in India, how does the child become a citizen? In 2003, that was rectified and Sri Lankan women were given the right to pass their citizenship. Now, this is not exceptional. Till 1967, Indian women were not allowed to pass their citizenship.
So, you see, it's a very complex process. And if I take it country by country, each countries have these anomalies in the whole notion of citizenship. For example, another anomaly for most of the South Asian states for a very long time was that a woman inevitably lost her citizenship when she married a citizen from another country. And I think that's true of Europe also for a time period. So, you know, women were not considered as equal citizen to that of men. So, you know, there are reasons why these anomalies happen, but it probably happens more in our part of the world and in certain other postcolonial states because we had to contend with different laws, different partitions, different principles on which statehood was formed and then the development that our state made or the changes that our state made on the basis of those laws. And inevitably, a state decides who belongs and who does not, in any way get the chance of belonging.
S.R: Do we have any examples where we have attempts at modernizing citizenship laws in order to equalize the unequal nature of gendered citizenship rights in other parts of the world?
P.B: Yeah. I mean, in most different parts of the world, we've had laws, you know, that have shifted the access slightly. For example, the abortion laws in Nepal, for that matter. You know, we have been tilting it in favor of certain groups but, to me, what is more problematic, Shalini, is whenever there is an attempt to correct the citizenship anomalies in favor of gendered subjects, there are other genders now who are sort of outside the pale of this question.
In fact, yesterday, I was talking to a friend of mine who is going through a process of asylum. You know, she's a lawyer, she's working for asylum of a lesbian woman and is finding it extremely difficult. So, you know, questions of sexuality, questions of gender have become progressively complicated. And even when states have affirmative actions in favor of women, there are still other categories where certain people are inevitably left out. Because the states, at least in most parts of the world, even when they have laws, they’re signatory to treaties, they’re signatory to a whole bunch of declarations, still they are ad hoc in their whole, you know, giving and taking away citizenship. And no two individuals get the same treatment because there are issues that complicate the whole matter and the state has the right to decide who to keep, who not to keep. So, you know, this is the crux of the question of sovereignty. The sovereignty is not with the individual but it's with the state.
S.R: So, that's something I'd like to come back to in a moment, but I think you've introduced one other concept into the mix, and that is the concept of state sovereignty and the right to either grant or take away citizenship. But the other related concept on which I think a lot of rethinking needs to be done is the concept of the so-called "displaced person." And if I may return to Hannah Arendt here once again, she writes of the massive cost of the Second World War, that, in addition to the death of millions, it rendered millions stateless across Europe. And she says, and I quote her, "The post-war term 'displaced persons' was invented during the war for the express purpose of liquidating statelessness once and for all by ignoring its existence. Non-recognition of statelessness always means repatriation, that is deportation to a country of origin, which either refuses to recognize the prospective repatriate as a citizen or, on the contrary, urgently wants him back for punishment. Since non-totalitarian countries, in spite of their bad intentions, inspired by the climate of war generally have shied away from mass repatriations, the number of stateless people, 12 years after the end of the war, is larger than ever. The decision of the statesman to solve the problem of statelessness by ignoring it is further revealed by the lack of any reliable statistics on the subject," end of quote. And she writes this in 1973.
The question here for me is a twofold one. One is a question of terminology on which I would like to speak to you first, which is what is the import of the terminology of displacement, of displaced persons in the context of South Asia? And is there a general consensus between the nation states, Bangladesh, India, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, or even among international organizations like the UNHCR when it comes to the hundreds and thousands of displaced people in successive civil-war partitions that the subcontinent has experienced?
P.B: You've asked two very complicated questions because I consider Hannah Arendt as the guru of everybody who works on displacement, on questions of rights, etc. And I think she is not just prophetic; she is almost the prophet. Because, you know, nobody in the 1970s really questioned these things. You see, displacement, there are a lot of very complex definitions but basically, in South Asia, it used to mean that, if you are a person who's forcibly moved from your home, you are displaced. And that is why I keep saying that rich people move, the poor people are displaced. Because, you know, the rich, they have the wherewithal even if you have to change countries. So, you know, there is this division. But, you know, what makes it more complicated is that, whether you are able to cross international border or not, because, if you cannot cross an international border, then you are actually forced to stay within the borders of a country that helped or at least, you know, looked the other way when you were being displaced.
So, what kind of a rehabilitation resettlement can that system give you and will it be a just system? There is this huge question. And if you are able to move across an international border, then you can seek asylum. But who gives you asylum? You know, you don't get to choose where you will go, it is the country that gives you asylum that chooses you.
S.R: So, let me come back to my second question, which is the question of the state of statistics on statelessness. Which I think, as you very rightly said, Hannah Arendt was prophetic because, as she says, "The decision of the statesman to solve the problem of statelessness by ignoring it is further revealed by the lack of any reliable statistics on the subject." What kind of numbers are we talking about when we talk about statelessness? And what is the problem with the way in which those numbers are produced?
P.B: Well, it's a very problematic thing to come up with any statistics on statelessness because of how, as per international treaty obligation, statelessness is measured. That is what the treaty obligation does is ask states to say that this person is stateless. For example, India can say, "Paula Banerjee is not a citizen," but India cannot say that Paula Banerjee is stateless because Paula Banerjee can be a citizen of Bangladesh. So, what that means is every country should come up and say, "This person is not our citizen," and then this person becomes stateless.
So, what is done is certain communities, let's say, 100,000 Nepalese in Bhutan, I don't know how to call them, refugees, they are considered as, you know, asylum seekers first and then they are given asylum. And those who are not given asylum ultimately become stateless. So, what happens is that the numbers that we come up with, you know, 1 million, 2 million, 4 million, is a completely false number. For example, today, do we know how many Afghans are displaced? Even if we know how many Afghans are displaced, we can only measure them in terms of how many people have got refugee or asylum status in different countries. What happens to those people who have been displaced and do not get asylum in countries like United States? The rest of the people are still in that region pushed from one end to another, or maybe in the borders of Belarus or somewhere like that. And, for every purpose, you know, they are de facto stateless.
Now, even UNHCR recognizes the category of de facto stateless, people who are stateless not by law but by action. Everybody recognizes that the durable solutions that we had considered durable, at one point of time, is really not durable. It just extends the limits of time when you will be given asylum at will of a certain nation. And then you can be thrown out of that country, that nation, if the states so, you know, feel.
And I have seen this happen in the context of South Asia. If two countries or two states are not friendly, then you get some sort of an asylum. But the moment there is an understanding, there is an effort to throw you back or repatriate you, but it is couched in terms of voluntary repatriation. So, that is why, you know, I wouldn't even try to give you a number because that number would be palpably false. UNHCR gives a number, it is there on their website, but that number is never the correct number because even UNHCR recognizes that there is this huge category called de facto stateless.
S.R: So, let me pick up two things which you just said. One, I want to come back to the really awful situation on the Belarus borders, which you just mentioned, but put that in the context of international law and treaties, which you have also referred to just now. And that is to say there have been no dearth of treaties and charters on refugee’s asylum and displacement, which have been signed by various countries at the international level. But the overwhelming experience of how these treaties and laws are being implemented today by most nation states, and also and in particular Western European nation states and the U.S., is hugely disappointing. And the latest example of that would come from the plight of refugees who are there in the freezing cold on the Poland and Belarus border who are basically being instrumentalized by Lukashenko. These are Middle Eastern refugees, but they are pawns in his game at the moment. And, in a sense, it is like being on no man's land. So, it's not only being stateless and rightless but it's states who have international obligations to protect those rights willfully ignoring them.
P.B: You're absolutely correct in that today the panacea for all problem is considered to be a treaty. If you have a treaty, if you have signatures on that, you feel you've done your job. You know, all humanitarian agencies look for treaties, and there's treaty after treaty after treaty. But every country knows how to subvert those treaties. The case of people in the Poland-Belarus border is the recent pathetic case but this is not the only case. Last night, I found out, from a news report, that they have been taken to a place where they could get the night shelter and some warm food and shower. And everybody applauds it. You know, we are giving them nothing and then we are applauding the fact that they have been given a night's shelter? You know, this is what humanity has come to? Forget human rights, even humanitarianism. And I hate the term "humanitarianism" because we should be right-seeking individuals.
You know, and as I keep saying, by virtue of being born, you have certain rights. But that is completely forgotten. I hate to use this term but look at the history of refugee resettlement in the United States. You know, this is happening in Belarus, but when hundreds of people were crowding in the southern borders of United States, where was CNN, where was world press saying that they should be given some sort of an asylum? Because these people were also fleeing from palpable threats to their lives. I'm a great admirer of Joe Biden but I wish he would do something about Article 42 because what is happening today is not right. You know, Kamala Harris, when she went to South America, she said, "Those of you who are planning to make the trek to U.S. border, do not come. Do not come." I think we should be critical of the leaders of the free world of anybody who is not allowing desperate people some sort of an asylum.
S.R: But, Paula, the interesting thing for me is that the disjuncture between law and practice, which you have just rightly pointed out to and insisted that it be held up to accountability, is reversed in the case of a country like India. We are not signatories to many of these international treaties, yet, in practice, we have been much more hospitable to refugees from across all our borders and we have had really hundreds of thousands of refugees coming to India from Tibet, from Afghanistan, from Sri Lanka, from Bangladesh. And despite the fact that we have not signed on, as a government, to this legal obligation, in practice, we provided these refugees many more conditions to make themselves a dignified home, a life and livelihood in India. And how would you explain this kind of disjuncture between law and practice?
P.B: I feel refugee law is constructed to exclude people rather than to include. Because what you do in law is you limit the terms of inclusion. In 1951, the way the Convention was drafted, the rights of people seeking asylum and getting asylum was actually very limited. People could seek asylum on the basis of race, religion, nationality, of having some kind of a political ideology, or forming some kind of a social group that was persecuted. And everything depended on this notion of fear, of persecution. And then, you know, everything was left so that the states could define it.
For example, Australia said yes to a group of white South African farmers to give asylum. And here I think the race factor is very important. So, the states decide, if you are white, you can come in. If you're brown, you cannot. Now, for the case of India, India had a huge history of mobility and recognized this history of mobility. So, when people just walked in, India was large enough for them to find their king network and settle. And that is why it was probably ad hoc-ism that saved us from being a really sort of strict adherence to the 1951 Convention, we were not signatories. So, the ad hoc-ism made it possible for us to take in people, to accommodate people. The good thing about India is, when you come inside, you're okay, you can disappear from the radar. And if you can disappear, you can still get jobs and still survive, I think which is a good thing. I, in fact, support that sort of creativity of the displaced population.
S.R: So, thank you, Paula, for this really fascinating discussion on questions of citizenship, displacement, statelessness, and the ways in which they are intricately related to questions of race and gender.
P.B: Thank you so much, Shalini, I loved the chat. But I'm sure I evoked more questions than answered any of yours because the problems are such. Thank you very much, to your listeners as well.
S.R: So, what we saw with Paula Banerjee is that citizenship, which is about belonging, is poised on the notion of the recognition and the granting of these citizenship rights by the state. In fact, it is paradoxically the state which is being asked even to define who should be considered to be stateless. And, therefore, we may need to rethink the relationship between citizenship and statelessness because one may want to invert it by making the argument that everyone is stateless unless a state decides to recognize and confer citizenship rights on us. Sovereignty then is the crux of the practice of the nation-state in conferring or denying these rights.
We also learned that race and gender are inextricably mixed up with questions of citizenship and the right to cross international borders. But class has something to do with it as well because mobility refers to the movement of the rich, the poor are the ones who are forcibly displaced. International treaties on refugees or displaced persons mean very little as countries who have signed these treaties subvert them constantly. But we need to look critically at the law itself, since refugee law is constructed to exclude rather than to include.
Paradoxically, countries like India, that are not signatories to some of these international treaties, have, in practice, been often more hospitable to refugees than many Western countries that have signed these treaties but continue to ignore them or violate them with impunity.
Thank you very much for listening. In the next episode, we are joined by the political theorist Jan-Werner Müller, Professor at Princeton University, to discuss the threat of populism to democratic politics, including the perils it poses to the infrastructure of democracy, to political parties, and to the press.
Please go back and listen to any episode that you may have missed, both in this season, Season 3, or, of course, in earlier seasons. And let your friends know about the podcast if you've enjoyed it. You can stay in touch with the work of the Central European University at www.ceu.edu and the Albert Hirschman Centre on Democracy at www.graduateinstitute.ch\democracy.