Gender, Identity and Migration in India 9811655979, 9789811655975

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Gender, Identity and Migration in India Edited by Nasreen Chowdhory Paula Banerjee

Gender, Identity and Migration in India “This compelling anthology of case studies and critical reflections offers new insights into our understanding of the nexus between gender, identity and migration. Offering a substantial contribution to the growing body of research related to displacement and dispossession in South Asia, the volume powerfully rectifies the silencing of experiences from the Global South and feminist methodologies. The editors have brought together a range of innovative scholars, who collectively, address a gap between knowledge production in academia and the lived experiences of people and communities who constitute both the subjects and objects of forced migration. Readers who want to understand the lived experiences of migration will see farther and more clearly through the authors’ lenses. The collection provides a solid foundation for students, academics and policy makers of the main questions being asked around migration and identity, with gender as the central figure.” —Professor Giorgia Doná, Co-director Centre for Migration, Refugees and Belonging, University of East London “This anthology brings together a set of carefully researched and logically argued papers, which deepen our understanding of the gendered nature of migration and the questions of identity, belonging, and citizenship. The chapters look at the phenomenon of forced migration and displacement arising out of conflict, coercion, and social and state practices that produce different kinds of ‘mobile’ populations. The book makes a significant contribution to displacement studies by examining displacement through conceptual lenses which are sensitive to the contexts of the global South. The deployment of feminist methodology unsettles ossified categories that have hegemonised the field of enquiry, prompting questions which are framed to elicit answers from people’s lived experiences. The focus on life histories and narratives have made the book a rich repository of ethnographic accounts of lived experience of migration. The contributors persuade the reader to look at borders and borderlands, conflict and resistance, work, lives and livelihoods, camps, and homes as spaces and sites constitutive of these experiences. An excellent anthology for those academics and policy makers who are looking for a rigorously researched and intellectually stimulating work.” —Professor Anupama Roy, Centre for Political Studies, School of Social Sciences-II, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi

“Understanding displacement, refuge, mobility and new labour regimes as gendered processes and to conceptualize the migrant as a central figure of contemporary history as part of a feminist epistemiology – these are key points of departure the authors of this edited volume share. Their explorations focus on South Asia and India and are doubly challenging standard paradigms in migration studies: by conceptualising South-South migration as key for knowledge production in the field as well as by giving the limelight to scholarship from the Global South. In other words: via understanding Indian migration, this volume is challenging global migration discourses.” —Professor Lydia Potts, Coordinator of EMMIR (European Masters in Migration and Intercultural Relations. It is a European Commission run Masters Program), Carl Von Ossietzky University in Oldenburg, Germany

Nasreen Chowdhory  •  Paula Banerjee Editors

Gender, Identity and Migration in India

Editors Nasreen Chowdhory Department of Political Science University of Delhi New Delhi, India Calcutta Research Group Kolkata, India

Paula Banerjee Department of South and Southeast Asian Studies University of Calcutta Kolkata, India Calcutta Research Group Kolkata, India

ISBN 978-981-16-5597-5    ISBN 978-981-16-5598-2 (eBook) https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-16-5598-2 © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2022 This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed. The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use. The publisher, the authors and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, expressed or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. The publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations. This Palgrave Macmillan imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. The registered company address is: 152 Beach Road, #21-­01/04 Gateway East, Singapore 189721, Singapore

Foreword

Gender, Identity, and Migration in India opens up a horizon of conflict studies where social contentions find their place of significance. This is in marked contrast to the usual crop of conflict studies which, in the name of realism, see conflicts as self-originating and do not go beyond the usual reasons of state and resources. This book takes us in a different direction that points towards our bodily existences and the deep physicality of the conflicts. Mobile human bodies, their gendered existences, the ways these bodies encamp or are quartered, and the dislocated presence of development in this age—all these in place of generals, politicians, strategic analysts, and diplomats, occupy centre stage in this book. Remarkable in this context is the pronounced presence of the narratives of displacement in this book—primarily because these narratives, besides bringing out the variegated contexts of displacement, tell us of their interrelations, and more crucially, the centrality of experiences as the object to be theorised in forced migration studies. As has been suggested, experiences themselves become a critical part of the migration process. Displacement transforms labour under a continuously globalising regime of capital, and as the volume suggests, politics plays tango with this regime of capital by transforming the army of mobile labour into various categories of footloose population. Dislocation in this way becomes a tool to create new modes of supervising labour. Yet these new modes of supervision do not succeed in controlling population movements and regulating them to suit the needs of democracy and an orderly polity. What we observe instead is something named today by many migration theorists as v

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autonomy of migration, which speaks of the range of legal, semi-legal, and illegal ways in which labouring bodies move and survive. The story of development is threaded in this global time of displacement, refuge, mobility, and new labour regimes. The book presents as parts of that story episodes that form chronicles of moving bodies, of towns in transit, other accounts of dislocation, modes of studying these phenomena, illegalities, the spectrum of experiences of dislocation, our policy world, and most importantly, the filling up of an entity called “space” with social meanings like gender and caste. Therefore, while at one level the book may seem to throw dispersed light on our age, this very dispersal and diffusion make possible for the book to show the various apparatuses of power and conflict-shaping processes of migration and forced migration. We are, it seems, moving from an old realist optic to a new one, and the new realism signals the arrival of the migrant as a central figure of contemporary history. Kolkata, India

Ranabir Samaddar

Acknowledgements

Someone mentioned a while back that collaborative works allow us to forge deep friendships. Writing any book is a collective process that brings together an assemblage of contributors, friends, colleagues and well-wishers. Similarly, the journey of this book begun quite early on and personally I am very grateful that all contributors allowed us immense time to shape this important scholarship on Gender, Identity and Migration. Both Paula and I are very grateful to our peers for their guidance and direction given in this work. Paula would like to acknowledge the Department of South and Southeast Asian Studies, University of Calcutta and Mahanirban Calcutta Research Group, and Prof. Ranabir Samaddar. Friends and colleagues are a very critical part of any journey, and Nasreen is very grateful to the Department of Political Science, University of Delhi, and to all colleagues and especially Prof. Veena Kukreja (who passed away in April 2021). I would like to thank my mentors in the Mahanirban Calcutta Research Group, Prof. Ranabir Samaddar, Prof. Samir Kumar Das and Prof. Sabyasachi B R Chaudhary. Family constitutes the backbone of my academic work—my parents who continue to be part of my existence, even though they seem far, and yet not so far, my sister Parveen Chowdhury, my nephew Amaan Chowdhury, and my partner Adlul Islam are my source of strength. To each one of them, I remain forever grateful.

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I dedicate this work to my parents, Azharul Islam Chowdhury and Nuron Nessa Chowdhury, and Prof. Veena Kukreja. Lastly, we are grateful to all contributors, especially Nergis Canefe for sharing her powerful illustrations in the book, anonymous reviewers and Ms. Sandeep Kaur of Palgrave Macmillan for their inputs and immense patience.

Contents

1 Gender, Identity and Displacement: Nexus Requirements for a Critical Epistemology  1 Nergis Canefe, Paula Banerjee, and Nasreen Chowdhory Part I Methodologies and the Production of Knowledge in Forced Migration Contexts  15 2 Production of Knowledge and Methodologies in Conflict Induced Displacement and Forced Migration 17 Manish K. Jha and Shagun Saklani Pande 3 What Is Feminist About Studying Women’s Forced Migration 43 Paula Banerjee 4 Interrogating Camps in Forced Migration Studies: The Exceptionality of South Asia 53 Nasreen Chowdhory and Shamna Thacham Poyil 5 Gender, Dispossession, and Ethics of Witnessing: Method as Intervention 81 Nergis Canefe

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6 On Research, the Politics of Migrations and the Materiality of the Global: Views Out of Place 99 Giorgio Grappi Part II Labour, Development and the Migrant Body 117 7 “If Only I Were a Male”: Work, Value, and the Female Body119 Shailaja Menon 8 Forced Displacement Studies in India: An Overview139 Biswajit Mohanty 9 The Facilitators and the Reproductive Laborers of the Indian Gestational Surrogacy Market165 Namreeta Kumari 10 Gender and Invisible Migration: Understanding Sex Trafficking in India185 Skylab Sahu Part III Identity, Borders and Borderland 205 11 Being with Difficulty and Uncertainty: Young Rohingyas in Children’s Homes of West Bengal207 Suchismita Majumder 12 Negotiations and Navigation: Migrant Lives in a Borderland District235 Anindita Chakrabarty 13 The Legacy of Partition and Structural Victimisation of the People of Borderland: A Case of Punjab253 Jagroop Singh Sekhon and Sunayana Sharma

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Part IV Gender, Conflict and Migration 283 14 Women in India’s CPI (Maoist) Ranks285 P. V. Ramana 15 Gender, Gun and Guerrillas: Narratives from Maoist People’s War of Nepal299 Amrita Pritam Gogoi 16 Victims to Vanguards: Displaced Yet Determined321 Shubhra Seth 17 Gender, Identity and Migration: Concluding Remarks341 Paula Banerjee and Nasreen Chowdhory Annexure349 Index363

Contributors

Paula  Banerjee Department of South and Southeast Asian Studies, University of Calcutta, Kolkata, India Calcutta Research Group, Kolkata, India Nergis Canefe  York University, Toronto, Ontario, Canada Anindita Chakrabarty  Mahindra University, Hyderabad, India Nasreen  Chowdhory Department of Political Science, University of Delhi, New Delhi, India Calcutta Research Group, Kolkata, India Amrita Pritam Gogoi  Dibrugarh University, Dibrugarh, India Giorgio Grappi  University of Bologna, Bologna, Italy Manish K. Jha  Tata Institute of Social Sciences, Mumbai, India Namreeta Kumari  SHSS, Sharda University, Greater Noida, India Suchismita  Majumder Department of Sociology, Raiganj University, Raiganj, India Shailaja  Menon  School of Liberal Studies, Ambedkar University, New Delhi, India Biswajit  Mohanty Deshbandhu College, University of Delhi, New Delhi, India xiii

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CONTRIBUTORS

Shagun Saklani Pande  Tata Institute of Social Sciences, Mumbai, India Shamna Thacham Poyil  Department of Political Science, University of Delhi, New Delhi, India P. V. Ramana  Independent Analyst, Rajahmundry, Andhra Pradesh, India Skylab  Sahu Miranda House College, University of Delhi, New Delhi, India Jagroop  Singh  Sekhon  Department of Political Science, Guru Nanak Dev University, Amritsar, India Shubhra Seth  Department of Political Science, Indraprastha College for Women, University of Delhi, New Delhi, India Sunayana Sharma  Department of Political Science, Lovely Professional University, Phagwara, India

List of Pictures

Picture 13.1 Picture 13.2

View of a peasant family in Ferozepur District. (Source: Field Study) Fencing on the border in Tarn Taran District. (Source: Field Study)

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List of Tables

Table 10.1

Various reasons for human trafficking in 2016

Table 10.1 Table 11.1

Various reasons for human trafficking in 2016 189 Number of Rohingyas interviewed in different Children’s Homes213 Details of the respondent in Sanlaap/Sneha Home, November 2016 219 Estimate of Rohingyas in Children’s Homes by Prajaak on April 2016 221 Details of the respondents in Vidyasagar Balika Bhawan, June 2016 221 Respondents from Silayan Home in March 2017 223 District wise description of the border-belt 259 Rate of population growth in Gurdaspur District (1971–2011)260 Rate of population growth in Amritsar District (1971–2011)261 Rate of population growth in Tarn Taran District* District (1971–2011) 262 Rate of population growth in Ferozepur District (1971–2011)263 Occupation of the farmers on the border-belt of Punjab 267 Distance of fields from the Entry Gates on the Fence (in kilometres) 270 Crop pattern across the fencing 273

Table 11.2 Table 11.3 Table 11.4 Table 11.5 Table 13.1 Table 13.2 Table 13.3 Table 13.4 Table 13.5 Table 13.6 Table 13.7 Table 13.8

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CHAPTER 1

Gender, Identity and Displacement: Nexus Requirements for a Critical Epistemology Nergis Canefe, Paula Banerjee, and Nasreen Chowdhory

Introduction The Global South categorically receives a generic and parochial treatment because of the historical inequalities underlying the North-South divide. It is generally framed as the source for ‘raw data’ or a beneficiary of theoretical work produced ‘elsewhere’, thus further reinforcing a conceptual hierarchy obscuring both historical asymmetries and violent power dynamics (Chimni 2009). There is a deep-seated need for the recalibration of established positions of intellectual power. Still, despite the genuine interest in including

N. Canefe York University, Toronto, Ontario, Canada P. Banerjee (*) Department of South and Southeast Asian Studies, University of Calcutta, Kolkata, India Calcutta Research Group, Kolkata, India N. Chowdhory (*) Department of Political Science, University of Delhi, New Delhi, India Calcutta Research Group, Kolkata, India © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2022 N. Chowdhory, P. Banerjee (eds.), Gender, Identity and Migration in India, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-16-5598-2_1

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and ‘empowering’ research partners in the Global South, international partnerships often reincarnate and reproduce neocolonial dynamics of inequality (Binka 2005). Including a southern partner, and any academic work produced in the Global South or referring to it in the curricula, if done in a manner that glosses over the politics of inclusion/exclusion, does not constitute an end in and of itself. Instead, this interaction needs to be framed as a first step towards an engaged, ethical and transformative relationship. Suffice to say that the same set of conditions apply to engaging with feminist methodologies and especially so in the context of forced migration studies (Hyndman 2010). In both cases, such critical work is directly informed by the logics of inequality. Meanwhile, efficiency/output, parameters of recognition, neocolonial tutelage and conceptual splits continue to play a major role in global academia. Working, teaching and publishing with the acute recognition of the homelessness and yet profound influence of such bridging acts constitute the first step towards establishing a critical epistemology of engagement. All of the contributors insist on working with an expanded concept of gender, social reproduction and belonging in order to tell more layered and complicated stories about the critical relationship between gender and dispossession. This kind of framework, combined with the critical and self-aware stance emanating from the Global South, has the capacity to underpin the dominant narrative structures operative in migration studies. The second key dimension of a politically engaged commitment to scholarship in the confines of academia is to remain involved or indeed to start the kinds of conversations that not only are transdisciplinary but also make a courageous attempt to address the gap between the academia and communities whose voice and participation are vital to the sustainability of local, regional and global understandings of the phenomena we seek to understand. As scholars, we not only do witness and analyse but also could challenge and change through our scholarship, research and teaching. The overarching argument presented here is that scholarship, despite its immense relevance, needs to be perpetually authenticated in order to create intellectual and political space for alternative ideas that are relevant to global historical realities. To this end, we must strive to explore the limits to the critique of capitalism, nationalism, refugee law, gendered division of labour, humanitarian and human rights law, etc. above and beyond reinstating their hegemonic dimensions. In seeking post-neoliberal, post-­ imperial and post-colonial insights, our work must address issues of injustice in order to establish a counterpoint and to introduce initiatives in research and capacity-building for genuine societal change.

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In this context, all the contributions to this volume embellish the argument that there is a direct correlation between an academic researcher’s positionality and the methods and trajectories of critical knowledge production. In particular, feminist epistemologies with specific emphasis on post-coloniality utilised in conjunction with scholarship related to transnational migration studies constitute a distinctly powerful vantage point for challenging methodological nationalism and the syndrome of ‘seeing like the state’ in the area of forced migration studies. Opposing the dualistic understandings of membership, crisis, exclusion and dispossession, it proposes a new set of norms that pertain to working with human suffering. Under the aegis of ethics of witnessing, this epistemological framework could provide a conceptual mapping of historical and emergent hierarchies vis-à-vis neocolonial as well as decolonial practices of knowledge production and dissemination pertaining to global patterns of displacement. These methodologies of dismemberment are uniquely inscribed acts of systemic violence resulting from state-society alliances, and it is high time that we attend to gendered forms of such dismemberment as a paradigm for understanding the overall pattern of dispossession across South Asia. Work on fluid borders, gendered forms of political engagement, intersection of power, identity and place, legacies of partition as conquest, and transnational readings of forced migration in the Asian context allow us to reflect upon the borders, borderlands, borderlines and spaces in between identities, languages and cultures. Similarly, rethinking historical geographies and contested readings of borders creates spaces for introducing a qualitative methodology for analysing contested identities, disputed national politics and territorial claims. Generating a new debate that makes it explicit that the fluidity of boundaries and uncertainty in histories of partitions are cartographic, historiographical and political debate is a crucial step towards establishing a new nexus for a critical epistemology. Extended conflicts, repeated partitions and seemingly unresolvable boundary issues are not just unique problems of South Asia. Mixed and massive population flows, large-scale population movements and exchanges, as well as statelessness occur globally as a result of actual practices or threat of violence, discrimination, natural disasters, man-made famines and floods, climate change, resource crises, environmental catastrophes, complex emergencies and civil wars alike. What makes the region distinct is not so much the chronic nature of displacement itself, but the normalisation of it and the rendition of borders as fixed when in effect they remained porous since India’s independence back in 1947. Narratives and life stories

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of displaced women within this larger context of redrawing of boundaries, partition of states, xenophobic policies, minority persecution, civil wars, and state-endorsed violence for the past 73 years unravel a unique history of a markedly gendered displacement. Bridging the gap between existing knowledge concerning displacement and dispossession which is often quantitatively constructed and the ground realities of the people whose lives are shaped by these phenomena at multiple levels needs to be challenged. Epistemological questions associated with the forced migration studies include the outlining of the gendered nature of forced migration only in a nominal fashion. This volume directly addresses the gap existing between knowledge production in academia and the lived experiences of people and communities who constitute both the subjects and objects of forced migration. Asking questions such as what is feminist about studying women’s forced migration, or treating camps as essential loci within forced migration studies while critically addressing the place of exceptionality, or working on policy reviews with an eye for mapping the profiles of sustainable livelihood and socio-­ economic rights of marginalised communities across South Asia, or establishing links between development, displacement and meanings associated with place, or treating partition not just as a method of conflict resolution but as a means of population engineering, looking at communities in the margin up close and personal and with a view of state policies and practices concerning sustainability of the rights of such communities, all of these points of entry constitute interventions. Forced migration has become an integral and naturalised part of everyday life for millions of girls and women in South Asia. While much of the academic and policy debate and related discourse centred on their movement across the borders and from one country to another, uprooting and displacement are also a reality from within, particularly when it concerns periodic back and forth and ‘temporary displacements’ as forced migration flows are often characterised as. Notably, a growing segment of these populations also experience uprooting and dislocation from their families and communities, husbands and children. For many, these multiple forms of individual and systemic violence have become a central feature of their lives. And yet, these issues continue to receive treatment as sub-headings with very little if any methodological bearing on the overall framework of forced migration studies. Overall, feminist analyses of forced migration in South Asia challenge the traditional forced migration studies framework on two counts: offering a lens that looks at dispossession from within the

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Global South, and, prioritising the lived experiences of displaced persons and recognising the gendered nature in which dispossession takes place. The ethical and pragmatic grounds for broadening our analytical focus from states to people cannot be achieved without investigating the social and political construction of dispossession or the destructive role that sexist and racist stereotypes play in constructing the category of victims of forced migration. Scholarship that emanates from marginalised and under-privileged geographies point to profound experiences of disconnection and formidable barriers to re/establishing connections after displacement, which altogether generate dangerous spaces of death and dispossession sustained by interlocking systems of oppression (Canefe 2019). In negotiating new spaces by dedicated and often confrontational scholarship, we underline the potential for the forming and re-forming of alliances among different sectors of the society and seemingly separate sources of knowing and telling the truth. In turn, these constitute new sources of understanding and insight that hold the promise of hope. It is within these alternative spaces of hope and forms of engagement that connections between academia and everyday life could offer a renewed sense of belonging and well-being for the society at large. The findings on gender, displacement and conflict brought forward in this volume highlight the relevance of studying the multi-faceted nature of uprooted-ness in women’s lives for providing new beginnings in terms of formulating critical epistemological interventions. Comprising a substantial contribution to the growing body of research related to displaced and dispossessed girls and women in South Asia, this volume offers a toolkit for future research for revealing the ways in which women’s lives are positioned in relation to other narratives, multiple audiences and the grand narratives of nationalism, war and conflict. It invites us to think and work in terms of how women position themselves vis-à-vis conflict, and are in ownership of discourses, strategies and performance devices reflecting significant changes in the life and times of societies that they are surviving against all odds. Their voices challenge the dominant narratives of war as well as peace and resist categorisation. As conditions of displacement became an integral part of decades-long ethnic conflict, border rearrangements and ensuing civil wars in South Asia, women’s life experiences were increasingly shaped by continuous ethnic conflicts and militarised projects of nation-building. They were forced to internalise their displaced state of existence and survival as an

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essential part of the price paid by the society at large for ongoing forms of structural violence. The queries engaged in this volume and the resultant collaborative effort sheds a new light to our understanding of the state, power, authority, privilege and territory by dislocating notions of place and border as fixed categories. By recovering the fluidity and mobility of geographies of systemic exclusion in the midst of seemingly settled political, cultural and economic realms, scholarly work of this kind pushes the envelope in terms of questioning the dominant epistemological certainties in the field. Such a fruitful discussion on the gendered consciousness of the displaced classes ultimately undermines traditional notions of displacement and dispossession as relatively homogenous experiences. The Asia-Pacific region has witnessed its share of conflicts; however, what is specific to this region is the nature of conflict, partition and boundary issues. South Asia region has the features of fluid borders, cultural commonalities with its neighbours which make it crucial for policy makers to recognise the unique nature of the problem in the region. The two broad issues that need to be reflected upon are – on the one hand mixed and massive flows, provoking desperate governmental methods, on the other hand innovations at a furious pace in humanitarian methods, functions, development of institutions, and principles. Large-scale population movement occurs as a result of threat of violence, torture, and discrimination, natural disasters, man-made famines and floods, climate change, resource crises, environmental catastrophes etc. The urgency to have a commensurate humanitarian response has grown accordingly in range. Governments realise the need to gear up not only to emergencies but also to ‘complex emergencies’ – a scenario that alludes to a complicated assemblage of factors and elements leading to the emergency situation. At the same time it is clearer than ever that the responsibility to protect the victims of forced migration must be wrenched away from its ‘humanitarian roots’, and located anew in the context of rights, justice, and the popular politics of claim making today. The rights of the migrants, in particular the victims of forced migration, becomes noticeable in this light. The responsibility on part of the governments to protect the victims and devise strategies of protection of those migrant’s rights then becomes a necessary corollary. The way in which the government wanted to stabilise the population flow as the humanitarian method, simplistically as a non-dialogic mechanism, becomes important to analyse. Refugee flows are consequent to political and social reasons, redrawing of boundaries, partition of states, xenophobic policies, minority

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persecution, civil wars, and foreign aggression. Without a proper understanding of these causes, durable solutions, the ‘right to return’, burden sharing in refugee protection, and the interface of human rights origins and humanitarian dimensions of refugee protection cannot be thought of. The unique features of this ‘new reality’ need to be highlighted by focusing on the relevant experiences of strategies of protection of victims of forced migration, particularly in the post-colonial world. The book is divided into four parts. Part I: Methodologies and the Production of Knowledge in Forced Migration Contexts. The Chapter 2: Production of Knowledge and Methodologies in Conflict Induced Displacement and Forced Migration, by Manish Jha and Shagun Saklani Pande, examines how people around the world have been forced to flee owing to diverse factors, like political instability, conflict, natural and man-­ made disasters making this form of migration mostly, conflict induced, development induced and disaster induced. The involvement of different actors and institutions in the production of knowledge in situations of forced migration raises numerous epistemological questions, which relate in particular to the concepts and categories we use to make sense of the phenomenon and lived realities. The production of knowledge in conflict situation has generated mostly out of large-scale quantitative studies that have influenced policies and programs. The chapter attempts to bridge this gap and qualitatively bring forth the subjective experiences of one such set of forced migrants living in a camp in Dantewada district of Chhattisgarh. The lived experiences of internally displaced people in a conflict zone are a rich repository for understanding the process of construction of knowledge by the actors and agencies involved. The chapter highlights the everyday lived experiences of forced migrants, particularly children. Through the camp life knowledge is produced and reproduced by them in the very act of living the life of a forced migrant. Paula Banerjee in Chapter 3: What Is Feminist About Studying Women’s Forced Migration poses the question as to how forced migration studies is neither a new field and nor has it lacked innovative research methodologies. But just as in most other fields of study traditionally the study of forced migration has also been marked by a male bias among other biases. About two decades earlier there was not just a paucity of women working on these issues but the issues privileged were largely those that are often designated as ‘male issues’. There was a proclivity to view forced migration from the perspective of law, legal and official discourses. In the last two decades a group of social scientists from the Global South have challenged

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the major theoretical assumptions of the field of forced migration as set by the Global North. Feminist objectives include some of the following characteristics: it presupposes gender as a central category of analysis; it questions what is recognised as ‘normal’; it serves as a corrective to andro-­centric notions by generating new knowledge; it accepts women’s own interpretation of their identities and experiences. Feminists over the last two decades not only have feminised the discourse of forced migration but also had created an alternative discourse through asking different question and creating a different value system by recognising women’s agency and agency of other vulnerable groups and this can loosely be termed as a feminist methodology. And looking all methodologies, it is neither full proof nor without closures. In Chapter 4: Interrogating  Camps in Forced Migration Studies: The Exceptionality of South Asia, Nasreen Chowdhory and Shamna Thacham Poyil examine how camp space becomes the paradigmatic of the stratification and diversification of membership prevalent in contemporary society. By first segregating and later confining the outcasts of the body politic to a demarcated space, the camp emerges as a zone in a state of suspension (Agamben 1996). It is at once both inside the ambit of normal spatial organisation of the nation-state and yet outside it. Being physically located inside the borders of the state, the camp is ‘inside’. But by challenging the hyphenation between territory of a state and population it embodies, the camp falls outside the normal spatial organisation of the state. The chapter will engage theoretically with camps as loci within forced migration studies while critically addressing the place of exceptionality. The camps in South Asia exhibit a situation of ‘exception’ within the space of exception that camps are generally tethered to. The blurred cultural boundaries that were not analogous to the borders established by the modern nation-states of South Asia occasioned the emergence of a common sense of belonging among the people. In the absence of a legal framework for refugee protection, the ‘exceptionality’ of refugee camps in South Asia is constituted by a sense of belonging that the refugees develop towards their host state and society. Nergis Canefe in Chapter 5: Gender, Dispossession and Ethics of Witnessing: Method as Intervention explores specific ways in which forced migration scholarship could bring about learning opportunities hand in hand with analyses of displacement and dispossession. The aim of the chapter is threefold. It proposes that a new ethics of witnessing as applied to the work of scholars of forced migration is to be construed as a form of responsibility; it sheds light on pedagogical/curricular

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interventions which could produce a targeted and radical-justice oriented form of scholarly engagement, especially in context of gender-specific historical trauma and wide-spread and state-sponsored or condoned violence; and, it provides a roadmap concerning how progressive pedagogies based on witnessing can motivate scholars and researchers to develop an articulate understanding of affect that could encourage transformative political responses and processes. Giorgio Grappi in Chapter 6: On Research, the Politics of Migrations and the Materiality of the Global: Views Out of Place attempts the exercise of linking together a critical assessment of the role of militancy in migration studies, with the perspective suggested by the study of forced migration in the global context. Grappi’s departure points will be some of the insights raised by the workshop on migration and militant research, hosted by the Politics department of Goldsmiths, University of London—which resulted in a special issue of the Postcolonial Studies journal entitled ‘Challenging the discipline of migration: Militant Research and Militant Investigation’—and the collective text ‘New Keywords: Migration and Borders’ published by Cultural Studies journal in early 2014 (Garelli and Tazzioli 2013; Casas-Cortes et al. 2015). In the Part II: Labour, Development and the Migrant Body, Shailaja Menon’s Chapter 7: ‘If Only I Were a Male’: Work, Value and the Female Body asserts that across India three quarters of women older than 21 have left their place of birth, almost all on marriage. Women are typically married young, between 16 and 20, and are generally illiterate or have less than a primary school education. Sent to a new village, new brides are often subject to violence, and are forced to create a new life in a strange place only rarely of their own choosing. Within the contours of the universally and culturally sanctified marriage norms, women have very little space to manoeuvre. Once, they reallocate to a new geographical space post marriage, their spatial negotiations depend on their spousal/ extended family relationships, education and skill levels and economic background. Many a time, they are forced to contribute their labour for the family, willingly or otherwise and their body is valued for its capacity to toil for economic gains. The chapter revolves around the life histories of four women belonging to different castes and economic backgrounds, who migrated to Delhi, post marriage. Depending upon their socio-­ economic location, they negotiated with their changing life conditions. The researcher’s close proximity with these women who worked as domestic help over a period of time and the daily conversations with them induced novel meanings of labour, work, space, motherhood, notions of

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gender and caste and the bodily aesthetics which would be discussed. In Chapter 8: Forced Displacement Studies in India: An Overview, Biswajit Mohanty asserts that development is a polysemic concept. Nevertheless, the core to the process of development is co-existence of adversative phenomena of progress/growth and displacement/dislocation, growth and poverty, growth and inequality and progress and inequality of place. Whereas development with displacement is justified by managerial theory of displacement, the primitive accumulation theory of displacement deals with capitalist system of production and displacement not only as moments of dissolution that expropriate powerless from their sources of livelihood but also to produce and normalise labour forces for the system. Theories of displacement have hardly taken into account the analysis of meaning of displacement and its relation to ‘spatial consciousness’: ‘the social production of space is implicated in the reproduction of inequality and injustice’ and ‘spatial justice’ of challenging structures of domination and oppression through meanings of place. Place becomes ‘product of social activity’ whose meaning is acquired through spatiality of life-worlds of displaced people. The aim of the chapter is to explore linkage between development, displacement and meanings associated with place. Namreeta Kumari, Chapter 9: The Facilitators and the Reproductive Laborers of the Indian Gestational Surrogacy Market, suggests surrogacy market or business, which is also referred as ‘market of lives’, is a highly contested market due to various moral and ethical issues associated with this market. This market is perpetuated by patriarchal mindset which controls women bodies, in an attempt to do so particularly in case of conception since they are alien to it with the help of science they have evolved assisted reproductive technologies like in  vitro fertilisation (IVF) which resulted in gestational surrogacy. This chapter highlights the key facilitators of this market who are the surrogate agents who play a crucial role in this market of lives as they bring women who intend to become surrogate mothers or egg donors to the IVF clinic. The chapter engages and analyses these crucial actors in the gestational surrogacy market where ‘life itself’ is traded. Skylab Sahu, in Chapter 10: Gender and Invisible Migration: Understanding Sex Trafficking in India, suggests that millions of people around the world are moving away from their homes, villages to towns or to cities within own country or across countries. Migration could be voluntary in nature where the individual or family takes a decision independently to live a better life after migration. Similarly, migration also

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could be forced due to nature-led disaster, drought and other natural disasters. The phenomenon is explained in terms of push and pull factors and its implications are viewed both positively as well as negatively by scholars. The chapter is based on the primary data of qualitative analysis of the 15 girls from Kolkata, who were trafficked and pushed to prostitution. The chapter while using case study of the five girls three from Bangladesh and two from Nepal and analyses how girls were trafficked for sex trade and faced severe socio-economic and health implications. The chapter critically analyses role of the state towards addressing cross border and within state sex trafficking. In Part III: Identity, Borders and Borderland, Chapter 11: Being with Difficulty and Uncertainty: Young Rohingyas in Children’s Homes of West Bengal, Suchismita Majumdar points out how the exclusion and persecution of a group of people namely Rohingyas, mainly a Muslim ethnic minority from the Northern Rakhine state of Western Myanmar for several decades and their colossal displacement in 2017 has recently attracted the attention of the world at large and come to be known as ‘Rohingya crisis’. The study attempts to highlight how the lack of a protection system is destroying the young generation of a community. In Chapter 12: Negotiations and Navigation: Migrant Lives in a Borderland District, Anindita Chakrabarty probes the undocumented population from erstwhile East Bengal as well as the present Bangladesh to India and consciously engage with questions on citizenship, residency, identity, belonging, legality and illegality. The study locates itself within the broader arena of migration research, while focusing on the Indian context in relation to cross-border migration between India and Bangladesh. The chapter unravels the migrant identity as a politico-­ religious category that is shaped by historical impulses over the decades following partition. It also brings out how the migrant population is controlled by the state, being subjected to the surveillance mechanisms, devised by the former that simultaneously decides the extent of the populations’ presence in the country. In doing so, it excavates how membership as a citizen is contingent upon the ideological differences over identity of the post-partition Indian state, and is motivated by subjective constructions of citizenship in everyday life beyond the legal discourse. This eventually poses questions around construction of a migrant identity as a ‘citizen-outsider’, and portrayal of a migrant in mainstream discourse. Jagroop Singh Sekhon, in Chapter 13: The Legacy of Partition and Structural Victimisation of the People of Borderland: A Case of

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Punjab, attempts to study and analyse the problems and issues of the people residing in the border villages of Punjab. The term ‘border village’ is used for those villages which are located on zero line, i.e. Radcliffe Line which divides India and Pakistan border. In Part IV: Gender, Conflict and Migration, P.V. Ramana, Chapter 14: Women in India’s CPI (Maoist) Ranks, asserts that the association of women with armed Communist movement dates back to the Telangana Armed Struggle of 1946–51 when women, especially from the middle class, were involved in non-combatant roles, such as maintaining dumps, managing safe houses to facilitate secret meetings and in transporting weapons. Thereafter, the role of women transformed and they were involved in combatant role by fielding weapons and engaging the security forces in gun-battles in Naxalbari as well as Srikakulam Armed Struggle (1969–1970). More than a decade later, women were involved in the Jagityal Rytanga Poratam (Jagityal Peasants’ Struggle). After taking root in Dandakaranya (Bastar), a conscious effort was made from the very beginning to start women’s organisations. Gradually, in the late 1980s – early 1990s, following internal discussions and the aspirations of women themselves in Telangana, a conscious decision was taken not to limit the role of women to non-combatant roles such as maintaining dens/managing safe-houses in urban areas, and they were given the choice of going into the forests to organise the movement/join the armed squads as fighters. The chapter makes a modest attempt to understand why women join in India’s Maoist movement, their role within the outfit, their equation with the leadership and fellow cadres, why they quit, and their lives after they surrender to the authorities. In Chapter 15: Gender, Gun and Guerrillas: Narratives from Maoist People’s War of Nepal, Amrita Pritam Gogoi narrates ‘woman should take up arms and fight against exploitation; it is us, the women cadres in the People’s War (PW) of Nepal, who taught the world’, a claim made by the Comrade Kranti, a battalion commander of the PLA. One might ignore the above statement as untrue considering the variety of role women has been playing in different conflict societies. However, it does in a definite sense point to a certain kind of law making or law altering claim in a society where women are not allowed even to kill a chicken. Laws written and unwritten, of and outside the institution of the state, laws of the body, mind or the tongue were challenged. It is in the light of claims like these, the chapter tries to understand how violence as an idea or an institution provided the ground for many legal, social, corporeal forms of

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liberation for women cadres in the PW of Nepal. By exploring the relationship that the cadres developed with the gun; using field notes, transcripts, letters, poetries and autobiographies the chapter highlights how the gun and their relationship has continuously been used to perform and establish their new identities as brave fighters, articulate policy makers and as questioning citizens. Shubhra Seth in Chapter 16: Victims to Vanguards: Displaced Yet Determined examines how those forced to flee and not being able to return home, become Internally Displaced Persons (henceforth IDPs). A large mass of people who do not cross the defined borders of their states unlike refugees and continue to combat conflict in their homelands amidst changed meanings and contours of their citizenship. In Chapter 17: Gender, Identity and Migration: Concluding Remarks, Paula Banerjee and Nasreen Chowdhory suggest that the knowledge formation has been skewed in forced migration, hence the need of the hour is to bridge the gap. The volume is therefore an attempt to do the same based on new kind of scholarship emerging in the Global South.

References Agamben, Giorgio, and Cesare Casarino. 1996. “Form-Of-Life: A Potential Politics.” In Radical thought in Italy: A potential politics, pp. 151–156. University of Minnesota Press. Banerjee, Paula. 2012. “Response to landau.” Journal of Refugee Studies 25(6) 4: 570–573. Binka, Fred. 2005. “North–South research collaborations: A move towards a true partnership?.”, 207–209. Canefe, Nergis, ed. 2019. Transitional Justice and Forced Migration: Critical Perspectives from the Global South: Critical Perspectives from the Global South. Cambridge University Press. Casas‐Cortes, Maribel, Sebastian Cobarrubias, and John Pickles. 2015. “Riding routes and itinerant borders: Autonomy of migration and border externalization.” Antipode 47(4) 894–914. Casas-Cortes, Maribel, Sebastian Cobarrubias, Nicholas De Genova, Glenda Garelli, Giorgio Grappi, Charles Heller, Sabine Hess et al. 2015. “New keywords: Migration and borders.” Cultural Studies 29(1): 55–87. Chimni, Bhupinder S. 2009. “The birth of a ‘discipline’: From refugee to forced migration studies.” Journal of Refugee studies 22(1): 11–29. Garelli, Glenda, and Martina Tazzioli. 2013. “Migration discipline hijacked: Distances and interruptions of a research militancy.” Postcolonial Studies 16(3): 299–308.

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Hyndman, Jennifer. 2010. “Introduction: the feminist politics of refugee migration.” Gender, Place & Culture 17(4): 453–459. Landau, Loren B. 2012. “Communities of knowledge or tyrannies of partnership: Reflections on north–south research networks and the dual imperative.” Journal of Refugee Studies 25(4): 555–570.

PART I

Methodologies and the Production of Knowledge in Forced Migration Contexts

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CHAPTER 2

Production of Knowledge and Methodologies in Conflict Induced Displacement and Forced Migration Manish K. Jha and Shagun Saklani Pande

Introduction The locally produced knowledge is often considered unscientific and irrational until critically validated by the larger dominant body of knowledge producers. Ghanaian philosopher Kwasi Wiredu (1980) has argued that the indigenous knowledge is generally perceived as “doomed to self- damnation unless it can be subjected to the therapeutic benefits of the dialectical and critical reflection and re-evaluation”. This view is based on the existing perception that ‘people in traditional setting are lacking in inspiration for critical thinking about theoretical and practical matters of everyday life’ (as cited in Karp and Masolo 2000: 7). While researching the phenomenon of everyday life of people, the focus should be laid closely on the context of people’s lives and not just about speaking on their behalf. Alcoff (1991: 29) has argued that ‘the practice of

M. K. Jha (*) • S. S. Pande Tata Institute of Social Sciences, Mumbai, India e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2022 N. Chowdhory, P. Banerjee (eds.), Gender, Identity and Migration in India, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-16-5598-2_2

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speaking for others is often born of a desire for mastery, to privilege oneself as the one who more correctly understands the truth about another’s situation’. People should be placed at the centre of power and knowledge production while we engage with them and attempt to produce newer knowledge. The idea of positionality also comes into play wherein we critically locate the identity of the researcher in relation to the ‘researched’ (Wolf 1996). The context where the processes of knowledge production are being undertaken play a crucial role in the quality of knowledge being produced. The context such as ethnicity, nationality, class, caste, gender, religion orientations, geographical locations, family setup, ideological perspectives, et cetera, play a determining role in the process. One such field of knowledge that has hitherto been dominated by ‘researchers’ and not by those being ‘researched’ is migration. When we look closely look at migration, we see that it is either voluntary, involuntary, or forced in nature. While we add the adjective ‘forced’ to the phenomenon of migration, the context of analysis changes to a large extent. Lives of those affected by forced migration need a careful understanding and analysis. The paper attempts to look at a particular category of forced migrants who have been affected by conflict in the state of Chhattisgarh. We argue that while attempting to produce or add on any knowledge to the phenomenon of forced migration, the everyday life and lived experiences of these people are crucial. With this idea, the paper advocates for qualitative methodology and use of methods like narratives, focus group discussion and informal in-depth interviews as important tools to bring out the everyday life and lived experiences of conflict induced forced migrants and their families. The major focus of analysis in this paper is on the narratives that have emerged from the field of study while the researcher engaged with the everyday life of people affected by conflict induced displacement and migration in the state of Chhattisgarh. It is however, important to understand the overall phenomenon of forced migration in the first place.

Conflict Induced Displacement and Forced Migration: A Brief Overview Forced migration has been a global phenomenon mostly prevailing across twentieth century to early twenty-first century. People across the globe have been forced to flee owing to diverse factors, like political instability,

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conflict, natural and man- made disasters. World War I and II, the proxy conflicts of Cold War, large number of internal conflicts in the States of Africa, Afghanistan, et cetera, conflicts over issues of autonomy and sub-­ nationalism, religion et cetera, large scale development work, natural disasters across globe have all resulted in massive scale of forced migration. Thus, forced migration can broadly be conflict induced, development induced and disaster induced. However, the categories are not constrained to these. The typology of migration looks at population movement by the level of choice involved in the decision to leave home. On one end of the spectrum, ‘voluntary’ migrants are the ones who exercise their choice when they head for newer areas, mostly out of economic reasons. On the other end, ‘involuntary’ migrants1 exercise no choice when they are forced out of their homes. However, it is argued that almost all migration involves some element of compulsion in it and at the same time, involves choices too (Van Hear 1998: 42). However, what has caught the most attention of the world of academia, research, policy makers, et cetera, has been the conflict induced forced migration resulting out of international and internal conflicts. Forced migration emerges out of a web of complex factors that may be political, economic and social in nature. However, what cuts across all these factors is the magnitude of gross violation of human rights along with massive destruction of the everyday lives of people. Internal conflicts have also been a major reason for large scale involuntary or forced migration. This especially stands true with the changed nature of conflicts, wherein a large number of civilians get affected by the conflicts more than the combatants. The changed nature of conflict in the present times is characterised for predominantly taking civilian lives leading to high levels of vulnerability. ‘The elimination or incapacitation of civilians through killings, torture and disappearances, forced migration, starvation and the destruction of social institutions, is the major feature of many struggles’ (Boyden et al. 2002: 4). Conflicts across the globe have been giving rise to the numbers of refugees and internally displaced 1  Robinson (1990) attributes the coining of “forced migration” to Petersen (1958), who conceptualised the phenomenon as follows: “If in primitive migrations the activating agent is ecological pressure, in forced migration it is the state or some functionally equivalent social institution. It is useful to divide this class into impelled migration, when the migrants retain some power to decide whether or not to leave, and forced migration, when they do not have this power” (1958: 261). (Footnote as cited in Mason 2000.)

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persons (IDPs) populations. Refugees and IDPs remain the most written about and researched set of forced migrants in the current times. Displacement takes place, across international borders and also within national boundaries, with the displaced population termed as Refugees and Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs), respectively. According the World Disasters Report (2012), ‘more than one in every 100 of the world’s citizens is displaced by conflict, political upheaval, violence and disasters and development projects…people forcibly displaced within their own countries far exceed the number of global refugees’. The human cost of displacement is characterised by destroyed livelihoods, economic insecurity, increased vulnerability, especially of women and children, lost homelands, fractured households and communities, destruction of the common social bonds and shared values of humanity. In today’s times, with a shift in the nature of conflicts from that of inter-state to intra-state, there has been a rise in the number of internally displaced population of civilians. Thus, camps become a reality for these forced migrants. A refugee camp, where the migrants take refuge, may be defined as a temporary settlement built to receive people fleeing from civil war or conflict internationally. The idea of keeping them in camps started during Second World War, when refugees were housed in school buildings, empty buildings and barracks (Tanle 2013). However, in today’s times, with the nature of conflict becoming long term, the nature of stay does not remain temporary for many refugees. They live in the camp across borders for a very long period of time, either due to impossibility of returning or due to political reasons that keep the conflicts on-going. Deardoff (2009: 9) described the characteristics of a refugee camp as freedom of movement is limited; little possibility for self-reliance and thus, refugees generally are dependent on aid. IDPs, on the other hand, are people who have been forced to flee or to leave their homes or places of habitual residences and who, unlike refugees, remain within their own country. The Guiding Principles on Internal Displacement (GPID), focusing only on IDPs displaced by conflict between states that IDPs are “Persons or groups of persons who have been forced or obliged to flee or to leave their homes or places of habitual residence, in particular as a result of or in order to avoid the effects of armed conflict, situations of generalized violence, violations of human rights or natural or human-made disasters and who have not crossed an international border” (OCHA 2004: 1). According to the Internal Displacement Monitoring Centre (IDMC), by the end of 2020 approximately  48

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million people have been internally displaced due to armed conflict, generalized violence or human rights violations (UNHCR, 2020). Unlike the refugees, IDPs do not cross international borders but remain inside their own home country. Even if they have fled for similar reasons as the refugees, that is, armed conflict, violent confrontations between state and non-state actors, human rights violation, et cetera, legally they still remain under their own government’s rule, even though that government might be the cause of their flight, hence, making them more vulnerable. Although, literature suggests two prominent characteristics of Internal Displacement, involuntary and within national borders (Cohen and Deng 1998: 16; Mooney 2005: 10; OCHA 1999: 5).

Production of Knowledge and Methodologies The last two decades have seen a substantial rise in social and political interest in the field of migration. This interest has resulted in rise in the number of actors and institutions that have been engaging in the production of knowledge and analysing the issues of migration. Adding on to the State and academia, a number of NGOs, international organisations, independent researchers and activists and experts have also been engaging in debates and creation of varied discourses on issues of migration. However, it is important to understand that in situations of forced migration, any response to the experiences of the migrant population mostly depends on the access and analysis of the data and its documentation. Research in the field of forced migration particularly, poses methodological and epistemological challenges. Methodologies  Carrying out research in the field of forced migration especially that is conflict induced, is a challenge. It can be argued that accessing field, collection of data, conducting interviews, carrying out observation, et cetera, all become a challenge without the support of the institutions (formal and informal) that are involved in the ‘management’ of the migrant population. For example, conducting a study in a refugee camp entails restriction of movement, association and involvement for the researcher. Mostly the researchers get associated with organisations (national or international) in order to gain easy access to the field. However, gaining access to institutions also poses a challenge, especially in situations of conflict. One also needs to look at the positioning of these organisations vis-à-vis the migrant population and analyse how they

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perceive and understand the migration realities. All these challenges raise the questions regarding how to conduct a research in such a field setting? What are the anticipated challenges? How does the relationship shared by the researcher and the organisation create possibilities of bias in the research? What are the best possible methods to get in-depth data from the respondents? How to obtain information and how to bring it out in the public domain? These are just a few questions in the long list of challenges and preparedness that go into work while conducting a study on forced migration. Epistemology  It can further be stated that the involvement of varied individuals and institutions in the production of knowledge on forced migration raises a number of epistemological questions too. These can particularly be related to the concepts, categories, terminologies we make use of while making sense of the phenomenon being studied. Currently, there has been a rise of varied categories of forced migrants and there have been the emerging categories like trafficked persons, environmental migrants, transit migrants, displaced persons, et cetera. These categories need to be looked at and analysed differently. Also one needs to understand that these categories have different influences on the researcher too, thus, affecting the questions and its critical analysis. It becomes a challenge for the researcher to analyse these categories and the institutional agendas and also maintain a critical distance from the same. Choosing a right approach for data collection and its analysis also poses an on-going challenge. Researches in the field of forced migration need to consciously make efforts to carry out independent analysis, and in the process, contribute to the social and political debates on forced migration. Researcher also needs to be conscious of the fact as to how the concepts and analysis would travel in different diverse social and political settings. It is a challenge for the researcher to address incomplete and contested data along with the addressing the issues of credibility and reliability (IASFM 2013: 12) and drawing strength of different disciplinary methodologies.

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Quantitative Versus Qualitative Study: Making the Right Choices Exploring the phenomenon of forced migration with a quantitative or qualitative approach is a debated issue. It is mostly argued that researches done with a quantitative approach bring out facts and knowledge that are better suited for generating more ethical and better policy decisions than the ones that are derived out of qualitative approaches than subjectively-­ informed and inductively derived guesses (Rodgers 2004). Contrary to this, it is argued that the approach that the quantitative researches adopt is that of ‘we know it all’ and only what is more relevant for the aid organisations or the independent researchers are explored (ibid.). The ground realities in situations of forced migration in conflict situations remain unpredictable, full of social chaos, economic vulnerability and a deep sense of confusion, disorientation and discontentment. Therefore, if the experiences and knowledge are attempted to be captured with pre-defined and pre-coded set of tools, they tend to ignore the lived and on-going experiences of the forced migrants. A pre-defined set of questions and observation guide further tends to create a divide between ‘us’ and ‘them’. This division is not just physical but social too. It means that the social world we attempt to write about is different from the institutions and political environment within which we bring forth our research. Qualitative approach to the production of knowledge in forced migration is often argued to be more appropriate as it is generated through intensive informal interactions and interpersonal relations between the researcher and the researched. It also provides a space for observation of the everyday socio-political dynamics that bring out rich data from the field. A researcher with a qualitative approach also tends to acknowledge the varied forms of knowledge about forced migration that are generated on an everyday basis through these informal, detailed interaction and observation (participant or non- participant). A rich and intensive production of knowledge in forced migration can be generated by consciously creating spaces for interaction, hearing and observing the social realities that may or may not even be represented in the research, but the voices need to be represented. Adding on to this, the existing problems and challenges of the forced migrants need to be understood in local intelligible terms (ibid.). By exploring the everyday life challenges of the forced migrants in situations of conflict, their perspectives and understanding of their current situation, one can easily explore the

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larger macro-level debates and discourses too. (e.g. closely observing and studying the lifestyle patterns of the migrants on an everyday basis, one can easily analyse if the larger discourse of conflict has had what magnitude of influence on this population without even making them consciously aware of these changes). The knowledge produced out of the subjective understanding and perspective and continued informal interactions with the migrants can be organised more systematically and in a well-defined manner that could be utilised in making substantial policy changes for the migrants and also contribute to the already existing set of knowledge on this phenomenon. Challenges  However, the field of study of conflict induced forced migration does not always provide a feasible and easily accessible ground to the researcher. Especially in situations of conflict induced forced migration, security and accessibility remain the greatest challenge for the researcher. Conducting a long-term study is also not possible at all times. With limited time in hand and, more often than not, being under constant vigilance makes the rapport building exercise a difficult one. There remain gaps in the production of knowledge in the field of forced migration. There has been a scarcity of intensive long-term studies in this field that could contribute immensely to this body of knowledge. Adding on to this, there is a lack of vocabulary (Robinson 1990), multi-disciplinary research or comparative works in this field. Researchers who attempt to contribute to this body of knowledge borrow from varied theories. There exists a need to improve methodologies, create specialised vocabulary, jargons, concepts, definitions, et cetera, thus, making the field of knowledge in forced migration more inclusive (Hansen 1996). There is a need to what Mason (2000: 246) calls the ‘pollination of ideas, methodologies, approaches both across disciplines and even within the purview of forced migration itself’.

Case Study: Kasoli Salwa Judum Camp, Dantewada (Chhattisgarh) Conflict induced displacement is not a new phenomenon in India. India remains home to a large number of refugees and IDPs resulting from conflicts of varied kinds going on in different parts of the country. Large sections of populations have been exposed to migration, voluntary or forced. Ironically, it is the economically vulnerable, backward population of the

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country that gets affected by migration. Many migrate voluntarily either in search of better economic opportunities, or are forced to migrate owing to large scale development-led displacement and conflict induced displacement. India has been witness to large instances of forced migration too. Large development projects like thermal power, dams, industrial set up, et cetera, have displaced a large number of people in the country. But the present time has also been a witness to large scale conflict induced displacement. The present study is based in the backdrop of the ongoing State-Maoist conflict in the state of Chhattisgarh. In the milieu of this prolonged conflict, Chhattisgarh has emerged as its epicentre (Sundar 2011: 46) and is known to be one of the most turbulent states in the current times. A large number of debates have been centring around this conflict and dominating this field of study. However, in the midst of it, Chhattisgarh has been narrowed down to a discourse and has been objectified suiting individual interests. It is now an entity characterised by presence of conflict and violence. These overarching debates and discourses over this conflict have often shifted the focus from the everyday life of the native population of the region, the adivasis who, in present day context, stand at the crossroads and lead a life deeply embroiled in this on-going conflict. The native people of this region have been affected by large scale displacement and forced migration. The study has attempted to closely look at the existence of everyday life of people amidst this ongoing conflict and its areas of proliferation. It explores the everyday not as a singular act, but as a broad and overarching phenomenon which is common to the people and the space in which varied socio-cultural, economic and political relations are negotiated or contested on an everyday basis. In the process, it explores in totality the changes that have been wrought by the existing conflict and also the ways in which newer socio-cultural forms have emerged that help in the process of meaning making in the lives of the people affected by this adverse situation like that of forced displacement. It closely examines the various processes taking place in the lives of the people in the study area and thus, examines the existing fissures along with the continuity that accompanies the everyday life. Therefore, it can be stated that the present study lays focus on the ruptured experiences of past and the everyday of the present and draws relation between the disruptions and the everyday life of people of Kasoli in Dantewada district of Chhattisgarh.

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Dantewada, a resource rich region, has been facing the continuous interplay between the political—economy has never got much attention in the national and international media. It was only in the year 2005 that Dantewada hit the headlines and caught nationwide attention. It became infamous and synonymous with violent conflict and bloodshed. It made news for an alleged uprising of the local tribal population against the Maoists in the region. The clandestinely State sponsored counter insurgency campaign called the Salwa Judum was highlighted as people’s spontaneous and self- initiated reaction to Maoists. Salwa Judum resulted in a massive scale of violence, killings and bloodshed. It was especially during the counter-insurgency campaign called the Salwa Judum that a massive scale of displacement and forced migration took place in the southern districts of the State. Large numbers of people were forced to flee to Salwa Judum camps set up by the State government. Many civilians also took refuge in the neighbouring state of Andhra Pradesh. Although Salwa Judum was declared unconstitutional by the Supreme Court of India in 2011, the camps continue to exist even today. Here is a brief look at Salwa Judum campaign.

What Was Salwa Judum? The word Salwa Judum (SJ from now on) has become an unforgettable phenomenon in the lives of thousands of tribal of this region. Salwa a Gondi word is referred to the water sprinkled on an ailing patient to drive him out of illness, while Judum means a collective hunt. So, literally the word means a purification hunt, while contextually it meant the purification hunt for curing the tribal people from an illness called ‘Maoists’. SJ was a counter-insurgency campaign launched by the State of Chhattisgarh in the year 2005. Mahendra Karma, Member of the Legislative Assembly and the Leader of the Opposition (Indian National Congress) christened this campaign as Salwa Judum. It was a campaign where the State government had set up a vigilante army of the local tribal against the Maoists. In the frontline of the SJ army were the ordinary villagers, the tribal of the region, who were pitted against each other on a scale unparalleled in the history of Indian counter-insurgency (Sundar 2006: 3187). Civil society organisations also reported that SJ was far from being a spontaneous response to Maoist tyranny by the local populace at large, as the government was making it out to be (Human Rights Watch 2008; People’s

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Union for Civil Liberties 2006; Asian Centre for Human Rights 2006; Human Rights Forum 2006). Salwa Judum and displacement of people to camps went hand in hand. There was displacement on a large scale to SJ camps that were strategically located on either side of highways near the police stations. Currently, the after effects of Salwa Judum can be worst felt in Bastar Division, comprising the districts of Dantewada, Sukma and Bijapur. The highways of South Bastar continue to be the home for those who came from the interiors of the jungle. No statistics are provided by the State on the status of displacement in the region. Camps can be seen on either side of the roads with thousands of people living at the disposal of the State for basic amenities like shelter, ration, education and health. A large number of displaced people live there having come to a point of no return. The inhabitants are living with little access to food, water, shelter and the means to a livelihood (ACHR 2006). During the times of Salwa Judum, many people, in order to escape being caught in the crossfire between the State and the Maoists, decided to take the alternate way and migrate to the neighbouring state of Andhra Pradesh. However, the plight of those who took refuge in the bordering districts of Andhra Pradesh have been vulnerable too. Although they are not vulnerable to bloodshed and violence, they face identity and acceptability issues. They also faced severe resistance from the natives of Khammam and there were a couple of killings too because the locals found a potential threat in these displaced people. As Salwa Judum started gaining momentum, the influx of people from Sukma and Konta started to increase and they started settling in the forests of Khammam. Some non-­ governmental organisations have been working closely with these IDPs towards getting them their rights and entitlements and advocating for getting ration cards and MGNREGA cards. However, with non-­availability and accessibility of employment opportunities, these families are living a hand-to-mouth existence and verging on the brink of daily starvation. Children are facing a major challenge in these IDP camps. Often there are no schools here and wherever they are available, the medium of instruction is Telugu which in itself is a challenge. Many children are also denied admission for not having identity and school certificates to produce. Adding on, the health services are also poor. One has to travel 30 kilometres to reach the nearest health centre. This is the plight of the IDPs from Chhattisgarh in Andhra Pradesh (see National Commission for Protection of Child Rights (NCPCR) 2007, 2010; Human Rights Watch 2008).

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Research Setting The study was conducted over a period of six  months in Kasoli Salwa Judum Camp, in Kasoli village, Dantewada district of Chhattisgarh. Kasoli, is situated at a distance of approximately 333 kilometres from the State’s capital Raipur and 30 kilometres from the district headquarters of Dantewada. The study was conducted in an erstwhile Salwa Judum camp inside Kasoli village. Kasoli camp is home to approximately a total population of around 800 persons. The natives of Kasoli say that their village has not been the same since 2005. It has undergone drastic change ever since. It was the launch of government’s counter insurgency campaign Salwa Judum against the Maoists in 2005 that led to a total disruption of the socio-economic fabric of life of hundreds of adivasis of this village. Kasoli is now a home for hundreds of people who were displaced from their villages and brought here. Kasoli now is better known for the presence of a Salwa Judum camp at its centre. However, the native families of Kasoli are now confined to the peripheries of this camp and the families living inside are the ones who were either forcefully displaced by the government or those who claim to have chosen to participate actively in the counter-­ insurgency campaign against the Maoists. There is no estimation of the extent to which the lives of hundreds of these adivasis has turned upside down and their livelihoods destroyed due to the ongoing evacuation of villages. Many camp residents informed how they had to leave their full ripened crops only to get rotten during Salwa Judum. Attempting to study the life of the forced migrants in this conflict-­ affected area was challenging. It not only entailed personal challenges for the researcher or researched but also challenges pertaining to the methodology. The paper attempts to highlight the everyday life and lived experiences of forced migrants of Chhattisgarh. The study tried to highlight the subjective knowledge, understanding, perceptions and feelings of the migrants along with developing a nuanced understanding on the issue of forced migration that could later contribute to the large field of knowledge in its own capacity.

Methodology The study was conducted with an ethnographic approach and highlighted the nuances, negotiations, adjustments, challenges, strategies and meaningful spaces that these migrants have created while being forced to live in

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a closed setting of a camp. It also captured how in their everyday lives newer meanings are produced and reproduced. Participant observation, focus group discussions and in-depth informal interviews with the displaced population, including men, women and children were carried out. These methods helped in addressing the power relation that often exists between the researcher and the researched. The people of Kasoli were looked at as active participants rather than passive recipients of an already existing body of knowledge on them. These methods helped the researcher get involved in the daily lives of these people and made it possible to interact with them in a variety of physical and social settings and, in this way, witness a wide range of responses. It helped in establishing relationship with them that was based on trust and enabled the researcher to create a space of comfort and ease too. Attempts were made to learn the local dialect. Extensive use of narratives helped to look beyond the prevalent discourses of the issues of forced migration and its affects and brought out the sense of the present everyday life and living experiences of the migrants in this conflict zone. The use of the above-mentioned methodologies, on the one hand, helped in drawing similarities and differences in the already existing body of knowledge on forced migration with the current field under study. On the other hand, it also brought out the way in which newer knowledge is being produced by the migrants in their mere act of living. It was only through the application of the above set of tools and methods that one could look beyond the pre-assumed understanding and perception of migrants. It helped to bring out newer dimensions and perspectives of the lives of forced migrants in situations of conflict. In the process of conducting the study, the micro level issues being discussed by the displaced could easily be organised and analysed keeping the larger macro level discourses and debates existing in the field of study. Therefore, themes emerged from the field and then linkages were drawn on a macro level rather than going to the field with already a set of themes in mind.

The Everyday Life of People of Kasoli Every individual who had been forced to migrate and got displaced during the ongoing State- Maoist conflict had a story, different from the others. The stories constituted a meaning of everyday life and experiences. Hearing out stories and putting down the narratives helped to learn, unlearn and relearn the idea of conflict induced forced migration. It

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challenged the already established knowledge and also supplemented it at some instances. Eastmond (2007: 248) states ‘narratives are not transparent rendition of truth but reflect a dynamic interplay between life, experience and story’. Narratives from the field brought out insights into how these migrated and displaced people make sense of their lives, idea of displacement, violence and lost identity. Some of the emerging issues that were brought out using these methods were that of vulnerability of women and children, influence of globalised culture, debates of alienation versus assimilation, issues of identity and acceptance, idea of un-freedom or restricted freedom, creation of meaningful spaces and common identities, et cetera. With an interpretive approach, narratives are valuable as they helped in telling about the people themselves as ‘experiencing subjects’ who were making sense of their turbulent lives. This also helped in challenging the already existing notion of ‘refugee or displaced experiences’. We get to know of people’s experiences only through their own expressions. In the interplay between expressions and experiences, narratives help in organising experiences but also give meaning to the telling. Shyama, a 35-year-old woman resident of Kasoli camp, shared her experience of the violent times of Salwa Judum and how her present day life contrasts with her past life. She narrates, My husband is a SPO (Special Police Officer). We came from Satwa village. A lot of people were forced to leave their homes when Salwa Judum started. We were all sent to camps. We did not want to come but had no option. I was pregnant with my second child that time and I almost delivered on my way to Dantewada. My son studies in Kuwakonda which is around 30–35 kms from here. There was no school nearby and so we had to send him there. My husband is posted somewhere in Sukma. I do not know where. He comes once in six months. I am on my own here. As a woman I feel unsafe. I have no family support here. Only a few women from the nearby tents talk to me. There is no land here to do farming, no cattle, no forest, no tendu, no mela mandai {fair and festivals}, no mahua… (Translated from Hindi/gondi to English)

The narrative here not just highlights the lived experience of one woman and her family but is a representative of hundreds of such women and families who had been forced to dislocate from their places of origin and were forced to settle down at a government-run camp. It also highlights the disintegration in the family, wherein all the family members are forced to live separately due to the prevailing circumstances. However,

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what also got highlighted is the way women have been able to bring about a gradual sense of permanency in this temporary makeshift homes. With over eight years of staying in this camp, these are becoming permanent homes for many families not just in terms of infrastructure, but also in social, cultural and collective terms. Gaining a Sense of Permanency  One observed that there has been a slow and gradual accumulation of experiences and memories—of birth, death, marriages, melas (fair), community functions and festivals, et cetera, that have given a new meaning to this space. It is said that the camp’s meaning is embodied by the very people who populate it (Rosemary 1994). In this context, Kasoli camp is that place where people from different villages, socio-cultural and economic backgrounds, having undergone a common experience of violence and displacement, have congregated. Observing and attending a series of incidences like, a community marriage, name-­ bestowing ceremony (chathii), festivals, et cetera, brought how in such adverse situations too, the people of this camp work as a close-knit community that is working towards leading a life of togetherness. In the very act of living, these residents have created newer meanings and laid down enduring ties and relations. Talking to a resident of the camp who, having been forced to leave his home back in the village and was literally dumped here, shared how people come together to celebrate small functions in the way nearest to their traditional way of celebration. The resources are minimal or not available, but they try to put an enthusiastic front. Siyaraam narrates People work together here. Almost all families got handful of Laai (a kind of snack made out mixing of puffed rice, sweet cardamom, bhujia made out of lentils)…Some camp residents got Mahua too. Had we been in the village, we could have easily got everything from the forest. Here we cannot go out easily so, we all work together.

Another displaced but now a resident of the camp narrated The camp residents are all from villages across the river. During the initial years, the camp used to be in a bad shape. People kept coming in and houses were all temporary and broken. They were brought in like cattle. But now the camp

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looks more like a village. All the residents stay together peacefully. Now they also know that they cannot go back.

Women, along with their families and children from different villages were forced to come and settle here during the times of Salwa Judum. Some of them have been given a small space for engagement and employment by the government. It is a bamboo processing unit wherein women come and make small artefacts, incense sticks, et cetera. It is however, not just a place of meagre employment, but a place for socialisation, self and collective sharings of experiences and everyday life. Phoolo, whose husband is an SPO and is posted far away somewhere to a place not known to her, is regular at this unit. She narrates, Initially we used to feel awkward here, but now we have adjusted. We do not feel scared anymore. After all we have to live everyday. Here we can work and earn some money and spend accordingly. My sons eat at the ashramshala (school being run within the camp) itself. I come here to this unit. We all work together. We take out time and come here and chit chat a lot, my old mother-in-law stays at home. I do miss my home but now I consider this camp as my home. I tell my children also that this camp is our home and camp residents are our family. With this thought life is easier. Today afternoon we got these tendu fruits (local fruit). Have some…

Life goes on for these women and their families. They have all lived here for eight years now and have led a life of restriction and uncertainty. While their lives draw meaning from an understanding of home as elsewhere, in the very act of living, they have created new meanings and laid down enduring ties and relations in their present lives in the camp. They are now participating in creating new meaningful spaces. That new meaningful space for them is the bamboo-processing unit that holds a meaning in their lives amidst this conflict zone. Women are reconstructing their lives in this new place also by making changes in the emotional attachments that they had with their homes. Many such narratives have come out from the people who were forced to flee from their homes and make this camp their new home. Interactions with people took place at all possible places and were sometimes not limited to a one-on-one level. Narratives emerged not just at the homes of these displaced people but also at places like, a chai tapri (tea stall), temple, kitchen of the school where I often helped the staff to cut vegetables,

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during mela, during collective bathing done by women at the hand pump, et cetera. Such diverse settings highlighted diverse experiences that go way beyond our pre-conceived set of notions and ideas about forced migrant and displaced population. This helped in bringing out more diverse knowledge from the field. This led to social interaction everywhere: it became a part of my everyday and their everyday life. It helped in the creation of newer meanings and re-evaluating the already existing ones. Experience of hearing the displaced and migrant population produced newer knowledge through narratives. As stated by Dilthey (in Turner 1986), experiences urge towards expressions, or communication with others, especially those formative and transformative experiences which erupt from and disrupt everyday routinised life. Hearing out the experiences of people, victims of forced displacement and migration, also helps in exploring the idea of continuity and discontinuity in their everyday life and their individual and collective struggle to bring about normalcy in their disrupted everyday life. The Special Police Officers (SPOs) of Kasoli  Most of the residents of Kasoli camp are former SPOs and have now been regularised as auxiliary force personnel under Chhattisgarh force. Going by the established knowledge on the security force personnel in conflict areas, we tend to analyse them through a lens of brutality and devoid of emotions. However, this cannot be generalised at any given point. The SPOs of Kasoli did exhibit the behaviours and set patterns that most of the literature reflects. However, engaging with the SPOs at an everyday level did bring out newer meanings that their life holds in this conflict zone. Radheshyam was one such SPO who, like many others, had his experiences to share. These experiences, of past or present, hold much relevance in his present everyday living. Sharing a cup of tea at chai tapri, he shared, We did not come here out of our own will and now we cannot even go out on our own. We are completely dependent on the State. It can throw us anytime and anywhere and so we have to live with it. I am a SPO now and have to follow the orders of the senior officers. Life was neither good back in the village nor here. We cannot express our discomfort or resistance or we will be killed. Going back to villages is also a ruled out possibility as we will be killed by the Maoists. We adivasis are caught midway. People from this camp are serving as SPOs in different places like Dantewada, Konta, Sukma and Narayanpur. For the security of their family and they themselves, most of the SPOs stay inside camps. This camp has become like a joint family now. All the residents are like my brothers and sister. We all are going through similar pains to a great

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extent. However, in a way if you see we are leading a life of an animal. We were being treated like animals back in the village and here too. The only difference being that back in the village we were free animals not tied under any restriction.

On one hand the SPOs of Kasoli, like any other security personnel in a conflict zone, are looked at as powerful individuals by the residents of the camp. But, the ground reality shows that there is a sense of  inherent restriction being experienced by them along with the continued sense of uncertainty, fear and helplessness. Most of the SPOs in Kasoli share a common response about letting their children join the security forces. With an exception or two, the majority of them were reluctant to let their children join in. One can argue that having accepted the harsh realities of life in this conflict, the people of Kasoli seemed to have reached a point of no return wherein they see no possibility of returning to their own native homes and leading a conflict-free and normal life. Almost all the residents of this camp, when displaced, did not have an idea that they would not be able to return ever. All these years they lived with the hope of returning someday, but their life and stay in the camp now seems to move from being temporary to permanent. Although, during the time of the fieldwork, Salwa Judum had already officially ceased to exist for over three years, but the after-effects of this counter-insurgency and manifestations of the conflict could be seen in the form of Salwa Judum camps like Kasoli, omnipresent security force personnel and restricted life being led by the residents of these camps. The failure to reconcile with the permanent loss of home has left a permanent scar on the lives of these displaced people including the children of Kasoli camp. They now relive their past through memories. They are living with their memories—of the days back in the village where they were close to nature, leading a non- restricted life, going to weekly haats, melas and dancing all night with their fellow villagers celebrating marriages, festivals and, more importantly, celebrating life. However, with the passage of time, residents have assigned new meanings to the camp and camp life. Children of the Camp  Whosoever visits Kasoli camp will be impressed by the large number of children of all ages present all over. These are those children who have somehow escaped the fatal dangers of this on-going State-Maoist conflict and found a minimal degree of security in this camp. Since the times of Salwa Judum, this camp as a space has become highly

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sensitive. Kasoli has been a target of the Maoists and has already been attacked twice by the Maoists. There are approximately 600 children residing inside the camp, including those living with their families and those studying in the ashramshala. Majority of these children, barring those who were born here, have all been a witness to conflict in some form or the other. Many of them have lost their parents at a very young age, seen their parents and siblings participate in the conflict in the capacity of an SPO and others have witnessed violent confrontations throughout their process of growing. Now, in the camp, these children are experiencing a life which is very different from what they hitherto lived in the villages. Kasoli camp has been the only home for a large number of children who were either born here or were too small when displaced from their native villages. Life has been constructed here for many as they witness birth, death and develop social relations, peer relations, all under this umbrella of camp life. Most of these children have no idea of the reason for this massive displacement, in fact they are not even completely aware that there has been a ‘before and after life’ for them. For a vast number of children here, camp is the only life known and experienced by them. Khemu shared, My mother tells me that I was born while we were on our way to this camp. We came from across the river. There was a big gate. Everyone came and stayed in tents. My mother told me that I was born in a sack. Laxmi, my sister was born in this camp. (Khemu, 1st standard, student at ashramshala also a resident of the Camp)

There are many children like Khemu, for whom camp life is the only life they have known. When asked about whether they know if they have come from somewhere else, most of them, interestingly mentioned “nadi uspaar” (across the river Indravati). Although these children have never got the opportunity to revisit their villages, they have only heard about being from across the river. Interestingly, when the researcher engaged with the children on an everyday basis, it was observed that not all children in the camp had a clear understanding of the conflict and of the reasons and experiences of coming to this Salwa Judum camp. Children’s understanding of why their families left their native villages and came to lead this restrictive life was

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also dependent on the age of children. The younger boys spoke with little understanding as compared to the older boys who had a more detailed explanation of the times of Salwa Judum. Junu, a camp resident had some images of coming to this camp. He shared, I was this small {raised his hand to his waist length} when one night my family members left the home in the village. That night we slept on stones. We had food at the river bank. Then we went to Orssa {another village} and then from there we came here. I was too small. A lot of other people from the village also came. Ramesh’s father was shot by an arrow. He did not die but he had to be carried by two other men on their backs. It took us a lot many days to reach. We did not get food. My stomach used to ache. My mother told me that I should sleep, we would reach the next day and eat only then. (Junu, 3rd standard, student at Kasoli ashramshala also resident of Camp)

Junu highlighted his own set of challenges faced during the times of Salwa Judum when he and his family were forcefully displaced from their native village. The tough conditions that Junu faced in terms of non-­ availability of food, rough terrains to walk on for days, were faced by many of his age and even younger too. However, it can be argued that the conflict induced displacement and its consequences have created not just physical and psychological impact on children and their families, but has also created such socio-economic conditions that have fragmented the communities and families and the repercussions of it can be observed with many examples wherein the sense of community looks weakened and people look more individualised in their thinking and actions. People who earlier practiced a sense of togetherness within their community or tribe look more fragmented  today, wherein they prioritize their family over others due to limited resources in hand. However, with the passage of time, the children and their families have adjusted to this new life. They are gradually getting accustomed to it and often mentioned how they have no other option at their disposal but accept this as a reality. Children also showed signs of getting comfortable having security personnel around. However, an element of fear still exists. But they are getting used to it. Baksu shared, It feels weird. We feel scared too. But nothing can be done about it. We cannot go back to the village now. If we work hard in the village and do something big in life, the Maoists come and kill us. We will stay like this forever now. We will always live in this camp, poor and lead a life amidst this conflict. Initially we

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used to feel little awkward. But now we do not get intimidated by the force personnel. But even today if we see a big group of police personnel somewhere, we feel hesitant to walk past them. There are a few known faces now from our village so it is fine here. (Baksu, 7th standard, student at Kasoli ashramshala also resident of Camp)

Conclusion While attempting to study the phenomenon of conflict induced displacement, it can be argued that while we collect stories in form of narratives from the field of conflict, we realise the difference between these stories and the conventional stories. As Good (1994: 145) states, ‘while predicament, human striving, and an unfolding in time towards a conclusion is central to the syntax of all human stories, in many refugee situations, the outcome is far from given’. Similarly, those who are victims of conflict induced forced displacement or migration, tell us stories that have an integral component of uncertainty, fear, restriction and liminality rather than progression and conclusion. Their everyday does not fit into the conventional ‘everyday life’. Organising themes that emerge solely from the narratives of people and taking cognisance to the locally dominant terminologies help become a guide towards understanding the phenomenon from the perspective of the respondents. In Kasoli, terms like, ‘jaanwar (animal)’, ‘mahua ab nahi khilta (mahua flowers no more bloom now)’ et cetera, were used as expressions by people depicting the state of their everyday life in this conflict zone that was characterised by powerlessness, suffering, loss of hope and point of no return for many. Closely looking at the everyday lives of the people of Kasoli has paved the way to critically look at the dominant idea of ‘refugee or displaced experiences’ as a universal, standardised phenomenon that cuts across all the population. Narratives and stories, as Malkki (1995) states ‘serve as a reminder against this sort of generalisation and the tendency to think of refugees as an undifferentiated, essentialized and universal category irrespective of the differential historical and political conditions of displacement and of the individual differences between people who become refugees’. However, it is also important to highlight the challenges that the field of conflict, displacement and forced migration throws towards us. Using narratives as an important tool to analyse and make sense of the everyday life of the effected population also places a certain level of pressure on

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them to relive their experiences and exhibit their everyday life. This can be looked at as victimisation by some. The overall environment of uncertainty, fear and dynamic socio-political context also pose a challenge. The idea of confidentiality and anonymity needs to be addressed at all levels of research with the displaced population. The representation of the stories shared by people affected by conflict induced displacement and forced migration needs careful handling. One is under constant pressure to do justice with what has been shared through these experiential sharing. While attempting to produce knowledge about this field of study, using qualitative methodology, especially with methods like narratives, puts an additional responsibility on the researcher to analyse and present the data in the most suitable manner. The interplay between the experienced and expressed is a complex one (Bruner 1986). Burner categorises these into three: life as lived, life as experienced and life as told. These categories flow from what kind of events have touched people’s lives, to what meaning the person attaches to these lived experiences and to finally, how he articulates it in a given context. However, another category that emerges from it is that of life as text (Eastmond 2007) that is based on the researcher’s interpretation and representations of the story. It is argued that ethnographers have worked towards this by letting the final copy convey the complexities of joint production (Dwyer 1982; Behar 1993; Caplan 1997 as cited in ibid.). However, it can be stated that narratives help in drawing a constructive meaning between the past and the present everyday life. Engaging closely in the everyday life of this population forces us to interpret their lives, draw newer meanings and then subsequently draw relations and inter linkages between the social, economic, political or cultural context they all come from. These inter linkages help us produce knowledge that is not central only to us, but has its roots deep into the realities of an affected population.

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CHAPTER 3

What Is Feminist About Studying Women’s Forced Migration Paula Banerjee

Introduction Migration is a critical global issue today. Not merely in social science discourse but in understanding global inter-connectedness, migration plays an extremely important role. From the end of the cold war, migration has emerged as a major force in the world. The historically dominant migrant receiving countries such as the United States, Canada and Australia were becoming more and more unwilling to receive the new migrants by the second phase of the cold war. Even until the 1960s the major migrants to these countries were from southern Europe but in the post-cold war period they were largely from Asia, Africa and Latin America. By the 1990s even countries in southern Europe—Italy, Spain and Portugal—which only a decade before had been sending migrants to wealthier countries in the north, began to import workers from Africa, Asia and the Middle East. At the same time, Japan—with its low and still declining birth rate, its aging

P. Banerjee (*) Department of South and Southeast Asian Studies, University of Calcutta, Kolkata, India Calcutta Research Group, Kolkata, India © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2022 N. Chowdhory, P. Banerjee (eds.), Gender, Identity and Migration in India, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-16-5598-2_3

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population and its high standard of living—found itself turning increasingly to migrants from poorer countries in Asia and even South America to satisfy its labour needs. With the change in the origin and hence racial composition of migrants, attitude towards migration was changing the world over. The new migrants were viewed as aliens and so there was a growing xenophobia that they might soon take away resources from the desired population. Therefore, walls began to be erected against these migrants whose labour was sought but whose bodies were looked upon with suspicion and new laws were created so that the aliens could be kept away from becoming part of the citizenry and thereby xenophobic efforts to keep certain groups of people ideally out. Such inter-country xenophobia transformed into intra-country hatred. In the context of India, Punjabi landowners desired Bihari migrant labourers but were reluctant to share any resources with them. In Maharashtra attitude to Bengali workers either in the jewellery factory or the bars got even worse. Progressively it came to be realized that migration as a process cannot disentangle itself from the element of force especially when one considered large flows. Therefore, for social scientists, it became fashionable to study forced migration. It was around the same time that feminists were trying to intervene in ways that social scientists think about and do research. Therefore, forced migration studies as a genre was born around the time when feminists were attempting to transform methodologies and epistemology of their field of research. This coming together of the transformation of migration discourses to that of forced migration and emergent feminist efforts to subvert orthodoxies created exciting possibilities in the field of migration research. Hence it stands to reason that when we speak of innovative research in the field of forced migration, feminist interventions present us with exciting possibilities. Today, I would like to make arguments in defence of “what is feminist about studying women’s forced migration.” Forced migration studies have never lacked innovative research methodologies. But just as in most other fields of study, traditionally, the study of forced migration has also been marked by a male bias among other biases. About two decades earlier there was not just a paucity of women working on these issues but the issues privileged were largely those that are often designated as “male issues.” There was a proclivity to view forced migration from the perspective of law, legal and official discourses. This tendency was further accentuated by the fact that studies on refugees were initially located in schools of law. Law dehumanized the field and then came the sociologists and anthropologists who developed narratives that

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put the onus of migration of refugees on the global south and was more concerned with the development of mechanisms of how to deal with these people as they were also the soft underbelly of the large scale industrialization that was going on in Europe and the United States and often provided the necessary cheap labour. What was ignored was the post-colonial aspect of the problem of forced migration: What were the root causes for such flows? Hence a corrective became necessary of the notion that refugees were rootless hordes moving to the global north without any political intervention from the north. The corrective that was then privileged can be termed as “counter discourses” of the refugees themselves. But even these could not shake off their homogenizing tendencies. In the process researchers often got entangled in questions of what is legal and illegal, Malthusian demographic discourses and security discourses at the cost of counter discourses by the refugees about their multi-layered oppressions and vulnerabilities that may be seen through the prism of gender. Through these official discourses notions of forced migration was being progressively narrowed, so much so that structural violence permeating whole societies and creating cleavages was often overlooked. In the last two decades, a group of social scientists from the global south have challenged the major theoretical assumptions of the field of forced migration as set by the global north. Among them were women’s rights activists too who tried to redefine the field. These scholars/activists brought to the table the critique that, as a result of male-centrism of the discourse on forced migration, humanitarian practices came to be premised on “gender-neutral” policies that strengthened insensitivities. The humanitarian system, both in terms of analysis and practices, began to subsume women’s experiences. Political turmoil of the late 1980s and the early 1990s dramatically revealed many silences, including silences on the gendered nature of forced displacement. Such recognition began to be posited on an understanding that both displacement and asylum is a gendered experience. At least in the context of South Asia, it results from and is related to the marginalization of women by the South Asian states. These states at best patronize women and at worse infantilize, disenfranchise and de-politicize them. It is in the person of a refugee that women’s marginality reaches its climactic height. Etienne Balibar has argued that the fissures in the “modern political community” emerge from the “practical and ideological sexism as a structure of interior exclusion of women generalized to the whole society,”

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which leads to the “universalization of sexual difference.”1 Thus, modern states that are built on gender differences develop a precarious relationship with its women. Women became both subjects of the state as well as its other. In pluralistic societies such as those found in South Asia, “the modern projects of national independence, state building, and economic development have had distinctive gender implications and outcomes.”2 The nation-building projects in South Asia have led to the creation of a homogenized identity of citizenship. State machineries seek to create a “unified” and “national” citizenry that accepts the central role of the existing elite. This is done through privileging majoritarian, male and monolithic cultural values that deny the space to difference. Such a denial has often led to further segregation of the marginalized, on the basis of caste, religion and gender from the collective “we.” One way of marginalizing women from body politic is done by targeting them and displacing them in times of state versus community conflict. As a refugee, a woman loses her individuality, subjectivity, citizenship and her ability to make political choices. As political non-subjects, refugee women emerge as the symbol of difference between us/citizens and its other/refugees/non-citizens. Refugee women become the material for the symbolic construction of the nation’s boundaries. By studying women’s displacement in South Asia, authors came up with these theoretical assumptions and more. In discussing women’s experiences of displacement, they portrayed how, as dislocated subjects, women negotiate spaces to retrieve agency in the face of institutional apathy. However, here I come back to my initial posit, and that is what makes such an exercise a feminist exercise or rather what is so feminist about studying women’s forced migration? I recognize that recording women’s history of displacement in itself is not a feminist act. Gathering data through interviews can be part of a positivist (read masculine) schema. Partition histories present us with prime examples of such sensitivities and insensitivities. Interpretation and analysis of partition studies was first reflected in studies of institutions that created partition or were created from it. The study of refugees stemmed from that of partition and so refugee studies could not escape the backdrop in which it was born. The motif 1  Etienne Balibar, Masses, Classes, Ideas: Studies on Politics and Philosophy Before and After Marx, translated by James Swenson (New York: 1994) pp. 57–58. 2   Valentine M.  Moghadam, “Gender, National Identity and Citizenship,” Hagar: International Social Science Review, Vol. 1, No. 1 (2000) p. 42.

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of that backdrop was one of unmitigated violence. The literature on refugees followed certain familiar terrain. I will endeavour to explain through broad sketches how that narrative evolved. To begin with, it was a literature of victimhood in which the refugees were portrayed only as victims. It cannot be denied that in large parts these refugees were victims but even as victims they constantly tried to negotiate with powers that be and strengthen their own agency. By fixing their identities as victims and not problematizing that victimhood, the refugees were for a long time displaced from the centre stage of their own narratives. Such displacements are counter to the established norms of feminist methodologies. With the ascendance of cultural studies, the refugee experience was reduced to the memory of the refugees. Authors such as Dipesh Chakravarty, Manas Ray, et cetera, discussed the imaginative mappings of the refugee lives through memories. The understanding was that a refugee lived in his/her memories whether they be of pre-partition belongings or of post-partition localities. These writings did not contradict the victimhood narrative but added a new dimension to it. Such narratives were often anecdotal and reductive challenging the understanding of refugee experience not through multiplicity but through singularity. Often it was the author’s own experience that was privileged over group experiences and it is through such discourses that the author reclaimed agency. But what about the agency of the refugees? Following these appeared a number of writings that discussed institutional responses to the arrival of forced migrants from both the west and the east. These writings by authors such as Samir Das and Monica Mandal discussed how the newly born governments operating within the imperatives of the state and nation-building exercise came to terms with the influx of such huge population groups. The measures that were taken by these governments could be categorized under relief and rehabilitation. These authors critique how the state viewed refugees not as individuals but in terms of numbers, shelter, food, health, hygiene, et cetera. By doing so, however, these administrative agencies made it possible for these huge groups to survive and prosper. These authors often conclude that, given the challenges and obstacles, the administration worked creditably. These narratives therefore shifted the spotlight from the refugees to the administrators, thus once again displacing the refugees. Such shifts went against feminist epistemology. Apart from these there are other authors who have tried to understand refugee experience through experiences of particular communities.

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Shekhar Bandyopadhyay, Joya Chatterjee and others belong to these schools of thought. These authors feel that by generalizing much of refugee experiences are lost. Also they feel that each population group had experiences that were unique to that group and cannot be reducible. Although there is much that can be applauded in these writings, but perhaps there is another way of looking at refugee experiences that has been undertaken by authors such as Dipankar Sinha who talks about the self-­ help initiatives of refugees who set up colonies and markets and strategize on their lives and the lived experiences of their neighbours for sheer survival. The authors who have either dealt with communities of displaced or refugee activities in building localities have seen refugees as agents of their own lives. It is true that their own lives were sometimes torn apart by greater forces than their own selves. But it is not to be denied that they were agents and through their agentive and communitarian struggles they emerged as empowered communities. Can these narratives be called feminists? Again we come back to our poser—what is feminist about studying forced migration? Actually feminist methodology in itself is an elusive concept. Methodological innovations in recent feminist approaches relevant to forced migration studies in South Asia came through aural approaches such as the art of story-telling. In 1993 Urvashi Bhutalia and Ritu Menon made almost break-through studies of oral narratives of women who were caught up in partition violence. What was often lost was the fact that many of these women that they talked about were forced migrants. This and the raging war in Bosnia made it possible for feminists such as Rada Ivecovic, Sandra Harding and others to make a paradigmatic shift in research. Therefore, what are the major attributes that makes a work feminist? In the field of forced migration, I posit that any work that claims to be feminist should have certain attributes: reflexivity, ethicality, recognition that it is political in nature and its effects have to be emancipatory. An early epistemological innovation that feminist methodology have brought in the field of forced migration is the rejection of the assumption that a strict separation between researcher and research subject produces a more valid and objective research. An example of this is Ann Oakley’s feminist paradigm for interviewing (1981) “which seeks to minimize objectification of the subject as data by viewing the interview as an interactional exchange. In her framework, answering the questions of

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interviewees personalizes and humanizes the researcher and places interaction on a more equal footing.”3 Even more important perhaps is that it is only when we use the information derived from the exercise of research for feminist objectives do such studies become feminist studies of forced displacement. Feminist objectives include some of the following characteristics; it presupposes gender as a central category of analysis; it questions what is recognized as “normal”; it serves as a corrective to andro-centric notions by generating new knowledge; it accepts women’s own interpretations of their identities and experiences, and it uses the end product for the purpose of emancipation. Therefore feminist research is an intrinsic part of feminist politics. Sandra Harding (1987) claims it is not the method that makes feminist research different from what she calls “malestream research,” rather the recognition that feminists deal with an alternate origin of problems; they present an alternate hypothesis; the purpose of enquiry is emancipatory in nature and the researcher is conscious of the difference between the interviewer and the interviewee, makes a work feminist. Let us if working on forced displacement authors have fulfilled most of these conditions and hence can be said to have feminized the existing the discourse? But is it enough to feminize the existing discourse or is it essential to create an alternate discourse to that of the given? Privileging women’s own experiences in refugee discourses in South Asia began in earnest with Sri Lankan analysts. Selvy Thiruchandran, Sasanka Perera and others claimed the centrality of women as dislocated subjects. Perera in his study on Monaragala and Hambantota districts worked on households that were formerly headed by male but now they are female headed. He came up with experiences of how women have coped with trauma and yet have continued their everyday life amidst depression, lack of economic opportunities and justice. He called for people working with the displaced population to be more sensitive to women as in most cases it is they who have taken up the onus of giving stability to their families.4 Darini Rajasingham and Senanayake wrote on how strongly women came out during the civil war in Sri Lanka. They stood out as individuals or as small groups exposing atrocities and violations of dignity. 3  Judith A. Cook and Mary Margaret Fonow, “Knowledge and Women’s Interests: Issues of Epistemology and Methodology in Feminist Sociological Research.” Sociological Enquiry, Vol. 56, 1986, p. 9. 4  Sasanka Perera, Stories of Survivor, Vol. I (New Delhi: 1999).

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She says women’s history does have a triumph. There is powerlessness and disappointment but also dreams and hopes.5 It is these writing that recognized that even in their marginality refugee women are never merely victims. Bolan Gangopadhyay’s essay on women refugees from East Pakistan portrays how women exert agency even in situations of marginality.6 It has been recognized that the women refugees from East Pakistan/Bangladesh have altered the work pattern of women in Bengal and changed the definition of what constitutes a bhadramahila.7 Women have often used their marginality to retrieve agency. The Women of Vitasta in Kashmir is a case in point. Afghan women in Pakistan have for long agitated for their voices to be heard in peacemaking. Dislocation is a debilitating experience no doubt, but many exceptional women have transformed it into an empowering one. They have assumed newer roles as head of households. Such experiences have increased their confidence, though at times it may have contributed to their trauma. I have met a number of women in camps in Sri Lanka who have used dislocation as an empowering incident. They have happily assumed the role of breadwinners. When these women take refuge in a different country, they assume agency even in the face of opposition from asylum-giving states because in a new area they are able to transcend patriarchal control. Sometimes repatriation can seem problematic because these women are then forced back within the control of traditional patriarchy. These studies on women’s forced displacement works against a state-­ centric narrative on the situation of refugee women as that leads to the trivialization of women as mere victims. It focuses attention towards the argument that State policy often results in the creation of refugees. State policy is not ungendered. It results from a political effort to homogenize citizenship. The ruling elites decide who belong and who do not. Rape, sexual assault and other gendered crimes are perpetrated against women to dislocate the society (which in conflict situation is formed largely of 5  Darini Rajasingham and Senanayake, “Post Victimisation: Cultural Transformation and Women’s Empowerment in War and Displacement,” Selvy Thiruchandran ed. Women, Narration and Nation: Collective Images and Multiple Identities (New Delhi: 1999) pp. 136–137. 6  Bolan Gangopadhyay, “Reintegrating the Displaced, Refracturing the Domestic: A Report on the Experiences at Uday Vila,” Refugees in West Bengal: Institutional Practices and Contested Identities, Pradip Bose, ed. (Kolkata: 2000) pp. 98–105. 7  Manju Chattopadhyay, “Refugee Women in Bengal,” Refugee Watch Nos. 10 & 11 (July, 2000) pp. 45 and 47.

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women) of the other in moments of conflict. Crimes against women are then trivialized as a natural result of conflict. Therefore death or a serious threat to liberty becomes a reason for asylum, but rape or vulnerability to human trafficking does not. Such a value judgment makes it even more difficult for women to seek asylum. This is a way of marginalizing crimes against women and then marginalizing the woman and making her a political non-subject and then reducing them to the status of political non-­ subjects. To retrieve women’s experiences from such marginalizations, it is essential to recognize the individual voices of refugee women in any narrative of displacement. Narrative based on responses of South Asian states cannot do so because governmental discourse reduce women to the status of victim and then justify their experiences as marginal and hence unimportant. Only by retrieving refugee women’s own voices and not dismissing their individual experiences as anecdotal can we centre the marginal. Dorothy Smith (1978) argues that feminists should never lose sight of women as actively constructing as well as interpreting social processes and realities. But of course feminist research methodologies in any field is no more unitary than the category of “women.” One of the liveliest debates among feminists is that which valorizes women’s experience and that which uses gender as a super category. This argument finds a particular edge when one talks about women forced migrants. That women among the forced migrant populations are even more vulnerable than their male counterparts is an acknowledged fact. What happens when that category of women are neither accepted by their country of origin nor by their host communities as someone who belongs. Thus, the two countries let them remain as “in between” people or people with indeterminate nationality/ indeterminate status of statelessness, thereby adding to their vulnerability, rightlessness and discrimination. They are truly the permanent exception to any known laws of citizenship. Here I am bringing to the fore a discourse that is of primary importance today: an analysis of communities such as the Rohingyas and narratives of women within stateless communities. Is it feminist to merely unearth the experiences of these women? But do these studies use a feminist methodology? Adrienne Rich has defined feminist methodology as a desire to be “disloyal to civilisation.” Studying women’s experiences of forced migration perforce centres the marginal by privileging women’s own voices and experiences and thereby it is disloyal to the given history of civilization. In this broader context, authors working on women’s displacement in South Asia have done a feminist exercise. Such exercises become a feminist method

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when  practitioners use information systematically for feminist purposes. Methodology then does not merely mean the art of asking questions or the method of collecting data; it also decides what politics shapes these questions and how has the information been put to use. According to Gelya Frank and Elizabeth Hampsten, feminist methodology emphasizes understanding rather than controlling information that is generated, and conceptualizes their task as one of opening rather than of closure.8 Given this definition, authors working on women’s forced displacement in South Asia have definitely used a feminist methodology.

References Dorothy E. Smith. 1978. The Everyday World as Problematic: A Feminist Sociology. Toronto: University of Toronto. Sandra Harding. 1987. Feminism and Methodology Social Science Issues. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.

8  Frank and Hampsten, “Autobiographies, Biographies and Life Histories of Women: Inderdisciplinary Perspectives,” Conference Paper, University of Minnesota, 23–24 May 1986.

CHAPTER 4

Interrogating Camps in Forced Migration Studies: The Exceptionality of South Asia Nasreen Chowdhory and Shamna Thacham Poyil

Introduction The conceptualisation of refugee camps in the academia has largely been Euro centric in the beginning, as a response to the specific conditions created in the continent in the wake of two world wars. Even though the current literature emphasises the refugee camps that exist in the Global South such as those in Africa, there is still a considerable dearth of work on the specific context and circumstances of the camps in South Asia. The colonial legacy along with the post- colonial state-building attempt in most of these countries has not created a seamless affiliation between the people and the borders. The shadow of partition and the migration across the borders of India and Pakistan in 1947 and later in 1971 during the creation of Bangladesh proves the incoherent and rather ruptured affiliation between people and the borders in South Asia. The N. Chowdhory (*) Department of Political Science, University of Delhi, New Delhi, India Calcutta Research Group, Kolkata, India S. T. Poyil (*) Department of Political Science, University of Delhi, New Delhi, India © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2022 N. Chowdhory, P. Banerjee (eds.), Gender, Identity and Migration in India, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-16-5598-2_4

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state-building projects in majority of the post-colonial countries of the Global South has often precipitated to the carving of mono-ethnic or homogenous nations based on vested sectarian interests as seen in the case of Sri Lanka or Myanmar. Apart from creating the causal conditions for the generating masses of refugees and stateless people across the region, such attempts also complicate the attitude of the host communities in the already resource starved countries of the Global South towards providing protection to the vulnerable refugees who crosses over to their borders. The need to inhibit the movement of people crossing the borders was furthered and enacted by a corresponding political response of containing those populations within the confines of a camp, such that the refugee camps evolved into ‘defacto durable solution’ to the problem of unchecked forced migration (Shacknove 1993; Chimni 2004; McConnachie 2016). Camps can be seen as temporary spatial constructs conditioned by the uncertainty of exclusion and protection, both at once (Minca 2015). The prevalent methods of sheltering the forced migrants have led to a larger observation that the accommodation practices of refugees in the Global South is hyphenated with ‘refugee camps’ where as those of the Global North are along the lines of ‘asylum centers’1 (Kreichauf 2018). With accommodation of refugees being eventually institutionalised through various asylum laws in many of the countries of Europe, terminologies2 such as ‘“asylum reception and accommodation centers”, “asylum shelters” and “homes”’ (ibid.) took a centre stage in the Global North. The prevalence of refugee camps in the Global South makes it imperative to understand the socio-political and cultural milieu of the countries that host a sizeable population of the refugees, so as to assess the significance of camps in the context of their ad hoc refugee protection structure. This chapter tries to build on the understanding of refugee camps in general and simultaneously attempts to bridge the gap of literature on the refugee camps in the context of forced migration in South Asia. The chapter is divided into three sections. The first section provides an historical understanding of refugee camps including the epistemology and 1  This is not to claim that refugee camps do not exist in the Global North, but rather highlights the distinctive nature of refugee accommodation of the Global North in contrast with hose in the Global South. 2  The adherence to 1951 Refugee convention and other regional protection frameworks such as European convention on Human Rights, EU directives etc. has caused the affiliated countries to develop standardised and institutionalise collective accommodation practices referred to as ‘European Accommodation Centers for Asylum Seekers’ (See Szczepanikova 2013; Morville and Erlandsson 2013; Kreichauf 2018).

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conceptual evolution. The second section discusses the humanitarian spatiality of camps, and the final section attempts to comprehend the complex functional spatiality and temporality of refugee camps that emphasise it as a space of exception. Through engaging on various reflections from South Asian refugee camps, the final section of the chapter asserts that the refugee camps of South Asia conjure a unique exceptionality within the overtly generalised discourse on exceptionality of camps.

The Historical Context of Camp Formation Despite the inherent variations in both the constitution and organisation of the camps, their sheer prevalence in numbers itself highlights the significance of refugee camps as the frontline response to the forced migration. Mostly it is imperative to provide a factual definition that clarifies the constitution of an entity, before one traces its historical lineage. Yet, when it comes to a definition, there is no phenomenon as complex and elusive as refugee camps. Rather than attempting to provide a comprehensive definition, we attempt to take an historical and epistemological analysis of the camp itself. The need for historiography is to locate and put in perspective the need for a nuanced and detailed post-colonial introspection for the refugee camps in South Asia. It is also to reaffirm that to a subcontinent where practices of hospitality have existed from time immemorial, providing protection to people by casting them out to makeshift structures of camp is a colonial administrator endowment. Kristen McConnachie started the genealogy of camps from the late eighteenth century, there by locating the prisoner-of-war camps of 1790s and internment camps3 as ‘camps of containment’. Starting from the French Revolutionary wars followed by the Napoleonic wars, American civil wars, and later during World Wars I and II, she elaborates on how prisoner of war camps became a common aspect to house the soldiers and enemies captured during the conflict. Apart from aggravating the suffering of those captured, 3  Within the same category of containment camps, McConnachie includes the internment camps that began to emerge in the late 1890s. If prisoner of war camps were used to contain soldiers or enemies caught in conflict, internment camps largely housed civilian populations for variety of reasons such as ‘medical quarantine or national security’ (McConnachie 2016: 402). Beginning with the Spanish siege of Cuba in the 1890s that consequently instigated the encampment of civilians, McConnachie (ibid.) explains how such internment camps were espoused by the imperial powers in their conquests such as ‘British in South Africa (1899–1902), United States in the Philippines (1899–1902), Germany in Deutsche SudWest Afrika (1904–7), and Italy in Libya (1928–32)’.

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these camps effectively utilised their containment as a tactical strategy to attain various military goals. These in retrospective served as precursors to the concentration camps that were instrumental in orchestrating the holocaust during Hitler’s Nazi regime. The term ‘concentration camp’ as we use it today, derived its meaning from the later ‘forced labor and extermination camps’ founded in Europe in the aftermath of World War II (Smith and Stucki 2011: 417). If deaths in the earlier internment camps were caused due to the encampment conditions that prevailed within, the deaths of inmates in concentration camps were caused by the deliberate ‘genocidal intent’ to which they were subjected based on their collective racial identity (ibid.). So where do these categories of containment camps belong in the genealogy of refugee camps and how are they significant? The discussion necessitates analysing the genealogy of containment camps from being a colonial strategical engagement that showcases care for the sick and vulnerable subjects to a post-colonial imperative in refugee management. It was imperative for the imperial powers to convince the people back in their home that civilians in colonies were being protected from the conflicts that emerged as a part of their colonial conquests. As a tool to further their vested interests, ‘the barbed-wire aesthetic of camps’ constituted by the Imperial British administration imposed ‘heavy labor and penal rations under dire economic restraints’ so as to restrain and guard the ‘problem populations’ (Forth 2015). The seeds of spatial segregation were thus laid by British Empire by promoting administrators to institute the material conditions necessary for the forceful internment of potentially threatening groups of people in colonies. This was in turn based on their racial and cultural attributes, effectively creating the category of ‘other’. The inherent nature of the British Empire with its wide variety of political and administrative structures along with correspondingly multifarious colonial subjects functioned as a test room. Forth (2017: 2) in Britain’s Empire of Camps  elaborates on how the empire transformed to a ‘laboratory’ for imperial agents to monitor and categorise mass populations. The attempt to regulate the people in colonies who were dislodged by ‘war, famine, economic dislocation and European settlement’ was showcased in the ‘established practices’ adopted by the empire (ibid.). This was reflected in imperial policy of relegating the economically poor of colonial India to relief and labour camps during the famines of late nineteenth century, segregating the sick and vulnerable to the camps during the plague in India and South Africa (1896–1901), or strategically allocating civilians to camps during the South African war of 1899–1902 (Forth 2017: 6).

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The term ‘concentration camp’ though is considered to have originated from the Spanish usage of ‘reconcenterados’ in Cuba in the 1890s (Forth 2015), our popular memory of concentration camp is associated with the extermination camps instituted by totalitarian Nazi regime. But they indeed learnt the strategy of concentrating civilians into camps‘Konzentrationslager’4 from the precedent established by the British Empire (see Henderson 1940; Forth 2017). This historiography of camps in the imperial era is important to understand how a pattern of space delineated exclusion concurrently emerged by phrasing imperial or military strategy5 in the language of minimalist protection6 for civilians. What was common to the above discussed situations was also a tacit way of sorting the population by subtly creating a hierarchy of categories—of who were privileged to provide protection and who were allowed to claim that protection. Royle (1998) notes how the camps in South Africa were a part of larger cluster of camps including Boer camps and the internment camps for prisoners. The political leadership in Britain validated the existence of camps in referring to them as ‘refugee camps’ and thereby emphasised that inmates of the camp voluntarily resided there for the protection provided (McConnachie 2016: 403). After which the closest to a functioning refugee camp can be seen in the Armenian camps7 of 1915 or even the ‘Dustbowl’ camps8 of 1930s. 4  After reprimanding Hermann Goering for Germany’s burgeoning network of concentration camps on the eve of World War II, the British Ambassador to Berlin, Sir Nevile Henderson, received a sharp rebuke. Walking to his bookshelf, the Nazi leader pulled out the ‘K’ volume of a German encyclopaedia and read ‘Konzentrationslager: first used by Britain in the South African War [of 1899–1902].’- Nevile Henderson, Failure of a Mission: Berlin 1937–1939 (New York: G.P. Puntnam’s Sons, 1940), 21 as quoted in Aidan Forth (2012). 5  The main argument in the case of camps instituted during South African Boer war (1899–1902) was to protect the civilians from the conflict. This pattern can be seen in the later camps instituted by Spanish government during the military invasion of Cuba, Germany’s attempt to create camps in erstwhile Deutsche Sud-West Africa (Namibia) or yet again establishment of ‘concentration zones’ in Philippines by United States. 6  It was considered to be the basic humanitarian protection that was ‘benevolently’ provided by the imperial masters to the colonial subjects as in the case of aforementioned Famine in British India in 1870s and 1890s or during the plague conditions prevalent in Africa and India in 1896–1901. 7  These camps were created for the Armenians fleeing the genocide orchestrated by then Turkish government in 1915–1923 (Kaprielian-Churchill 1993). 8  Dust bowl camps in California were created for the American labour migrants from the Great Plains and Midwest fleeing the environmental cataclysm in the drought struck “Dust bowl region in 1930s. Roughly 2.5 million people left the Dust Bowl states – Texas, New

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The emergence of refugee camps as a response to the large influx of migrants and displaced people occurred in the aftermath of World War II. The massive redrawing of boundaries resulted in the one of the largest migrations. The Post World War II, Soviet government along with Allied powers founded administration and processing centres for facilitating the repatriation of over 11 million people displaced9 due to war (McDowell 2005). According to Slatt (2002), the multiple relief and aid organisations in charge of ‘post war rehabilitation and reconstruction’ assigned the category of ‘displaced persons’ to a widely heterogeneous group of people10 who were now compelled to cohabit under a single aid plan and course of action.11 The administrative governance of the camps sheltering displaced persons was later taken over by United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration (UNRRA) in 1945, which in 1947 got reorganised as International Refugee Organization12 (IRO) (McDowell 2005; Hilton 2009). The makeshift structures and lurching buildings that were overcrowded with the refugees were appended to the construct of ‘refugee camps’. The tacit consonance amongst the new powers that the stability of modern nation-state is contingent on maintaining or re-carving homogenous nations advertently promoted ‘unmixing of peoples13‘ (Gatrell 2013; Brubaker 1995). Hence, as much as the conflict itself, even the peace-­ making attempts during the end of World War II also generated a lot of chaos that aggravated the displacement of millions. The Cold War era compounded the existing chaos of bordered and boundaries by inducing Mexico, Colorado, Nebraska, Kansas and Oklahoma – during the 1930s. It was the largest migration in American history’-See https://www.history.com/topics/great-depression/ dust-bowl 9  The defeat of German forces by Allied powers simultaneously precipitated the voluntary return of 7 million people to their homeland who had earlier fled the totalitarian Nazi regime (Cohen 2008). 10  Most of the people residing in these camps were reluctant to be repatriated to their homelands in countries such as Lithuania, Poland, Russia, Yugoslavia etc. along with the ‘Soviet prisoners of war and French civilian soldiers’ (Slatt 2002). 11  Also see https://collections.museumvictoria.com.au/articles/13619 12  Despite its conceptualisation as temporary establishments for protection of displaced populations, most of them went on to last for longer duration ‘providing accommodation, employment, education, medical care, recreation and transit’ for the vulnerable (Shephard 2011). The attempt by the camp administrations to the rearrange the disorganised camp structure according to the identity and national affiliations of the inmates did not effectively materialise. 13  A usage made by Lord Curzon as quoted in Gatrell (2013) in The Making of a Modern Refugee.

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a new set of conflicts based on geopolitical agendas and ideologies. Despite generating a large number of migrants and refugees across most of the continents, it also deeply entrenched the need to preserve the inviolability of territorial margins rather than the incumbent people. The withdrawal of imperial powers and the resultant decolonisation in the 1940s that were often entwined with bloody partitions and civil wars resulted in the mutation of ‘economic and cultural relationships within and between countries and communities’ of the Global South (Thomas and Thompson 2014). In contextualising decolonisation within forced migration, Ian Talbot (2011: 29) delineates three patterns of population flow: the return of the European colonisers with some of their chosen native allies back to their homelands, migration precipitated in apprehension of the ethnic frictions and minority marginalisation, and orchestrated exclusion and ‘expulsion of scape-goat communities’ as a part of the post-­ colonial state-building in in newly independent states. Talbot empirically argues that despite their self-perception as refugees, those who belong to first two groups often qualify to be economic migrants or internally displaced people while third group undeniably belong to the category of refugees. The establishment of refugee camps in the Global South such as the partition camps in India, Palestine, Rwanda and Congo amongst the many bears testimony to these troublesome population flows in the wake of decolonisation. For South Asia, the history of refugee camp is entwined with the account of forced migration across the borders at the instance of the mutation of the colonial space to two distinct nation-states based on the religious identity. Arguably the narratives of this migration were not homogenous in nature. The inherent variations in gender, caste and class had occasioned diverse experiences of partition for each person who migrated across the border, to their new homeland. The relatively affluent migrant population settled in residential areas with proper housing and adequate facilities, whereas the socio-economically deprived sections settled in the tents and camps erected in different parts of the city. There was also a spatially variant pattern of migration such that there was continuous mobility across Eastern Pakistan and West Bengal region of India, whereas that across the North-Western borders of India and West Pakistan was an instantaneous response to the partition (Bagchi and Dasgupta 2003). Both the countries established many camps in the nature of Transit camps/ Relief camps mainly in the territories of border States of Bengal and Punjab. The enormous number of partition refugees involved caused the

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Government to reconsider their initial plan to directly rehabilitate them at the outset. Instead they were segregated to three categories of refugee camps—Transit Camps/Relief Camps, Colony Camps/Work site Camps and Permanent Liability camps (Datta 2013). The historiography of partition on either side of the borders has showcased the narratives of refugee life in camps at various places such as those in Kingsway camp and Kurukshetra camp sheltering those from Pakistan (Kaur 2007), Purana Qila Camp that housed those on their way to Pakistan (Zamindar 2007). Similar accounts of refugee experiences in West Bengal were emphasised by Joya Chatterji (2017) and those of Muslim refugees in Lahore were provided in Ian Talbot’s (2006) account of Walton Camp. All these accounts of misery and plight of refugees in partition camps were obfuscated by the hyphenation of identity and politics, which was both implicit and explicit in the nation-building of the newly formed post-­ colonial states of India and Pakistan. Forced migration in South Asia, irrespective of the causative factors, has simultaneously witnessed ad hoc approaches of humanitarian response from the countries of the region to the population flow across and within the borders. Without completely abandoning the responsibility to offer protection, states have adopted a calibrated approach to contain these unsolicited, and vulnerable section in specific sites of camps without interspersing them with the host population. The burgeoning of refugee camps as the Rohingya refugee camps in Bangladesh and India, Tamil refugee camps in India, the various Internally Displaced People (IDP) Camps in Sri Lanka all bear testimony to the significance of the same. The ‘refugee camps’ that showcased the enigma of both ‘control and care’ at once started proliferating throughout the world so much so that twentieth century became ‘the century of camps’ (Bauman 2004). It could be postulated that the conceptualisation of camp as a space that habituates ‘bare life’ then could be used as a starting point for envisioning camp as a space that necessitates protection. While examining camp as a site of humanitarian protection of bare life, Agamban’s notion of ‘exceptional structure of camp that shelters “bare life”’ has been challenged in many scholarly works (see Martin 2015; Ramadan 2009; Sanyal 2012; Oesch 2017). A deeper discussion will be engaged with to address the socio-political spatiality of camps, by elaborating on the protection of ‘bare life’, contestation of ‘bare life’ and ‘exclusionary paradigm’ associated with camps itself. (Sigona 2015: 12). Camp should be rather seen as an ambivalent and contested space where

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‘multiple subjectivities’ emerge (Achilli and Oesch 2016; Oesch 2017) through the everyday practices of refugees.

Camps: As a Humanitarian Space and Its Emergent Socio-Political Configurations The functioning of a refugee camp is enabled by host states and international organisations through provision of aid. Kibreab (1989) opines the idea of local settlement in Africa, which means placement of refugees in spatially segregated sites where their material needs (except land contributed by host countries) are met by the international refugee support system. The host country provides land for the settlement based on their vested interests to curtail the resource sharing burden, limit the mingling of refugees with the host society and also to enable their early and successful repatriation. The moment from which refugees cross border, seek aid and assistance from host state and humanitarian organisations, until their return home- all constitutes the refugee cycle. In this procedure, Jansen (2015) understands camps as the site of the most intimate form of humanitarian governance, where the relation between aid giver and aid receiver is at its peak. This conception of international aid received by the host country can also potentially benefit its economy in multiple ways either through UNHCR funds, donations or also through circulation of economy due to the presence of labour force. The camps are also argued as bringing opportunities for the host population in terms of employment, investment and opportunity to host communities, rather than limiting them (Jansen 2015). On the other hand, refugee camps are concentrations of humans, trading centres as well as labour markets (Montclos & Kagwanja, 2000), which in a way supports the economic system of the host country. This humanitarian space of camps could also be transformed as ‘humanitarian sanctuaries’ (Rufin 1996: 28) that have the adverse potential to be appropriated as a guerrilla base utilising the vulnerable refugees as human shield (Agiers 2002). From the security perspective, camps normatively pose the dual ambivalence of state mediated protection—the need to protect the refugees along with the need to guarantee protection from the threats posed by the refugee (ibid.). The predisposed political will of the state to protect their borders and guard their population causes them to segregate, forsake or even initiate the involuntary repatriation thereby

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perpetuating the undesirability of refugees segregated to camps (Agier 2002; Godding 1997; Cigerli 1998). The instances of open armed confrontation in the Lebanese camps north of Tripoli for forty days (Hanafi 2008), the presence of guerrilla forces in the Rwandan refugee camps in Zaire (Barber 1997), the recruitment of child soldiers from the refugee camps of Chad by the camp leaders themselves14 – all these partially rationalise the state paranoia on refugee camps being sites that need to be both protected for refugees and against refugees. The camps transmute to insecure and violent spaces in the country giving asylum, as they are sites of direct military attacks and security threats in everyday lives in the region of Africa (Crisp & Kiragu, 2010). But in envisioning camps as humanitarian spaces, the focus on the aspect of assistance and protection is necessary rather than spaces of potential security threat. Beauchamp (2008: 16) considers humanitarian space to be ‘fluid’ in nature that emphasises the shifting dynamics of the concerned space both with respect to the actors involved and the type of assistance provided. For refugees residing in camps, their everyday life is determined not just by the ‘political geography of displacement’, but also by the subtleties of humanitarian assistance provided to them (Feldman 2012: 156). In hypothesising camps as humanitarian space providing assistance to refugees, the existing scholarship has engaged in detail about the legitimacy of the actors such as aid agencies or international organisations and even host governments who administrate the refugee populations in their capacity of humanitarian protection (Fassin 2007; Barnett 2013; Kennedy 2004). The constitution of ‘bare life’ that has necessitated humanitarian protection in itself signals the inability of the state to prevent the causative factors that generated the refugee crisis in the first place. Both humanitarian organisations and host governments do not assert ‘sovereign authority’ over the camp inmates as humanitarian organisations do not consider themselves to be sovereign entities whereas host governments do not consider refugees to be their citizens (Feldman 2015). This inadvertently constructs the equation of legitimacy that exists between aid providers and recipients as an impermanent one (Feldman 2015; Buchanan 1999; Kahler 2011). Legitimacy within the humanitarian framework of the refugee camp among other things is significantly shaped by the capacity of administrators and the aid providers to handle the financial liability for providing the minimal services within the camp. Feldman (2015: 245) opines that in  https://www.theguardian.com/world/2008/jun/06/sudan.humanrights

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perceiving camps through the lens of humanitarian protection, donors and aid providers observe refugees as ‘apolitical victims’. The burgeoning of camps in the under-developed regions of the world rightly validates Michael Agier’s (2002: 320) hypothesis on them as the ‘formation of a global space for the “humanitarian” management of the most unthinkable and undesirable populations of the planet’. The effort of the state to decouple the lives of the refugees surviving in camps from the normal socio-political world of the rights-bearing citizens outside the camp is a confirmation to the above observation of Agier. This is synonymous with the narrative of portraying refugees as ‘victims’ that necessitate humanitarian protection. Constructed as temporary confinements that house the ‘undesirable populations’, the camps characterise a different trait of biopolitics through humanitarian governance that reduces the existence of refugees to ‘bare life’ (Agamben 1998: 133; Diken and Laustsen 2005: 86). In attempting to ameliorate the suffering of refugees, humanitarian action within camps signify ‘biopolitics’ in the way they administer the life of refugees at the micro level through managing their aid and food provisions or in monitoring their physical well-being. The camp as a humanitarian space often transmutes to the biopolitical arena preoccupied with ‘politics of life’ (Fassin 2009: 44) where life is nurtured and supported only up to an extent that death is averted, but bare life sustains. As observed by Hanafi (2008: 88), refugees are then essentially ‘transformed into bodies to be fed and sheltered’. Such hyphenation of refugees with victimhood correspondingly mandates an aid/assistance-based approach precluding the need for a rights-based approach. In precluding their ability to function as ‘full subjects in their own rights’, the humanitarian actions within camps generate conditions that precipitate ‘depoliticizing effects’ on refugees (Feldman 2012: 157). Overt humanitarianisation of the camp that reduces the refugee to a hapless victim would deter their social and psychological growth in the long run. The ‘pure humanitarian activity of saving lives without transforming them’ will adversely impact the refugee rehabilitation process during the later phases of refugee cycle (Feldman 2015: 247). The usual ambit of humanitarian protection in the camp involves food, water, shelter, sanitation, health and basic education. For camps administered by agencies such as UNHCR, the structure of humanitarian administration coalesces a synthetic social contract that allocates a ‘partly’ sovereign status to UNHCR whereas the refugee becomes the ‘quasi state-citizen’ (Hilhorst and Jansen 2010: 1124). If the usual entitlements

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that refugees attain is akin to the citizenship produced through social contract, the supplementary assistance in the form of higher and advanced education, support in securing jobs with various agencies or even help for resettlement are special privileges that some of them accomplish while negotiating their everyday life in camps (ibid.). The modalities with which humanitarian organisations determine their beneficiaries in camp construe a ‘hierarchy of vulnerability’ based on the needs of refugees. It is in such situations that organisations like UNHCR create patterns of conditioned inclusion and dual exclusion within the humanitarian space of camps. In camps that shelter Palestinian refugees, the same paradigm of inclusion and exclusion within the humanitarian space of camps offers the platform for ‘rights talk and claim-making’ to emerge (Feldman 2012: 165). These refugees navigate both their ‘legal vulnerability and social marginality’ inherent in their camp life to construe a collective space where ‘civil rights or humanitarian rights’ claims are asserted (ibid.). Feldman argues that such instances cause the humanitarian space in camps that otherwise embodies the ‘politics of life’ to transmute to the everyday ‘politics of living’ (Feldman 2012: 168). This understanding is elaborated in examining camps as socio-political space. The absence of law or rather the biased implementation of law has caused the vulnerable and targeted population to undertake forced migration to other states for refuge. In the absence of a state authority that would acknowledge their state-hood, refugees and stateless people are cast to a zone outside law—hors du nomos (Agier, fn 16). As rightly pointed by Bauman (2004), their plight is not that they are ousted from the ambit of any particular type of law or law of any particular state, rather they are ousted from ‘law as such’. With the looming ambiguity on the culmination of their flight and plight, they have been cast to the zone of exception in the camps. Where both the journey and destination remain simultaneously uncertain, these refugees navigate the permanency of their temporary journey and transient nature of their permanent destination in a state of ‘liminal drift’ (Agier). The mobility of these people across the border obfuscates the affiliation between nationality and citizenship and thereby complicates the ways in which nation-state governs its population. Camps thus become the spatial structures that segregate and contain the ‘wasted life’ (Bauman 2004) of refugees surviving in a condition of ‘debilitating dependence’ (Adelman 2008: 8). Normatively refugee camps materialise the humanitarian obligation of the host countries to protect the refugees, and the spatial functionality of

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camps reflects this conditional prerequisite. But more than often their prolonged existence is conditioned by the protracted conflicts that caused them and the political tenacity in arriving at a sustainable resolution of those conflicts. This uncertainty causes a concurrent variation in the spatio-­temporal characteristics of the camp. The spatial boundaries of a territorially demarcated camp are altered when the refugees cross them for seeking employment or livelihood whereas the provisional timeframe that determines the temporality of the camp eventually stretches to attain permanence (Turner 2016). This extension precipitates new socio-political configurations to the space of refugee camp. From a zone of exception where normally the political existences of individuals are devalued, it transmutes to an ‘active political space’ (Petti 2013). As explained, reducing refugee camps to a space of humanitarian action is in turn symptomatic of the proposition that refugees and other asylum seekers are victims of our modern political and economic order (Agamben 1998, 2005; Schmitt 1991). Such a conceptualisation also diminishes refugee to a passive entity who lacks ‘autonomous identity or agency’ (Petti 2013). Actively propagating a political stand can be counterproductive to a refugee surviving in the camp, as it diminishes his subjectivity as a vulnerable victim in need of humanitarian protection. But the refugee camps in Lebanon and Palestine challenges this very perspective of victimisation and instead signifies the assertion of their political agency. This agency emerges in their navigation of everyday life in camps or as a resistance to the legal and surveillance measures instituted within the camp. In the absence of a political resolution for the conflict and without Israel conceding their ‘right to return’, the Palestinian refugee camps have become a stage in which every act boils down to an act of emphasising their right to return. Earlier despite the expanding population in these camps, a structural and material expansion of camp was inhibited by the fear that such a move would cause the refugees to assimilate locally and develop a sense of belonging to the area they inhabit (Abourahme and Hilal 2012). The presumption that festered living conditions of the camp would reiterate ‘camp’s ephemerality’ (Petti 2013) had caused the inmates to internalise the pitiable living environment. But now, this expression of right to return is done not by perpetuating appalling living condition or shoddy material architecture of camp. Defying the perception of being just a passive beneficiary of aids and provisions, Palestinian refugees started actively partaking in the establishment of an ‘autonomous political space’ (ibid.). They also exert their political agency in negotiating or re-­ negotiating the

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various socio-political aspects of their daily life in the camp. Without normalising the political state of life in exile, the Palestinian refugees have altered camps such as those in Dehesheh near Bethlehem from a transient space of liminality to a zone that signifies political representations of agency (Misselwitz and Sari 2012; Petti 2013). Such instances that challenge camps as ‘space of exception’ necessitate the need to look at the particularity of refugee camps in South Asia.

‘Exceptionality’ of Camps in South Asia Refugee camps spatially materialise two concepts at its core: segregation and exclusionary protection. The makeshift constructs of tents and shelters in the camp are a reflection of the ambiguously transient nature for which the state has ideally conceived it—a space that permanently segregates and temporarily protects the excluded. The space of exception constituted by the camp defies the binaries of inclusion and exclusion to which a citizen and non-citizen respectively are subjected. Therefore, the exceptionality of the camp is that, the bare life of the refugee is ‘included solely through exclusion’ (Agamben 1998: 11). In a nation-state global order arbitrated through borders and territories, camp excludes the refugee by admitting him into the space it occupies. By first segregating and later confining the outcasts of the body politic to a demarcated space, the camp emerges as a zone in a state of suspension (Agamben 2005). It is at once both inside the ambit of normal spatial organisation of the nation-state and yet outside it. Being physically located inside the borders of the state, the camp is ‘inside’. But by challenging the hyphenation between territory of a state and population it embodies, refugee camps fall outside the normal spatial organisation of the state. Hence based on Agamben’s conceptualisation, camp can be seen as a space of exception that shelters the ‘bare life’ (Agamben 1998). As individuals who have been deprived of their political status, the refugees embody a status of ‘bare life’. Camp thus manifests as an ‘extra- territorial’ zone of exception where the sovereign decision to suspend the law of the land that amounts to the exclusion of inhabiting vulnerable population (Agier 2011; Diken 2004). This section makes the argument that refugee camps in South Asia conjures a specific pattern of exception within the discourse of refugee camps that are overtly generalised as ‘spaces of exception’. This particular exceptionality is brought about by the inhabitants of camp developing a sense of belonging to the host society that at once problematises both the ‘space of exception’

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in the camps and the ‘bare life’ of refugees it shelters. The exceptionality is equally conditioned by two aspects—blurred cultural boundaries in South Asia and the absence of any definitive legal framework in the whole of subcontinent to guarantee the ambit of refugee protection. The two functionalities of segregation and protection of refugee camps need to be contextualised in the aforementioned specific exceptionality prevalent in South Asia. The notion of protection has always been inherent in the practices of hospitality prevalent in the subcontinent. The protection accorded in the earlier times and the current protection habituated by performative practices of hospitality—both were not dependent on the pre-requisite of a law. Then, delineating protection to those who are demarcated as ‘others’ within the confines of a camp can be seen as a colonial legacy of the camp. This colonial legacy was being adopted and perpetuated by the post-colonial nation-state in its attempt to institutionalise protection in accordance with its utopia of homogeneous nation. This brings in perspective the need to see the exceptionality of camp refugees developing a sense of belonging to the host state with reference to the functionality of ‘segregation’ brought about by the camp. Refugee camps in South Asia characterise fulfilling the requirement of ‘unmixing’ of the refugees with the host population. These refugees are organically mixed with host society more than often through the shared sense of belonging that they nurture emanating from common markers of identity such as language, religion or culture. This makes it necessary to undertake a closer introspection at the ‘space’ of a refugee camp so as to locate the exceptionality of South Asian refugee camps. The space of a camp signifies many aspects such as its socio-political spatiality, the configuration of power assemblage it embodies or even simply its structural design. But the ambiguous spatial and temporal functionality of camps specifically indicates the instrumentality of camps as finite spaces that caters to the mass accommodation of refugees over an extended time. The confines of ‘interpretational sovereignty’ make it is a tedious task to define camps from the ambit of refugee accommodation (Kreichauf 2018). More than often, such definitions that tag and characterise such spaces are determined by the political, administrative and organisational disposition of the entities that govern them (Pieper 2008; Kreichauf 2018). Even then, the conceptualisation of refugee camps as spaces of refugee accommodation (see Harrell-Bond 1999; Marx 1990; Witteborn 2011) can be seen from the lens of scholarly postulations, such as Goffman’s (1961) notion of total institutions, Auge’s (2008)

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theory of ‘non-places’ or the Foucauldian (1997) notion of heterotopia (Kreichauf 2018). The ‘space’ of a refugee camp being central to its spatiality, we need to engage with diverse body of literature on the same. In his work Of Other Spaces, Foucault postulates that the symbolic relevance of certain spaces as being derived from the reflective implication of the spaces that they inherently juxtapose. Foucault refers to these counterpoising spaces as ‘heterotopias’ that often ‘reflect, contest and invert the normalized’ spaces that we occupy (Rice 2003: 39). They construe illusionary spaces that in turn expose the reality of ‘messy, ill constructed and jumbled’ material spaces that we inhabit (Foucault 1986: 27). As sites of ‘alternate ordering’ where distinct approaches of control and freedom are envisaged, heterotopia moulds the collective space we occupy as essentially different from the place that encircles it (Hetherington 1997: 8) Various policies of exclusion, organisation and control cause refugee camps to be seen as “contemporary out-places” or “concrete heterotopias”, signifying the inequality and precarity that constitute these spaces (Agier 2019:14). For the refugee, the camp is internalised as a spatially bounded manifestation of repressive life in exile. But this internalisation of the spatiality of camp is done with reference to the place of origin of refugees. They navigate their everyday life in camp within the confines of order and control administered by the camp authorities yet habituated by the limited care and conditioned protection from the humanitarian aid organisations. Caught between the contentious spectrum of control, order and protection, a refugee juxtaposes his space of exiled life in the camp with his space of homeland. The observation of heterotopic space as being a zone that ascertains its difference through underscoring the unity that encloses it (Foucault 1998) becomes pertinent in the context of porous borders and forced migration in South Asia. The refugee camps that shelter these forced migrants became the heterotopic space that mirrors the utopias of host societies that surrounds it. The attempts to carve culturally homogenous states created tangible friction that in turn caused separatist movements, minority persecution and explicit state orchestrated violence on targeted minority populations in the countries of South Asia. This created conditions for the forced migration of these vulnerable populations in turn creating refugee influx to the neighbouring countries. The notion of homogenous state-­ building causes the host states to segregate the refugees from its population. By demarcating the refugee camp to the outskirts, the state carves intangible boundaries of segregation and separation within its tangible

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borders. The contouring of the undesirable refugees of a specific identity to the heterotopia of the camp, thus resonates a utopia of the homogenous society that the state desired to create. Heterotopia of the camp thus permits us to create an illusory mirror effect of ‘otherness’ vis-à-vis ‘us’ that resides in the utopia. But as opined by Agier (2019), even the otherness constructed is one ‘without substance, in the image of the non-­ existent inaccessible thought’ of utopia. Space of a refugee camp in South Asia can be problematised from various theoretical perspectives. Building on Michael De Certeau’s differentiation of ‘place’ and ‘space’,15 Auge (1995: 80) conceptualises space in lines of an ‘anthropological space’. Despite its abstractness as mere geographical variable, ‘space’ inherently comprises in itself both aspects of ‘place’ and a ‘non-place’ (ibid.). The actuality of a ‘place’ is conditioned by its ‘historical, relational and identical’ existence for an individual. When the people who occupy a particular space strives to nurture and protect their history, relationships and identity associated with that space through rituals, traditions and practices, then they carve a ‘place’ out of that abstract ‘space’ (Auge 1995: 42). The population within the boundaries of a ‘place’ thus develops a collective identity shaped by the ‘unformulated rules of living know-how’ (ibid.: 101) that would eventually inculcate a common sense of belonging within the inhabitants of the ‘place’. The concept of ‘non-place’ does not have the variables of ‘history, relations or identity’ associated with it, rather it is characterised by the absence of those variables (Auge 1995: 78). These ‘non-places’ are unstable and dynamic spaces that are in constant flux, it can only inculcate a strange sense of acquaintance for those within rather than developing the notion of belonging in them. Apart from being a definitive outcome arising from the various contingencies of ‘supermodernity’,16 refugee camp epitomises 15  Certeau in turn builds on the distinction made by Merleau-Ponty on geometric space and anthropological space. If ‘space’ is where the individual is situated, the individual’s experience of ‘seeing’ and ‘doing’ transforms the space. While ‘seeing’ focuses on observing the ‘inventories’ constituted by the geometric space, it is the ‘doing’ of an individual that shapes his/her ‘relational, historical and identical’ underpinnings that constitutes an ‘anthropological space’ (Auge 1995). 16  ‘Super modernity’ simulates conditions of excess and superfluity that creates spaces that are in perpetual transition. The extravagant indulgence created by super modernity opens up ‘non-places’ like airports, supermarkets, highways etc. where mostly one’s collective identity is irrelevant. The only time it is warranted (if at all) is during the entry and exit to such spaces, where one’s documented identity becomes relevant. In these ‘non-places’ only a shared identity such as that of a co-passenger in airport, co-traveller in a parking lot or co-pedestrian in

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the ‘space of indistinction’ (Diken 2004: 91) central to a ‘non-place’. Like an entity who enters the demarcated space of ‘non-place is relieved of his usual determinants’ (Auge 1995: 103), the constituting characteristics of an inmate entering the spatial boundary of the camp is relegated to the oblivion. The ‘exterritorial’ nature where ‘they are “in” but not “of” the contexts in which they are located exceptionally’ is what is common both to the conceptualisation of ‘non-place’ and refugee camps in general (Diken 2004: 96; Minca 2005). By the same logic of this comparison, refugee camps function as ‘non- symbolized abstract spaces’ that do not associate ‘meanings, traditions and sacrificial or ritual moments’ (ibid.). In perpetuating the ‘logic of exclusion’, refugee camps could be compared to the conceptualisation of non-place so much so that ‘non-place territorializes the biopolitical operatives of camp via the exclusive entrances and exits’ (Sharma 2009: 135). But from the perspective of refugees, the camps in South Asia differ from this analogy of non-places. The brief historiography of camps provided in the beginning of the chapter ascertains that ‘logic of exclusion and segregation’ that epitomises the refugee camp is in fact a colonial inheritance which is being co-opted by the post -colonial states. The camp refugees inculcate a ‘sense of belonging’ in the ‘space’ of the host state and to the host population during exile, owing to the shared culture and ethnicity. The ethnic kinship between people in the host state and the refugees is one among the factors that shape this belonging, as refugee groups have an inherent inclination to ‘seek asylum in a society that shares a similar language, culture and kinship structures’ (Chowdhory 2018: 30). The post-colonial nation-state that hosts them might factor in the shared ethnic affiliation as a potential threat that would encourage more influx of refugees or instil an aversion to the repatriation process, which over a prolonged period can precipitate political unrest due to changed demographic pattern of the population. This perception of the host state only incentivises the biased protection of refugees and asylum seekers by restricting them to camps. In doing so it invokes unique exceptionality for the refugees inhabiting the perennially exceptional space of refugee camps. Drawing on Malkki’s (1995) observation and based on the empirical cases of Chakma refugees and Sri Lankan Tamil refugees in India, Chowdhory (2018: 35) asserts that the camp refugees perceive a shopping street is created and all relations are conditioned by formulated rules such as the code of conduct/rules that a passenger in the airport has to adhere to. (see Augé 1995: 102–11 Non-Places as accessed from https://core.ac.uk/download/pdf/43032477.pdf).

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themselves as ‘de-territorialized people with deep associations with the physical location of campsite’ and ‘seek to re-territorialize in exile in camp’. Then the universality of refugee camps being a ‘non place’ can be contested by the refugee camps in South Asia. This notion of camp being a ‘non-place’ characterised by absence of history, relations or identity, is contested by the camp inmates in South Asia through a sense of belonging stemming from their shared ethnic/cultural/linguistic affinity with the host population. Schoch (2008) in his study of Afghan refugees opined that the camps in Afghanistan in 1980s were referred to as ‘refugee villages’ so as to prevent the military implication associated with camp where as Ramesh (2009) in his work mentions a similar usage of the term ‘welfare villages’ for the camps that sheltered internally displaced persons in Sri Lanka.17 This rightly denotes Janmyr and Knudsen’s (2016) emphasis that notion of refugee camp is a politically inclined concept and hence should be considered as ‘fluid, culturally, temporally and spatially’. At the same time, Agamben’s notion of refugee camp as the site of exception where ‘bare life’ is manoeuvred neglects the presence of multiple agencies within that state of exception (Martin 2015; Ramadan 2013) and underplays the possibility and potential of refugee subjects to contest their ‘bare life’ existence in camps (Gregory 2006; Butler and Spivak 2007). They have not just been humanitarian spaces that offer care and compassion to the refugees, or ‘spaces of control’ that systematically institutionalise the segregation and separation of ‘others’ from the host population or yet again mere ‘spaces of destitution’ that perceive the inhabiting population as victims devoid of agency (Herz 2008). This is furthered in Janmyr & Knudsen’s (2016) assertion that refugee camps are not inexorable responses to the predicament of forced migration, rather spaces of confinement that unjustly validate the calculated detention of refugees thereby abrogating their rights in the so-called humanitarian spaces. Refugees neither have many functional prospects in the country of asylum nor many chances to be incorporated to the larger society there. Essentially, they are discarded to the ‘dumping site’ of camp from which ‘there is no return and no road forward’ (ibid.). It is this state of suspended animation that refugees in camps undergo that Agier (2002: 318) refers to as ‘frozen transience’ where temporary transforms to permanent. The evolving socio-political 17  This mentioning of refugee villages, welfare villages and protected villages were made in the chapter Hybrid Spaces by Maja Janmyr and Are J. Knudsen.

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dynamics in the such ambiguous permanence of refugee camps validates  Janmyr & Knudsen’s (2016) postulation that the hybrid space of camp that are ‘transitional zones of emplacement’ has expanded and transmuted into camp-scapes, urban slums or hyper ghettoes by transcending the spatial and temporal borders of the camp.The camps in South Asia have become structural confinements that epitomize “politics of violence and suffering”  where  “migrant illegality” is conflated to the treatment of “unwanted” rightless groups (Punathil, 2021: 200). The constitution of massive detention camps in Assam for housing those recently excluded from National Registry of Citizens (NRC)18 and even the recent conflation of a redundant sediment island called Bhashan Char19 with recently transported Rohingya refugees—with a massive camp with no tangible fences, yet no escape—all of these indicate the commonality of the need to separate and segregate the ‘other’ who has no claim on the utopia of homogeneous nation.

Conclusion While discussing the discourse on forced migration, it is impossible to overlook the centrality of refugee camps as spatial sites that shelter the undesirable. This is even more pertinent in the context of South Asia, where the shared post-colonial history of the countries has conjured a distinct socio-cultural milieu in which the forced migration needs to be analysed. Causative analysis of forced migration in South Asia (among other factors such as natural disasters, climate change, development induced) significantly showcases the negative impacts of post-colonial state-building that attempts to carve homogenous populations by relegating different cultural/ethnic/religious minorities to the margins of the state forcing them to migrate. Despite not being a part of 1951 refugee 18  Apart from the existing six detention camps, the state of Assam is building more massive camps each with a capacity of 30,000 people at places like Goalpara in order to shelter those individuals who are excluded from NRC and who would effectively become ‘non-citizens’ of the country and stateless. See https://www.businesstoday.in/current/economy-politics/ assam-nr c-final-list-out-what-will-happen-to-the-19-lakh-excluded-people/ story/376476.html 19  Bangladesh state authorities transported 1642 Rohingya refugees from Chittagong port to Bhashan Char, an isolated island which was once perpetually submerged in monsoons. See https://www.business-standard.com/article/international/bangladesh-starts-rohingya-refugee-relocation-sends-1-500-to-remote-island-120120400257_1.html

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convention or not having a concerted regional framework for refugee protection, countries in the region like India let the vulnerable forced migrants enter their territory. This tacit consent for admission and basic protection offered to the refugees on entering the borders is based on the performative practices of hospitality grounded on the principle of humanitarianism (Chowdhory et al. 2019). Historiography in the first section helps to contextualise the colonial practice of segregating and demarcating vulnerable individuals as ‘other’ and providing them protection in temporary structures. Evolving from the concept of containment as mentioned in historiography, refugee camps in South Asia, specifically the ‘partition refugee camps’, had become sites of short-term emergency aid and assistance centres which addressed the forced migration in the aftermath of partition. The nature of protection offered through refugee camps to various groups of people have varied in both approach and impact since then owing to the vested political priorities of the countries in South Asia. Reflecting on the observations made in earlier sections, it should be reiterated that the camps in South Asia are not merely sites of humanitarian protection; spaces that assert control by methodically establishing patterns of segregation or zones of destitution that identify the occupying populace as victims lacking agency. The camps in South Asia exhibit a situation of ‘exception’ within the space of exception that camps are generally tethered to. The fuzzy cultural boundaries that were not analogous to the borders established by the modern nation-states of South Asia occasioned the emergence of a common sense of belonging among the people. In the absence of a legal framework for refugee protection, the ‘exceptionality’ of refugee camps in South Asia is constituted by the sense of belonging that the refugees develop towards their host state and society. These camps by virtue of their attributes of shared ethnicity/culture/language/religion of inmates with the host society contest the prevalent analogies of camps as ‘nonplaces’. They are hence indicative of the ‘heterotopias’ that in turn reflect the utopia of the homogenous society that the nation-state created or desired to create through the post-colonial state-building in South Asia. The permanent exclusion of refugees in camps serve as effective instruments for post-colonial nation-state to enforce a ‘segregated protection’ that prevents the refugees from being integrated to the host society. The lack of sustainable political solutions and concerted refugee protection framework precludes successful repatriation as a viable option for these refugees, condemning them to a perpetually extended exile in the camps. As opined by Agier, it is necessary to acknowledge camps to be occupying

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‘centrality of margins’ in the context of forced migration generally and specifically in South Asia. The exceptionality of a sense of belonging among the South Asian camp refugees cannot be overlooked because of the density of the blanket space of exception that camps are usually type casted to.

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CHAPTER 5

Gender, Dispossession, and Ethics of Witnessing: Method as Intervention Nergis Canefe

Introduction This chapter provides a critical discussion on the ethics of witnessing as a form of responsibility in relation to doing scholarly work in the area of gender and dispossession. Gender-specific approaches to forced migration have long provided critical interventions in terms of conceptualization of space, subjectivities, and units of analysis in the field of forced migration studies.1 My current retracing of the core concerns of feminist approaches to displacement and dispossession stems from the conviction that forced migration studies is to be more aggressively engaged with not just the unequal geographies of mobility and displacement, but also with the socially embedded and politically potent processes of gendered dispossession.2 In this quest, gendered analysis situated in the Global 1  Silvey, Rachel. “Borders, embodiment, and mobility: Feminist migration studies in geography.” A companion to feminist geography (2005): 138–149. 2  As a very good example of how to redefine disposession as a gendered process, see Caitlin Ryan, “Gendering Palestinian dispossession: Evaluating land loss in the West Bank.” Antipode 49, no. 2 (2017): 477–498. Ryan aptly argues that in the context of Palestinian

N. Canefe (*) York University, Toronto, Ontario, Canada © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2022 N. Chowdhory, P. Banerjee (eds.), Gender, Identity and Migration in India, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-16-5598-2_5

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South lends a particularly sharp tool for developing an accurate understanding of both the structural causes and the consequences of forced movement of populations. No doubt approaches including critical ethnography, radical ethics of care, action research, and methods of relational comparison provide tools for reconfiguring forced migration studies to challenge the imperial imprint on the field.3 Of this list, radical ethics of care is of particular importance for the discussion presented here. Since the publication of Carol Gilligan’s In a Different Voice back in the 1990s, feminist scholars engaged with moral theory, philosophy, and political and legal theory have been pushing for a more inclusive and gender-specific approach to social injustice.4 There is thus a long history of rendering ethics of care centrally relevant to debates in political philosophy. Simultaneously, there has been criticism about feminist understandings of the ethics of care for it being too dependent on gender differences, for being particularistic or even essentialist. Still, feminist ethics of care provides us with a grounded approach to moral and political problems at large as it focuses on structural reasons for social injustice and proposes the idea of a relational self. In this chapter, I would like to further this debate in the direction of ­redefining ‘witnessing’ as a profound form of ethical engagement in forced migration studies and thus embodying a marked form of responsibility resting on the shoulders of the researcher/scholar/student.

territorial dispossession, the inadequate attention paid to how this process is heavily gendered leads to a failure of fully understanding its legitimizing discourses and practices. Specifically, gender-blind discussions on territorial dispossession entirely overlooks the power relations at play as well as the differential and societal impacts of these waves of dispossession. I use a similar lens for discussing the essentially gendered nature of displacement in the South Asian context. On this issue, see Vandana Desai, “Urban widows: living and negotiating gendered dispossession in speculative slum housing markets in Mumbai.” Gender, Place & Culture (2020): 1–21; Clara Mi Young Park, “‘Our lands are our lives’: gendered experiences of resistance to land grabbing in rural Cambodia.” Feminist Economics 25, no. 4 (2019): 21–44, and, Gillian Hart, “Denaturalizing dispossession: Critical ethnography in the age of resurgent imperialism.” Antipode 38, no. 5 (2006): 977–1004. 3  See the work of Normas Geras, Discourses of extremity: radical ethics and post-marxist extravagances. Verso, 1990, as well as the more recent take on radical ethics of care as exemplified by Kathleen Skott-Myhre et al. “Towards a radical ethics of care.” Journal of Child and Youth Care Work 22 (2009): 228–242. 4  Carol Gilligan, In a different voice: Psychological theory and women’s development. Harvard University Press, 1993.

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Critical Scholarship as Praxis The power-laden processes of constitution of subjects of displacement and dispossession require more than special techniques or approaches developed by forced migration studies scholars to highlight the significance of gendered forms of dispossession. Forced migration cannot be isolated from the larger context of societal segregation and denigration of women, and the root causes of displacement and dispossession are essential for our understanding of forced migration flows and their implications.5 It is true that issues of gender-related persecution and violence against women have been put onto the international agenda for the last three decades, both thanks to lobbying by feminist NGOs and transnational networks emanating from the Global South. However, what remains as a problem for the field of forced migration is the kinds of questions we use as agenda-setting and their potential translation for on-the-ground politics of justice as well as policy-making measures. The protection of women who are victims of gender-related persecution is only a very small part of the larger problem of gender-specific forms of violence, exclusion, and dispossession. Motivations and plans such as providing gender sensitivity training through various offices and for the representatives of a large organization such as the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), and even measures such as identifying ‘refugee women’ as priority groups in terms of determination of vulnerabilities are no doubt commendable. And yet, they do not address the larger context of why this has to be the case and what are the long-term implications of these phenomena. In this regard, the ways in which the concept of gender has been adopted within the UNHCR or similar bodies at the national scale could be argued to have mainstreamed gender within refugee protection activities. The extent to which this kind of mainstreaming led to the freezing of gendered violence leading to and occurring during dispossession as a special category of ‘vulnerability’ is of major concern. 5  On the issue of gendering forced migration, see inter alia, Doreen Marie Indra, ed. Engendering forced migration: Theory and practice. Vol. 5. Berghahn Books, 1999, Eleonore Kofman, “Gendered global migrations.” International Feminist Journal of Politics 6, no. 4 (2004): 643–665, Floya Anthias, “Metaphors of home: gendering new migrations to southern Europe.” Gender and migration in Southern Europe: Women on the move (2000): 15–47, Susan Martin, S. F. (2004). Refugee women. Lexington books, and, Jane Freedman, Zeynep Kivilcim, and Nurcan Özgür Baklacıoğlu, eds. A gendered approach to the Syrian refugee crisis. Taylor & Francis, 2017.

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This is the larger disciplinary and global political context within which I will introduce the concept of ethics of witnessing as a form of responsibility, and its practice as a method which then amounts to the kinds of interventions amounting to undertaking critical scholarly work.6 Specifically, this chapter is written with the belief that an in-depth knowledge of consequential aspects of research practices could lead to a deeper and more engaged understanding of how to address societal and global inequalities among students of forced migration. Such an approach to scholarly research requires us to rethink the practice of academic work in tandem with the needs of the community and the society at large, and the complex web of relationships between the two. As such, undertaking progressive feminist scholarship in the area of forced migration studies means one takes a deliberate stance against reigning patterns marking the existing social and political order as well as against systemic violence that serves to reinforce established practices of dominance at the expense of the needs of society and in particular, vulnerable groups and individuals. Since my aim here is to explore the variety of ways in which feminist forced migration scholarship could bring about opportunities for engaged scholarship hand in hand with analyses of displacement and dispossession, it is essential that we regard critical scholarship as a form of praxis.7 The Marxian notion of praxis refers to the relationship between theory and practice and dictates a dialectical understanding of social and historical change. Presenting a perspective towards scholarship based on the will to transcend the theory-practice dichotomy is thus the first step towards establishing a methodology for praxis-oriented knowledge production. This is the specific context within which I explore ethics of witnessing as a method that would allow students of forced migration studies to directly 6  I am indebted to Obiora Okafor and his analysis of TWAIL (Third World Approaches to International Law) as both theory and method in my formulation of ethics of witnessing as both method and intervention. See Obiora Chinedu Okafor, “Critical Third World approaches to international law (TWAIL): theory, methodology, or both?.” International Community Law Review 10, no. 4 (2008): 371–378. 7  For a directly applicable theoretization of critical scholarship as praxis in the area of race theory, see Chandra L. Ford and Collins O. Airhihenbuwa. “Critical race theory, race equity, and public health: toward antiracism praxis.” American journal of public health 100, no. S1 (2010): S30–S35. The authors argue that critical race theory provides fertile grounds for developing a transdisciplinary methodology that grounds scholarly analysis in a transformative vision of social injustice. I make a similar argument in the context of feminist work on forced migration emanating from the Global South though the methodology I propose is a direct engagement with ethics of witnessing.

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address social and political realities concerning the intersection of class, political subjectivity, and gender. Subjects such as excluded and vulnerable groups seeking representation in front of the state and its bureaucracies, groups effected by constitutional or special decree measures that adversely affect their rights and freedoms, including freedom of assembly, freedom of movement, the right to life, freedom from detention, the right to environment, right to justice, and other such basic rights claims each have a gendered dimension. Through engagement with this new kind of praxis-­ oriented scholarship, and with the patent addition of feminist analysis as an essential part of this approach, students of forced migration studies are invited to practice taking ownership of their insights, problem assessment, and problem-solving skills as they relate to urgent social and political issues on the ground. If achieved, emergent forms of scholarship could be systemically contextualized in terms of increased awareness of the socio-­ economic and socio-political milieu within which the scholar/researcher operates.8

From Feminization of Migration to Gendered Analysis of Mass Human Mobility Both internal and international forced migration movements are increasingly ‘feminized’ due to the circumstances within which such flows generally occur: war, famine, crisis, genocidal violence, ethnic cleansing, environmental disasters, ongoing civil conflicts, et cetera.9 For the c­ hildren and elderly to leave their habitual residences, women have to move as the primary caretakers of the young and the old, and, as the undertakers of social reproduction and survival of households.

8  According to Charles Kurzman and Lynn Owens (2002), there are at least three broad trends that define the role of the scholar/intellectual in the society: the Dreyfusards and “new class” theorists, including Pierre Bourdieu, treat scholars/intellectuals as potentially a class-in-themselves; Antonio Gramsci, Michel Foucault, and in general theorists of “authenticity” treat scholars/intellectuals as representatives of their group of origin and thus class-­ bound; finally Karl Mannheim, Edward Shils, and Randall Collins treat intellectuals as relatively classless and able to transcend their group of origin to pursue their own ideals as well as articulate new ideals for the society at large. In this work, I take side with the last of these three categorizations. 9  Katz, C. (2001) “On the grounds of globalization: a topography for feminist political engagement.” Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society, 26(4), 1213–34.

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The political ontology of such existential threats could best be unpacked by examining the modulating effects of ‘affect’ in the aftermath of war, crisis, turmoil, upheaval, and subsequent dispossession.10 Decoding the forms of legal and societal reception, attributed meanings, imposition of social hierarchies, and regulation of these gendered waves of mass mobility requires a closer look at the actual experiences of women who are on the move, or who survived after displacement and continue to live through the labyrinths of dispossession. Gendered politics of production of both scale and space in terms of borders, national identities, membership categories, and application of national and international law, is not only laden with power.11 There are social and political vested interests for these relationships to be reproduced and presumed as natural, and for meanings associated with gendered displacement to be kept dormant and static.12 Furthermore, dispossession as a formal or informal practice is founded upon conceptions of citizenship that exclude specific categories, such as minorities, immigrants, and refugees, while maintaining social and cultural boundaries between ethno-religious groups, a practice which in turn makes exploitation and marginalization possible.13 If so, in addition to ‘gendering’ the nation and the state, we must actively engage with a ‘gendered’ understanding of forced migration and include ‘household’ and ‘reproduction’ as essential conceptual tools for understanding en masse population movements marked with gendered

10  See Melissa Gregg, Gregory J. Seigworth, and Sara Ahmed, eds. The affect theory reader. Duke University Press, 2010. 11  Hyndman, J. (2004) “Mind the gap: bridging feminist and political geography through geopolitics.” Political Geography, 23(3), 241–366. In her work, Jennifer Hyndman has insistently argued that although refugee studies includes gender analyses, scholarship in the field traditionally neglected the deployment of a feminist framework and thus generally lacked the ability to trace the power relations that shape politics of forced migration. She puts special emphasis on the concept of ‘refugee transnationalism’, which she identifies as a form of globalization allowing for a powerful intersection of social and political domains. This latter issue, though very important, does not fall under the purview of the present analysis. Also see Hyndman, J. “Introduction: the feminist politics of refugee migration.” Gender, Place & Culture 17, no. 4 (2010): 453–459. 12  Massey, D. (1999) Power-geometries and the politics of space-time, Hettner-Lecture. Heidelberg: Department of Geography, University of Heidelberg. 13  Staeheli, L. (1999) Globalization and the scales of citizenship. Geography Research Forum, 19, 60–77.

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forms of difference.14 Specifically, where the household begins and ends cannot be kept static, subservient to the national phantasy of a settled and native labor force and the family as a stable unit identifiable with a set geographical location and networks suitable for policy and planning. Similarly, household membership cannot be reduced to limited ‘domestic space’ and presumed gender roles. The cross-cutting of race, gender, class, ethnicity, religion, age, nationality, legal-status, and political recognition reveals the existence of a myriad of categories of difference that cannot be subsumed under the heading of place-based belonging and formal exclusion/inclusion vis-à-vis national or international law. In this regard, understanding the reproduction of boundaries through forced migration is a process that owes much to the way gendered interventions to the socio-political order of things are played out. Rejecting socio-spatial fixities and challenging received notions of membership lead to carving out spaces of survival despite the surrounding denial of the conditions that would normally lead to the annihilation of physical, social, and political life.

Dialectics of Positionality and Scholarship In a historically interconnected world where social and economic developments have strong global dimensions, strengthening our engagement with critical issues about the society at large and, with the communities from which we have come, we will be in a better position to honor our profession, our rights, our own autonomy and agency as scholars, researchers, public intellectuals, and advocates.15 Through substantively grounded research practices, we showcase that it is possible to think outside imposed frames of reference. By training our students with that ethos, we would encourage the development of the skills and insight to create alternative visions for social justice, social transformation, rights protection, and enactment of political agency. We 14  Lawson, V. (1998) Hierarchical households and gendered migration: a research agenda. Progress in Human Geography, 22(1), 32–53. 15  On the issue of public intellectuals, see Richard Zinman, Jerry Weinberger, and Arthur M. Melzer, eds. The public intellectual: between philosophy and politics. Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 2004, Richard Posner, Public intellectuals. Harvard University Press, 2009, Helen Small, ed. The public intellectual. John Wiley & Sons, 2008, David L. Swartz, David “From critical sociology to public intellectual: Pierre Bourdieu and politics.” Theory and Society 32, no. 5–6 (2003): 791–823.

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cannot be blind to the fact that there are significant and deep-rooted conflicts in the society at large that shape the research-based relationships we establish. The surrounding context for scholarly work indeed creates conditions whereby academic engagement often becomes a very complicated matter. There are situations whereby we seek to balance out not only our personal ethical obligations, but also our political obligations to a cause. Here, we need to further explore the notion of a scholar’s ethical responsibility. Notwithstanding its promotion of admirable principles and goals, the academic model often proves inconsistent with basic legal and ethical obligations of scholars to the society. This is particularly true when there are successive waves of regime change or ongoing political turmoil and the scholars are in general ‘at risk’ in terms of their ability to challenge the status quo. The idea presented here is not to advocate or redefine academic duties in terms of being a fiduciary, an agent, or as a zealous advocate, but to remind ourselves that scholarship faces the substantial burden of identifying an overriding spirit of, or underlying conflicts within, a given social, cultural, and political situation with courage, rather than merely being a handmaiden to the status quo. In this context, we must recognize not just the aspirational value but also the practical significance of scholarly research and knowledge production. If so, we must train ourselves and our students in such a way that engaged scholarship is not seen as an anomaly but as a normative choice, and a doable one. Indeed, in many cases, the scholar has more autonomy and responsibility to identify and delineate the underlying purpose of an existing law, practice, or systemic policy and identify its overriding function. In this sense, the kind of ethics we must strive to bring to the attention of our students is, although related, above and beyond the standard professional rules of conduct while conducting research with ‘vulnerable groups’ and in the context of human suffering.16 In particular, the ethics of witnessing I envisage here as a key component of engaged scholarship is about being aware of the social, economic, and political milieu within which research takes place, with a particular emphasis on structural causes of human suffering. 16  For the most succinct formulaic statement of this approach, see Christina Clark-Kazak, “Ethical considerations: Research with people in situations of forced migration.” Refuge: Canada’s Journal on Refugees/Refuge: revue canadienne sur les réfugiés 33, no. 2 (2017): 11–17.

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Witnessing as Responsibility During the twentieth century, witnessing outgrew its original affiliations with legal evidence and became a social vocation in its own right. On the one hand, there is the ethical redefinition of witnessing advanced by social theorists such as Jean-François Lyotard, Shoshana Felman, and Giorgio Agamben.17 Here, I propose that we couple what characterizes witnessing and testimony with their pedagogical possibilities.18 In this regard, one must build a framework for contextualizing central aspects of the debate on witnessing as a political act. There is a very potent connection to the wound and injustice witnessed and the history of the socio-political order within which we do the act of witnessing. The pedagogical possibilities I will highlight in this context are developed in relation to Agamben’s work on potentiality as well as the radical ethics of care as it is applied to scholarship I introduced in the opening paragraphs of this chapter.19 Witnessing emerged as a crucial practice of agency and engagement that binds individual autonomy to institutional platforms, reflective procedures, and socio-political or legal change. In the context of academia and scholarship, the researcher as a witness is an entirely different tract that adds new dimensions to the debate on witnessing as a responsibility. Specifically in Lyotard’s work, the idea of the ‘affect-phrase’ as outlined in essays collected in his Misère de la philosophie is of great importance. An important part of Lyotard’s later philosophy, while the ‘silent phrase’ indicates the limits of representation, and testifies to the existence of something unpresentable, the affect-phrase contextualizes the testimony in relation to the act of witnessing. Here the question is, if the Holocaust, or any other mass injustice, is construed as unpresentable, how is it possible to bear witness to it? But even more crucial for us as we deal with the 17  For an overall view of this debate, see Jean-Philippe Deranty, “Witnessing the inhuman: Agamben or Merleau-Ponty.” South Atlantic Quarterly 107, no. 1 (2008): 165–186. Of particular significance for the Holocaust Studies literature on the issue of the impossible witness is Shoshana Felman and Dori Laub. Testimony: Crises of witnessing in literature, psychoanalysis, and history. Taylor & Francis, 1992. Also see Jean-Francois Lyotard, The Lyotard reader and guide. Columbia University Press, 2006. 18  See Kelly Oliver, Witnessing: beyond recognition. U of Minnesota Press, 2001 as well as her Oliver, Kelly. The colonization of psychic space: A psychoanalytic social theory of oppression. U of Minnesota Press, 2004. Also see Felman, Shoshana, and Dori Laub. Testimony: Crises of witnessing in literature, psychoanalysis, and history. Taylor & Francis, 1992. 19  See Giorgio Agamben, Potentialities: Collected Essays in Philosophy. Stanford University Press, 1999.

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mainstreaming of gendered forms of violence and dispossession, what distinguishes one unpresentable, traumatic historical event, from another and renders one particular cluster open to representation through witnessing while negating such a possibility for others? The possibility of testifying to something specific when the question of unpresentability may emerge at the point of contextualizing its specificity and in my view, that is what critical feminist scholarship provides us with in terms of understanding the relationship between gender, social and political violence, and dispossession. In other words, we need to capitalize the ‘nonspecificity’ or the generic nature of what appears as the ‘unrepresentable’ in terms of the egregious nature of the acts marking the experiences we try to witness during, or in the aftermath of, such events. Here, I reiterate Lyotard’s idea of the affect-phrase as the question of affect as it relates to the unpresentability of gendered violence and dispossession. Indeed, seeking justice requires resistance to both representation and articulation of the acts of violence that mark historical construction of specific subjectivities via violation, erasure, and expulsion. Thus, the separation of the academic and the ethical needs to be not only questions but should be undone while the twin demands of each are negotiated in an altogether different context. Specifically, I would argue that at the graduate level of education, capitalizing the scholar’s responsibility as a witness must aim at tackling the conundrums of scholarly research, maximizing its potential and benefits for institutional and social change, and tracing and teaching its most adequate and resonant forms. The societal function of engaged scholarship should be included in graduate education. In order to devise a remedy to the lack of such discussions, we must combine philosophical argument, methodological analysis, and cases drawn from actual scholarly practice. Overall, if we are to defend a theory of ethics that is focused on the scholar’s role in enhancing human dignity and rights against all odds, we must start with providing a road map for our students. The role of scholars and academic work in current political and social systems has been construed much too narrowly. Graduate education squarely reflects this limited focus. A more interactive view of graduate training is not only possible but indeed highly desirable. This alternative view is characterized by knowledge mobilization (invoking, challenging, and improving societal norms) as a form of legitimate activity by which the scholar/researcher uses her public authority to ask questions as well as to seek and devise answers. This form of public power, although contingent, is widely overlooked.

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Consideration of the factors that influence knowledge mobilization is important for our understanding of who uses the law and for what ends, but also for deciphering implications of existing public policy frames and political institutions. The scholar/researcher could act as a witness to the demands for social and legal change coming from the society at large and particularly from the margins, and of course in ‘borderlands’, rather than as a mediator between the state and the citizenry for system maintenance and social control. However, the decision to participate in this kind of process depends in large part upon one’s sense of duty to the public and one’s realization of a unique kind of responsibility as a scholar. In the remainder of this chapter, I will briefly explore potential meanings of witnessing as a scholar and its importance to transformative practices, especially in times of civil strife, political upheaval, and regime change. My aim is to concentrate on the creation of pedagogical conditions necessary for students of forced migration to become critical witnesses to violence, systemic rights violations, suspension of civil legal order, political and personal trauma and society-wide oppression and from a gender-specific vantage point. There are important ethical and political possibilities that emerge through such efforts. These in turn could extend our thinking about the affective possibilities of witnessing as a methodological component in research and scholarship. In order to resurrect the question of what we mean by social and historical justice in the context of forced migration and dispossession, we must re-imagine rather than simply critique contemporary notions of the rule of law, rights, access to justice and legal standing, and equality. We must be able to offer a progressive approach that could potentially boost our capacities for caring, and an idea of equality that captures the kind of vision based on the recognition of shared humanity and human dignity of non-citizens, alien subjects and stateless populations. Traditional takes on academia view the relevance and scholarship of ethics in this larger sense as prosaic, although it is an issue of profound social and political significance, and will impact our professional and personal lives as well as the future of the societies within which we produce and disseminate knowledge. Deficient education on the issue of ethics of witnessing as responsibility has serious consequences for all parties involved in cases of harm to the public and public institutions’, including universities’, tendency to protect the status quo. The cultural, political, and social challenges faced by vulnerable individuals, groups, classes, and communities in the society must inform the scholarship and pedagogy of forced

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migration research in a very unmediated fashion due to the very subject matter falling under the purview of this area of expertise. Furthermore, there must be a very direct acknowledgement of the gendered nature of these systemic practices of exclusion, denunciation, decimation, and annihilation of human lives. The fundamental understanding of the ways in which identity, gender, and class impact legal practices, in part by impeding access to remedies, must also be an essential part of training students of forced migration. Weaving themes of violence, gender, identity, and class together, we can offer an expansive take on socio-economic and socio-cultural awareness of those who will ‘go into the field.’ In this changed context, academic education becomes a platform upon which inequalities and injustices are discussed openly rather than presumed to be falling outside the capabilities of the scholar to engage with. For teaching and working with narratives of traumatic events and cases of political or socio-economic violence on a curricular basis, it is important to explore how both educators and students could embrace a new understanding of responsibility that encourages an alternative affective, ethical, and political approach to injustice. Such a response would move beyond reactive responses to trauma and would consider alternative meanings of narratives about human suffering, thus rendering the classroom as a venue for debate, critical understanding as well as affect-based engagement.20 Both fear and terror are the kinds of emotion that are deeply affective. Sociality borrows its potency from inter-relationality. In this specific context of method as intervention, affect acts as an amplifier and yet it is also the most fragile of all forms of relating. Discussions and theories on the politics of affect constitute a particular approach to gendered political violence that is to replace the generally more preferred terminology that is used to depict war, displacement, and dispossession. Although both drives and affects are influential in individual choices, affect has a nuanced social and cultural history without which it is not possible to understand the true nature of power relations in society. Politics of affect allow us to tell and to hear specific stories and these stories localize, but also humanize, the experiences of ‘subjects of scholarly research’ in times of upheaval and mass

20  See Michalinos Zembylas, Teaching with emotion: A postmodern enactment. IAP, 2006 as well as Michalinos Zembylas, “Witnessing in the classroom: The ethics and politics of affect.” Educational Theory 56, no. 3 (2006): 305–324.

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suffering rather than allowing for observation from a safe and critical distance. Institutional accountability, acknowledging vulnerability, and ethics of witnessing put to use in the context of death, disappearance, displacement, and dispossession removes the counting of the dead and disappeared bodies away from the kind of erudite voyeurism with no responsibility. Lack of cognizance of victimhood as a result of which accountability is suspended means no dignity for those who are ‘observed’ while living in a limbo, under lockdown, during periods of normalization of exceptionality and that very condition renders law, justice, and responsibility null and void for those who are the chosen subjects of academic interrogation. In contradistinction, the figure of the migrant/refugee/stateless subject re-emerges as a new site for reconceptualizing the border, redefining the threshold for subjectivity, and a substantive challenge to the categories of heterogeneity and liminality within the national space if we engage with dispossession as an engaged party. In this latter case, the migrant/refugee/stateless subject does not manifest the absence of citizenship, and reconstitutes agency beyond the universal referent of the citizen. While working with displacement and dispossession, the act of abandonment of the ‘subjects of our interrogation’ has no benevolence. The refusal to apply individual, institutional or political responsibility and accountability could take many forms: giving up responsibility by not collecting data; abandonment of women in a negotiated legal framework of non-­ recognition; women abandoned in transnational spaces; ignoring methodological challenges by not making adjustments to received conceptual wisdom; refusing to name experienced hierarchies of power; avoiding parallel and ‘grey’ documentation of experiences of abandonment; refusing to engage with testimonies of daily torment; chronicling what has happened but not sharing these documents with the people who are experiencing the pain or are witnessing it; isolation/disassociation/lack of communication with the subjects of our interrogations…Such practices lead to the larger questions concerning academic feminist praxis in the context of forced migration. Here, we must once again turn our attention to the very context of stigmatization concerning the bodies of the migrants. These bodies are considered risky bodies; they are enumerated as aggregation of bodies; they are considered to have no power of negotiation with the state; they become the sacrificial lambs of the web of relations that link mobility and motility (capability of movement). They become hyper-visible while

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negotiating citizenship and rights, they are blamed for the initiation of mobility, they are categorically conceived as masses folding in and folding out of public spaces rather than individuals, families, or communities. Against this background, migrant women’s bodies become a site that is only legible through acts of the state, migrant women’s bodies are considered as aggregate data, and the family or the household as the base unit of social reproduction disappears. That is a direct causality of gender-neutralizing forced migration research. Along with it comes blurred notions of erasure of public health and mobility connection, consideration of care as a secondary or tertiary matter, and thus exclusion of the life stories of children and elderly from forced migration matrices. Overall, forced migration takes place within a paradigm that creates non-grievable bodies, whereby seeking dignity is made into an act that is categorically questionable, witnesses of death and destruction have no stand to speak, the corpses are merely numbers. Conceptualization and research of forced migration primarily as a gender-neutral and often as a male process further eradicates even the most basic understanding of real vulnerabilities of migrant communities. Especially in the context of multiple partitions and resultant multiple borders, unconditional erasure of rights leads to the disappearance of the forced migrant as a political subject, and gender-neutral depictions of migration further removes the experiences of migrant lives from the registers of humanity.

Conclusion: Method as Intervention In this chapter, the main methodological intervention I propose has been to provide opportunities for students of forced migration in the post-­ colonial contexts to use a gender-specific lens in their work but with a direct engagement with social and political responsibility concerning ethics of witnessing. This, I argued, would allow the scholar/researcher to decipher the firsthand experiences and testimonies about discrimination, violence, or atrocities carried out against individuals, groups, and communities and treat their unit of analysis no longer as the ‘individual migrant’ who is presumably gender-neutral. The intended effect of directing scholars to hear, think about, collect, and examine gendered life stories, case documents, reports, expert witness accounts, interviews, and other forms of records is to allow us to truly bear witness to societal traumas and injuries that have not found direct address in dominant socio-­ legal approaches to mass movement of communities.

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Bearing witness to gendered violence, injustice, and trauma that has not found address or remedy or at times have been further perpetuated by existing processes should start with reconsidering the most basic, core principles of justice and rights. Since this often proves to be a difficult exercise in divided societies or societies affected by ongoing civil strife and tenuous partition, it is of utmost importance to constitute communities of learning and trust. This pedagogical approach could be set in motion by asking direct questions about narratives of injustice that cannot [yet] be addressed within the current social order. Such questions are meant to elicit thoughts that at least some sectors of the society at large are eager to talk about and thus creating counter publics, as well as bringing to light issues not easily acknowledged or expressed. In this way, the research community moves beyond a sense of ‘what could we do, nothing more than research and document’ and towards a belief system in which the utterance of ‘there must be and are other ways’ is embraced. By using the cases at hand as a springboard to think about social and historical justice in political and ethical terms is a must for scholars who work within the context of gross and systemic human suffering. Whenever such communities are created, our research practices become a site of engagement and transformation in which we perform our roles as witnesses and advocates for social justice defined in the most inclusive and often challenging of terms. If so, we must provide direct, hands-on means for our students to bear witness to historical traumas and present wrongdoings in the very context of their research projects and establish a collaborative environment of daring support.21 There is a direct relationship between witnessing as a form of responsibility and assuming agency and power to affect change. Documenting and being present is the first step towards acknowledging the shortcomings or malfunctions of a social, political, or legal system. Introducing and managing such forms of engagement in research have 21  On the issue of how to deal with historical trauma in an education setting, see Roger Simon, Sharon Rosenberg, and Claudia Eppert, eds. Beyond hope and despair: Pedagogy and the representation of historical trauma. Totowa, NJ: Rowman & Littlefield (2000), Ann C. Berlak, “Confrontation and pedagogy: Cultural secrets, trauma, and emotion in antioppressive pedagogies.” Counterpoints (2004): 123–144, Valerie Walkerdine, “Progressive pedagogy and political struggle.” Screen 27.5 (1986): 54–61, and, Robin L.  West, “Re-imagining justice: Progressive interpretations of formal equality, rights, and the rule of law.” RE-IMAGINING JUSTICE: PROGRESSIVE INTERPRETATIONS OF FORMAL EQUALITY, RIGHTS, AND THE RULE OF LAW, Aldershot, UK/Burlington, VT: Ashgate/Dartmouth (2003): 12–074.

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ethical, pedagogical, and emotional implications for our students who are asked to bear witness to individual and societal injustices that is yet to find address. Thinking about our responsibility as scholars and researchers to act beyond expert witnesses also requires progressive pedagogies based on discussions on and practices of witnessing, potentially leading to transformative political and legal practices. This is particularly so in the context of introduction of gender-specific categories of analysis to the discussion of en masse movement of populations. In this context, providing an alternative repertoire of practices that address the most troubling issues in the society related to gendered violence is of utmost importance. Gender-specific lenses of analysis allow us to decipher how hierarchical social and political identities are shaped and how difference and differential access to justice gets calcified through normalization and naturalization of exclusion. What is suggested here is in tandem with the main tenets of what has come to be known as ‘action research’, a transformative approach which understanding of complex social situations has been sought in order to improve the quality of life of the affected populations. The importance of this kind of engagement with research is not merely to instill an ethics of witnessing in order to raise awareness about difference and suffering in society. Rather, the aim is to move away from simply acknowledging injustice and towards the consideration of possibilities of substantive changes that could emerge from the very act of witnessing as scholars and researchers. Witnessing is an act that connects us, and obligates us, to each other. It is not a passive presence but an active engagement with the society at large that engulfs the researcher/ advocate. At times, when silence is the only option and where immediate recovery or remedies are not possible, witnessing buys time and sustains the hope that soon another horizon for justice would emerge. Finally, teaching about ethics of witnessing in forced migration research and with a specific emphasis on gendered forms of violence points to the importance of an ethos that understands the world less as a terrain of clashes between individual actors from which to extract simple recognition, restitution, or rights and more as a place whereby ethical sensibilities and larger societal concerns are integral to scholarship. Yet the effort to realize this potential requires that we take seriously the fact that witnessing practices often require being directly involved in difficult processes such as facing testimonies of grave injustices, death, destruction, and large-scale ills and injuries. Witnessing could provide a way of fleshing out deep-­ seated societal divides and histories of trauma. This strategy allows

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pedagogical encounters the kind of spaces that move beyond the demands for mere recognition of otherness and others’ suffering and towards doing something about it. Similarly, educating our students toward an understanding of witnessing as a responsibility would cultivate ethical sensibilities with a transformative potential for thinking about, practicing, and relating to scholarship. This approach is to be administered in order to ascertain the translation of academic and scholarly knowledge to sustainable gender-specific practices concerning both foundational and advanced research in the field of forced displacement, particularly pertaining to identification of rights violations, rights protection, and access to and equality before justice regardless of one’s citizenship status. The types of commitment and effectiveness of existing strategies concerning knowledge dissemination as mandated by this model of learning and training could be further expanded to provide active promotion of progressive and engaged scholarship by way of determining key questions to be asked. Establishing organically linked exchanges between universities and research centers and those who are ‘studied’ requires the enhancement of improved and structurally sustainable knowledge transfer and translation of expertise, particularly in the area of rights awareness. As such, ethics of witnessing as methodology could provide a pathway to increase the ability of students of forced migration to directly engage with systemic abuses and inequalities, and pursue the definition of a well-entrenched ideal of justice in the context of mass mobilities that are not conceived as gender-neutral.

CHAPTER 6

On Research, the Politics of Migrations and the Materiality of the Global: Views Out of Place Giorgio Grappi

Introduction Migration and the politics surrounding it are present and relevant in our everyday life, in any corner of the globe. Its most obvious manifestation is the physical presence of migrants, yet it involves a full range of activities, discourses and news—from our relationship with IDs and passports, the labelling of newcomers as clandestine, the almost imperceptible association of certain types of jobs with migrants, male or woman, black or white, the exhibition of police control in the streets, the revolts in detention centres, strikes and demonstrations, to the news on the sinking of boats in the Mediterranean or the death of migrant workers in the sweatshops producing for global firms–that show how migration is a materially contested

Parts of this chapter develops material previously published in Grappi (2013). G. Grappi (*) University of Bologna, Bologna, Italy e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2022 N. Chowdhory, P. Banerjee (eds.), Gender, Identity and Migration in India, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-16-5598-2_6

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terrain, a field of struggle where any type of weapon, including mainstream propaganda and the public force, is used in order to carry on the ‘border spectacle’ (De Genova 2013). The relationship between a critical commitment with the study of migration and the political engagement inside this field of struggle is thus complex and ambiguous. The views I present are out of place because I am neither a specialist on migration studies, neither a scholar on forced migration, even if both fields of research have been part of my academic and scientific path. A third element has been indeed crucial to me: the political engagement with migrants’ movements in Italy and in the transnational context, starting from the European space (https://www.coordinamentomigranti.org/, https://www.transnational-­strike.info/projects/transnational-migrantscoordination/). Almost two decades of organising, meetings and networking have been the place where my approach to a theoretical and academic study of migration has been constantly put under pressure by the political materiality of migrants’ and migration movements. The practical experience with migrants has somehow conditioned my study of migration while, at the same time, the theoretical engagement has been a laboratory to test and understand concrete challenges. Moreover, the constant effort to affirm migration and migrants’ struggle as core issues for the political initiative of social movements and, even when this effort has been successful, the difficulties of translating it into new practices and paths of mobilisation, led me to understand the presence of a sort of unrecognised ‘political epistemology’ on migration acting as a block on the capacity of social movements and radical groups to deal with migration. If on the one hand this has to do with the reticence to overcome the consignment of migration to a lateral position or a matter for specialists, on the other hand the politics of migration forces us, both as scholars and activists, to accept the challenge to change our gaze and to adopt different approaches to polical and labour struggles. The politics of migration is indeed more often a problem of proletarian politics than of definitions, as Balibar pointed out almost twenty years ago (Balibar 1997), and migrants’ problem are more often the problems of working and living in a world of extremely precarised conditions, dominated by the global operations of capital (Mezzadra and Neilson 2013b), than of solidarity, antiracist sentiments or humanitarian help. Being migrants is a very specific position, but this has to do more with the institutional, political and social conditions for the reproduction of these precarised conditions, than the mere

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description of disadvantaged groups. To address this specificity without losing its general dimension is a major task for critical thinking and social movements.

Scholars’ Activism and the Militant Research Conundrum It is essential to develop engaged and critical scholarship in order to understand, deconstruct and criticise the dominant gaze on migration, yet this is not enough to sustain a political perspective on migration, the political contestation of border regimes and the transformation of their social results. It is not only that a theoretical critique cannot substitute the need of concrete actions, it is also that scholars, even though they can conceive themselves as ‘militants’, are part of the social dynamics produced in the contested political terrain relating the movements of people and the simultaneous attempts to exploit, block, discipline and govern it. This many-­ sided dynamic generates problems that I proposed to analyse under the name of ‘militant research conundrum’ (Grappi 2013). My approach to this conundrum is organised around few, fundamental, questions: is militant research a category, or a concept, to be applied to the work of the researcher? If so, how can militancy relate with research, when one takes into account that research is a particular form of labour with specific and highly misleading traps in terms of supposed autonomy, freedom and independence? If not, how do we deal with the incisiveness of the particular outcome of research, namely communicable knowledge, discourses, concepts, interpretations? Finally, how do we posit the researcher vis-à-vis migrants and the sociopolitics of migration? As Glenda Garelli and Martina Tazzioli, who promoted a discussion on this topic at Goldsmiths, argue, the proliferation of scholarly interest in migration and the subsequent becoming an object of study of migration resulted in a double dynamic: on the one hand, the study of human mobility has been institutionalised, leading to ‘a ‘becoming of the discipline’’; on the other hand, this very same process has coincided with ‘a kind of ‘disciplining’ of migration knowledge practices’ (Garelli and Tazzioli 2013b: 245). As happened in the past with other critical field of enquire, like for example race and gender studies, their recognition and inclusion in the formal organisation of academic knowledge implies a partial subsumption of the critical potential of their findings inside the productivity

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measure of the global knowledge machine. With migration studies, this phenomenon is often directly related to the research of mobile and flexible policy patterns with the ability, if not to govern, at least to channel and manage migration movements across international borders and inside states. As now widely recognised by critical scholarship, migration and border policies are more flexible instruments, capable of being mobilised in different ways and to use different practices, than the simple control of borders. This heterogeneity of practices is able to translate in the language of technocratic governance, and thus depoliticise, even expressions and terms that have been thrown in the public debate as part of a critical effort. The same word ‘migrant’, rather than immigrant, is now widely use by mainstream media and government agencies, while concepts such as ‘freedom of movement’ constantly overlap with the financial and trade discourses. The ‘battle of words’ that accompanied the process of globalisation has nevertheless been important, especially in countries where migration has been long considered as a new and somehow temporary phenomenon, like Italy. Migration and migrants are thus both an object of study, and an epistemological question that creates tension in all scientific disciplines and public discourses; they can also be a vantage point from where criticise these same disciplines and public discourses (Mezzadra and Ricciardi 2013). The very use of the label ‘critical’ is twofold: if, on the one hand, its scope is to point to a politically engaged research, on the other hand, given the disciplinary organisation of the global academia, it is also the name of just another field of research, sometimes even more profitable than the more ‘traditional’ approaches. Following this second thread, the critic assumes the shape of an experimental and cross-disciplinary approach that not automatically is related to a real politicisation of the field. It is clear how the attempt to reverse the assumption of the public discourse— or the political debate—on migration is the by-product of a misconception of the public debate itself, taken as a sort of scientific counterpart. On the contrary, the politicisation of the disciplinary field of migration studies should face the epistemological problem that lies at his core, and escape the objectification of the migrants as subjects assuming the indeterminacy of migrants’ movements as an open question. Rejecting the hyper-­ qualification of the researcher’s own field of study means, for example, to recognise that at the core of the migrant condition lies the general question of mobility and its role in the continuous reopening of practices and discourses that impact both social movements, knowledge production and institutions. To recognise that migrants are political subjects, even if they

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don’t want to be political—neither ‘critical’—is a challenge that should haunt the so-called militant scholar well beyond the academia. Furthermore, following the expansion of neoliberal techniques of government, migration research if not politically assessed is under the constant risk to become an instrument for the political disciplining of migration itself.

Beyond the North/South Dichotomy: Knowledge and Power Going Global The production of knowledge about migration has, in many instances, a direct impact on the way migration is framed in terms of political discourse and policies. At the same time, the political discourse and the policy framework impact on the way migration is studied. The problem here is twofold: if on the one hand we are confronted with the ‘methodological Europeanism’ inside the global academia, which ‘posits Europe as the blueprint for migrations’ epistemology’ (Garelli and Tazzioli 2013b: 247), on the other hand engaged researchers themselves are positioned inside social relations which relevance overcomes the borders of the campuses and libraries. Since the academic work is by itself conceived more and more as global in scope and reach and the funding schemes that lies behind large research projects involve partners from different countries and continents, this counts both for researchers that position themselves in the older centres of knowledge production in western countries and those working elsewhere in the world. A recent discussion in the Journal of Refugee Studies has taken on this question moving from Loren B. Landau’s denouncing of the ‘tyrannies of partnership’ (Landau 2012). Landau explains how the resource unbalance between partners in international research projects often brings to some power relation in favour of northern universities. At the same time, she stresses that the policy-oriented approach of these large research networks, filtering ‘the voices heard on the global stage’, leaves to the network the double authority over research priorities and visibility. Looking for a solution, Landau fell short to a patronising view, suggesting that people responsible of these large network should put more effort in ‘building southern capacity and influence’, somehow implying the idea that the problem is how to include southern circles in the supposedly ‘relevant’ debate. She also suggests to focus more on ‘local politics, not global

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principles’ because these are ‘what typically matters most’ for migrants (Ibid.: 555, 565). These are problematic assertions. On the one hand, as Paula Banerjee observes in her response to Landau, there is no real problem of capacity empowerment of so-called southern scholars. These scholars have produced scores of analyses, studies and theoretical assumptions, without the need of any help from the outside. ‘It was therefore possible—Banerjee writes—for northern scholars to deny the presence of these theories not because we did not make them, but because they were always political and often in contention with those put forward in the policy making of the North’ (Banerjee 2012: 572). Banerjee raises the crucial point of the contested meaning of concepts such as ‘forced migration’, when she argues that the approach of northern scholars and research centres towards the south is basically politically biased, and ‘there is a larger politics involved in theory making’. These theories ‘are made so that the northern agenda of development and profit making vis-à-vis the south can continue and the concomitant forced migration of people stays within the south’. Banerjee’s line of reasoning implies the possibility to use the same concept by different actors and the possibility to politically contest the hegemonic discourse by considering ‘the discourse on forced migration’ as ‘part of a larger discourse’ on global economy and global unbalances. Moreover, the different paths of migration and the different dynamics of forced migration inside contexts that are often conflated into the definition of ‘Global South’ leads Banerjee to sustain that ‘there is no global South’ and that this ‘is considered northern vision’, where political problems are simplified and categorised inside policy terms or geopolitical areas in order to depoliticise them (ibid.: 571, 572 and Banerjee 2013). Banerjee’s location of forced migration as a  fact and as a definition inside the contested field of global economics and global politics allows us to enlarge our gaze to what has before been defined as the problem of working and living in a world of extremely precarised conditions, dominated by the global operations of capital. Economic and power relations that go against any attempt to classify forced migrations simply as humanitarian problems came into play. Before going into this point, however, what needs to be stressed again in this debate is the use of the north-south divide in such a way that somehow underestimate the reframing of differences and unbalances inside contemporary global dynamics. What follows from this is the very narrow definition of the ‘northern universities’ given by Landau, confined to the universities of Europe, Australia and

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North America. Yet it is difficult to consider these spaces as homogeneous and responding to the same logic and geoeconomic position. What must be considered is a larger process of corporatisation of universities, in the organisation of labour and its measurement through productivity criteria, and the strong competition among the most prominent, often at detriment of other, less powerful, universities independently from their geographical positioning. If there are universities competing at the global level inside these spaces, their relation with other institutions in the same regions is not dissimilar to the one portrayed by Landau as a north-­ south relation. At the same time, the capacity of this ‘north’ to bear of the power of the purse inside global competition is coming under discussion. While it is certainly true that most leading universities are located in the ‘north’, it is important to understand that they are so because they are both historically prestigious institutions, in some cases, and global enterprises. As such, they play in a context where their power is the result of a mix between existing and quantifiable private and public funding, their attractiveness to international students, and the capacity to become a financial product in global markets. These developments bring about radical changes, including the rising power of universities  as economic and political institutions in different parts of the world. Moreover, as Stephen Castles observes intervening in the same debate, ‘increasingly, researchers from outside the old power centres of North America and Western Europe are taking the lead in building research networks and setting academic agendas’ thus leading ‘on to the question of whether the division of the world into ‘south’ and ‘north’ is meaningful, at a time when new economic centres are emerging in Asia, Latin America and Africa too’ (Castles 2012: 574). This ‘global university’ is among the producers of a new transnational intellectual class, whose labour life constitutively develops across borders, whether physically or through online tools. The classification of this intellectual class as part of an international labour market élite is nonetheless contradictory, primarily because of the high level of precarisation of labour inside the university (Ross 2010). In fact, this implies that when militant research takes place inside a similar space—a space that is already politicised from above—the militant researcher needs to frame his/her discourse in a useful way for his/her academic career and to make the most of his/her engagement to find space for discussion and recognition. This space of power relations and precarious conditions an be seen as part of the ‘multiplication of labour’ described by Mezzadra and Neilson,  that

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displays itself across borders and needs borders in order to operate (Mezzadra and Neilson 2013a). This frustrates from the outset any pretention of radical separation between the researcher’s position and the very conditions of reproduction of migrant’s condition, and the possibility to objectify the subject of the research without becoming part of this reproduction process. Yet, a social and political gap distances the researcher, its field of activity, and the migrants. This paradox explains both the need and the insufficiency of bringing research into the realm of the political investigation. The problem of the researcher is that militant research can only take place within this dilemma and dealing with these contradictions. Engaged researchers often move from methodological statements implying the recognition of the separation between the objects of enquire and the epistemic environment where the enquirer acts. At the same time, they express the need to work towards a research praxis that poses the contestation of these separations among its primary goals. Contestation, indeed, is unsatisfactory and insufficient: what is needed is to recognise these differences and to understand their functioning, their role and what it means to work towards their interrelation. In the following sections I will try to elaborate on this open question in relation with forced migration as both a political and epistemic object.

The Politics of Forced Migration Forced migration is defined by IASFM as the forced movement of people, displaced within their own countries or across borders, due to prosecution, to flee war, to escape famine, or because a major development project (http://iasfm.org/). As seen before with Paula Banerjee, forced migration is in fact framed—in the international debate, both academic and by institutions that deals with forced migrants, including UN agencies and states – in a way that depoliticises its contents, and with the fundamental aim to keep forced migrants in their own place, without disturbing the very dynamics that forced them to move. The main preoccupation of the mainstream discourses on forced migration seems to be how to deal with the people who move, leaving the dynamics behind their movements untouched, while at the same time alluding to an impossible—and scarcely desirable—world where anyone should, theoretically, remain in the place where he or she is, and being happy that way. This is not surprising, given the humanitarian framework dominating what has been critically named in the New Keyword project as the ‘politics of protection’ (Casas-Cortes

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et al. 2014: 16–19). Based on the Geneva condition, in fact, ‘the humanitarian framework, under which different practices of displacement are administered and varying forms of protection organised, obscures the political context that produces displaced people in the first place’, namely ‘the nation-state order and the violence its reproduction involves’. Moving from this ‘methodological nationalism’, the solutions envisaged for the refugees, such as repatriation to the country of origin, reintegration in the host society, or resettlement to a third country, ‘all aim at transforming the “anomaly” of refugees back into the “normalcy” of nation-states citizens’. At the same time, the protection regime works as ‘a partitioning instrument’ based ‘on a distinction between forced (political) and voluntary (economic) migrants’ that have been revealed to be empirically untenable. This has consequences both for the academia and the politics of migration, due to the ‘disciplining effect’ of the division between Refugee, Migration and Forced Migration Studies (ibid.: 17, 18.). As the global agency set to deal with refugees and other subjects defined as different from  labour migrants, UNHCR Statute defines his work as ‘entirely non-political’ and states ‘it shall be humanitarian and social and shall relate, as a rule, to groups and categories of refugees.’ And yet the whole process is political starting from the power to define and name who can be entitled to some protection and who actually deserve protection. The present refugee protection regime can in fact be described as ‘a partitioning instrument’, which ‘effectively intensifies the precarious existence for many while offering protection for few’. Through this ‘partitioning  instrument’  people included in protection regimes, coherently with the depoliticising nature of the process, are reduced to ‘a bundle of material needs’. Protectionism and patronisation, critics argue, are the background for the ‘authoritarian dimension’ of the humanitarian regime, since protection is given only to people that obey and behave as demanded and as the protection regime requires (ibid.). This state-gaze feature that has been related to the protection regime is a model that, in a more scattered and sparse way, resonates the ‘moral economy of deservingness’ (Chauvin and Garcés-Mascareñas 2012: 243) that encourages all migrants, whether legal or illegal, to interact with their own personal biographies always trying to mirror the institutional discourses, be that accumulating formal ‘emblems of good citizenship’ (ibid.) such as certificates of reliable economic and legal conduct, or describing themselves as pure victims in order to find a place in the policies of protection.

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However we know from the experience of migrants themselves, even in the worst situation, that  their knowledge of legal mechanism and their capacity to creatively use it always escape the attempt to bureaucratise their existence, forcing institutions to continuously modify or except to the rule. This state-centric logic is nonetheless one of the main problems when we approach the need to sustain and resettle forced migrants and refugees. While the regime is transnational, in fact, the definition of the subjects is related to a specific threat and a specific lack of protection by a state, and their status, albeit international, has always to be validated and recognised by another state. Spaces like the European Shengen regime, where the Dublin regulation applies, epytomize this situation by requiring asylum seekers to apply for asylum in their first country of arrival and wait there the response, leaving them trapped for months or even years, with the consequence that one of the main challenges for migrants entering Europe is not to survive or to find a safe haven, but to reach the place where they want to stay before being registered in the Eurodac database (Kuster and Tsianos 2013). The state-centered logic that is  starkly visible  in the case of IDPs— which show the limit of any discourse related to compensation or resettlement, as it requires to the same actor that causes, or allow, displacement to solve its consequences—is thus a general political condition of the protection regimes. The same states that are responsible for the definition of the international regime that prevents people to freely move and settle should in fact guarantee the protection for the displaced. Behind this system one can recognise a legitimising protocol for the states, rather than an universal acceptance of basic human rights. This is rooted in the history of the refugees system itself whose assumption, at the time of its adoption in 1951, was to show the western countries moral superiority facing the ‘unfree world’ and that only a few people would actually move from one country to another applying for asylum and protection (Grappi 2010). At the same time, this system operates transnationally and represents a negotiating tool for geopolitical reasons, creating instruments of governance capable to overcome the states where it is applied, when they are labelled internationally as weak or ‘failed’. Besides and before the dramatic spread of war and calamities, the history of world migration and the active use of the legal framework made by men and women who moved led to the explosion of this system and its crisis.

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Documents and the Question of the Political Subject Keeping in mind these problems and the technical definition of forced migration, my suggestion is to broaden its sense and its scope. Without diminishing the concrete reality of forced migration and its specificity, I suggest to read the ‘forced’ in forced migration in relation to migration at large, labour regimes and the production of subjectivities in capital relations. If we distance ourselves from its classical understanding, we can indeed frame forced migration in a different way and consider how woman and man on the move are ‘forced’ to adapt and interact with the legal regime by which they are categorized as forced or economic migrants, as irregular aliens or legitimate asylum seekers, etc. At the same time, they are ‘forced’ to experience the direct intertwining between this legal framework and what can be termed as the hidden political dimension of the labour market in global capitalism. The problem of the relation between research and militancy should thus be posed at the level of the materiality of migration as a social fact. One could reinvent here Marx’s eleventh thesis on Feuerbach, by saying that ‘migration researchers have only interpreted the migration regime, in various ways; the point is to change it’. Evoking Marx’s definition of Capital, migration can be described as a social and power relation mediated by special ‘things’ such as documents, papers and different statuses. Such ‘things’ are produced by the joint role of the many authorities managing migration regimes, namely the state and the supra-national organisations involved in the regulatory systems of visas release, and by the continuous re-shaping of their material meaning which depends on the balance of power within a transnational labour market. The ‘hidden abodes of production’ are thus where we must place any attempt of critical reading of the social relations involved in migration, here including the position of the researcher. The philosophical debate on the political subject has placed migrants at the core of transformative politics. Authors like Jacques Rancière and Etienne Balibar have written extensively on the role of migrants in any attempt to subvert any given political order and revealing the institutional racism at the core of contemporary discourses on citizenship. At the same time, albeit in different ways, they both traced a parallel between the condition of migrants and the history of proletariat. If Rancière describes today’s migrants as a ‘part of no part’, like French proletariat in the nineteenth century, Balibar, intervening in the political debated raised by the

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sans-papiers’ protests in France, defined them as the ‘modern proletariat’ (Rancière 2004: 29 and Balibar 1997–2013). These arguments have in common the recognition of the specific position of migrants, particularly undocumented migrants, as bearer of the power to overthrow/reverse the existing social order against the background of citizenship, defined around the sovereignty principle and the national logic (this applies, as Balibar argues, also for the construction of a supra-national polity as the European Union, see Balibar 2003). Yet, they also reveal the strict relation between migration politics and class politics. ‘Migrants and non-immigrants—as writes labour sociologist Harald Bauder—integrate when they perform distinct roles in society and in the labor market’. As a consequence, ‘in the context of immigration, labour market integration does not necessarily imply that immigrants are paid equally or have equal access to occupational opportunity as non-­ immigrants’. On the contrary, ‘integration means that immigrants have a distinct economic function that is vital for local, national and international economies to operate’ and that ‘they affect labor supply and thus wage-­ structure and other labor conditions’ (Bauder 2006: 9). This distinct function depends on multiple factors, but it is related to the specific condition of migrant workers within a transnational labour market and global production chains. The fact that migrants, even refugees and asylum seekers, everywhere in the world need some sort of documents to be inscribed in the legal regime, and their documents, including having or not having documents, define the relation they have with work and social reproduction, and vice versa, seems to be the general rule. Assuming the existence of different conditions and different situations, this is strongly related to what Nicholas De Genova calls the ‘deportation regime’. In this regime, ‘it is deportability, and not deportation as such, that ensures that some are deported in order that most may remain (undeported) – as workers, whose pronounced and protracted legal vulnerability may thus be sustained indefinitely’ (De Genova 2009). The first and obvious consequence is that migrants’ vulnerability and powerlessness, two concepts that are part of the victimisation lingo embedded in the international protection regime, should be considered as the result of the migrants’ imposed weaknesses vis-à-vis the state and the employers, rather than neutral categories. It is within the social relations shaped by institutional racism, labour market segmentation and the border regimes that migrants are produced as ‘vulnerable’ subjects. The second and more pervading effect is the drawing of a line between migrants

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and not-migrants depending on their legal definition, and of many other lines among migrants depending on their specific status. If for migrants this means to be constantly and differently haunted by the border and threatened by their legal status inside and outside the workplace, for non-­ migrants it contributes to a status of belonging defined by what can never happen to them. He or she can’t be deported in the current historical scenario. He or she can’t become an object inside a transnational protocol that defines their deservingness of protection or any other aid. The two sides are anything but homogeneous: they are, instead, crossed by differences, first of all by gender and race differences. Nevertheless, focusing on this cleavage  that keep  migrants constantly under the threat  of  institutional racism, violence and exploitation is important in order to grasp the field of tension where migrations take place. In fact, contrary to the common understanding of the state role in regulating, supervising or blocking migration movements, what the different authorities involved in the management of migration primarily do is to define statuses and hierarchies in order to create the conditions to turn a transnational movement—a total social fact—into an element functional to the market and the production system (Burawoy 1976; Castles and Miller 2009; Mezzadra 2016). The complex apparatus of laws, regulations, administrative and bureaucratic differentiations concerning migration—that we name institutional racism—must thus be related to different wages of citizenship and regularity, to paraphrase David Roediger, working as tools of division and hierarchisation of society (Roediger 2007; Grappi 2012). Differences are produced through institutional racism, which in turn, through the differential inclusion of migrants, impacts on the positioning of migrants and non-migrants in the social domain (Mezzadra and Neilson 2012). Within this perspective, it is important for researchers to politicise the social order on which migrants and the researchers themselves are included, without accepting the partitioning logic behind the classification of migrants that follows the different needs of the states, the international agencies such as UNHCR and, ultimately, the transnational labour market of global capitalism. In this way we can focus our attention not much on the failure of the migration policies, including of  protection policies, but on  what we  can learn from the movements of migration which, by using their knowledge of the legal system, by refusing reclusion in supposedly humanitarian camps, or by contesting their working conditions, transcend the transnational regimes that wants to control them and the global division of labour. The theoretical consequence is that the emergence of the

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political subjectivity of migrants, in most cases, rises in sites that are not immediately visible and intelligible even if we adopt a gaze based on the dyad ‘inclusion/exclusion’. On the contrary, this dyad itself must be scrutinized within  the larger picture of global capitalism (Mezzadra and Neilson 2013b).

On Force, Mobility and the Materiality of the Global The researcher and the militant should address the question of what does it mean to be part of the relations shaped by the multifaceted migration regimes and their production and enforcement of visible differences. What is necessary is to recognise that the willingness of being against the border regimes or the widespread exploitation of migrant labour around the globe is insufficient. The simple  public denouncing of the inefficacy or corruption of transnational regimes of protection is often doomed to produce the reinforcement and legitimisation of their prerequisites, instead of opening a space for their contestation. As data from UN global migration statistics reveals, south-south migration is today as common as south-­ north migration. In 2013, more than 82 million international migrants who were born in the south were residing in the south, a number close to the 81.9 million originating in the south and living in the north. Overall, the UN survey number is 232 million of international migrants living abroad worldwide, with a majority 136 million living in the ‘developed countries’ and 96 million in the ‘developing countries’. This means also that more than 50 million are north-north migrants. Gallup estimated in the period 2009–2011 four main pathways of global migration: south to north, representing 40%, south-south representing 33%, north-north representing 22% and north-south, covering 5% (IOM 2013). Global trends in the following years arguably confirmed this deployment of human movements across the globe. To stress this complexity doesn’t mean to affirm that all these paths are equal. As we know, some of these paths are deadly paths, as in the case of the Mediterranean or the Sahara crossing, while other can be practices through regular flights, such in the case of financial traders (Mezzadra and Neilson 2013a: 111–118) and, for example, the students and the researchers in the university, an intellectual class that experiences its precarious condition across borders. Some of them are ‘forced’ movements; some of

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them are ‘free’ movements. Yet these definitions also need some complications: what does it means to be ‘forced’, when we can describe in the same category people obliged to leave their homes by violent persecution, and people forced to work because their documents are kept by their employers and they can’t leave the working place, if they don’t want to suffer violence from police, be arrested, jailed and often expelled without any safety measure? This situation involves millions of migrant workers that often never reach the supposed north. Suffice to look towards the Arabic peninsula and see who built the shining towers of Dubai and other UAE cities, or turn our gaze towards Malaysia electronic industry where, following a report by the NGO Verité, almost one third of the workers are in an ‘unfree’ condition (Kelly 2014). Similar situations can be found also in Europe, North America and Africa or inside India and China. To give just another example, recent news sets the number of Indians locked in jail abroad in around six thousand. What is interesting to note is that among the six thousand, a significant number, more than 1.4 thousand, are lodged in Saudi Arabia, while other thousand in United Arab Emirates. The UK, traditionally related to foreign Indians, counts only 441 Indians in its jails, Pakistan, the bordering nation, has 468, Bangladesh only 128, while US, the country with the world largest prison population, 426. If we add the states of Qatar and Kuwait, it will turn out that half of the Indians jailed abroad are in the Gulf Area, and the reasons they are in jail must not be much different from what it was some years ago, including mostly the ‘violation of visa rules such as overstay and illegal entry, non-­ possession of valid travel documents, economic offences and violation of employment contracts’ (Business Standard 2014; Economic Times 2012). These are conditions that more and more do not relate to exceptions or perversions of the system. On the opposite, they are part of a complex reorganisation of economy and production at the global scale in the last decades. This applies even to a strict definition of forced migrants and IDPs, given that more and more the condition behind their need to move are created by global developments such as the construction of industrial corridors, dams or the competition for raw materials such as minerals used to assemble microchips and conductors in the high-tech industry. Even climate change, among the main causes of displacement, is being finally understood as less a problem of scientific innovation and green policies, than of market ideology and global capitalism (Klein 2014). All these processes have been described as dynamics of ‘expulsions’ through the transformation of growing areas of the world into ‘extreme zones’ for ‘new or sharply expanded modes of profit extraction’ for global capitalism (Sassen

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2014). On the one hand, as Sassen observes, ‘these diverse causes of displacement and the futures of those who have been displaced are calling into question the United Nations’ formal classification of displaced persons, because mostly such people will never go back home—home is now a war zone, a plantation, a mining operation, or dead land’ (Ibid.). On the other hand, this calls for a different and systemic approach to migrations and forced migrations that faces the political challenge to reverse the order of the discussion and work towards ‘the real movement who abolishes the present state of things’. Migrations must thus be politically analised and conceptualised vis-à-vis the global transformations of production, power and the economy, which include a profound redefinition of the state form, its capacity, its role and its functions. Migration is a fact that involves our everyday life, and the politics that attempts to govern and exploit it works through a complex heterogeneity of measures and technologies across class, race and colour lines, and gendered power relations (Grappi 2012; Grappi and Sacchetto 2013). Even when we are confronted with forced migration, thus, it is unrealistic to confine the issue, and the possible ways out, by employing definitions of ‘unfreedom’ or ‘willingness’ that are incapable of putting under scrutiny the irrepressible dynamics of mobility, the process of creation of the labour force as a commodity, and the imperative of its political government and containment inside transnational production chains that constitute the materiality of our global times.

References Balibar, Etienne. 1997–2013. What Do We Owe to the Sans-Papiers. eipcp.net. http://eipcp.net/transversal/0313/balibar/en. Last accessed 14 June 2013. ———. 2003. We, The People of Europe. Reflections on Transnational Citizenship. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Banerjee, Paula. 2012. Response to Landau. Journal of Refugee Studies 25 (4): 570–573. ———. 2013. A Response from the Global South on ‘Negotiations of Engaged Scholarship and Equity Through Global Network of Refugee Scholars’. Refugee Watch Online, December 3. http://refugeewatchonline.blogspot. it/2013/12/a-­response-­from-­global-­south-­on.html Bauder, Harald. 2006. Labor Movement. How Migration Regulates Labor Markets. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

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Burawoy, Michael. 1976. The Functions and Reproduction of Migrant Labor. American Journal of Sociology 81: 1050–1087. Business Standard. 2014. Nearly 6,000 Indians in Lodged in Foreign Prisons, July 17. http://www.business-standard.com/article/news-ians/nearly-6-000-indians-inlodged-in-foreign-prisons-114071701380_1.html. Last accessed Aug 2014. Casas-Cortes, M. et al. 2014. New Keywords: Migration and Borders. Cultural Studies. https://doi.org/10.1080/09502386.2014.891630. Castles, Stephen. 2012. Response to Landau. Journal of Refugee Studies 25 (4): 573–576. Castles, S., and M.J. Miller. 2009. The Age of Migration. International Population Movement in the Modern World. 4th ed. New York: Guilford Press. Chauvin, S., and B. Garcés-Mascareñas. 2012. Beyond Informal Citizenship: The New Moral Economy of Migrant Illegality. International Political Sociology 6: 241–259, 243. De Genova, Nicholas. 2009. Conflicts of Mobility, and the Mobility of Conflict: Rightlessness, Presence, Subjectivity, Freedom. Subjectivity 29: 445–466. ———. 2013. Spectacles of Migrant ‘Illegality’: The Scene of Exclusion, the Obscene of Inclusion. Ethnic and Racial Studies. https://doi.org/10.108 0/01419870.2013.783710. Economic Times. 2012. 6,000 Indians Languishing in Jails Abroad, November 22. http://articles.economictimes.indiatimes.com/2012-11-22/news/35300964_1_ foreign-jails-indian-nationals-salman-khurshid. Last accessed Aug 2014. Garelli, Glenda, and Martina Tazzioli. 2013a. Special Issue: Challenging the Discipline of Migration: Militant Research and Militant Investigation. Postcolonial Studies 16 (3): 243–327. ———. 2013b. Challenging the Discipline of Migration: Militant Research in Migration Studies, an Introduction. Postcolonial Studies 16 (3): 245–249. Grappi, Giorgio. 2010. Refugees and Partition in a Migrants’ World. Refugee Watch 35: 64–72. ———. 2012. Lungo la linea del lavoro. I migranti e il razzismo istituzionale, in A. Curcio – M. Mellino, La Razza al lavoro, Roma, manifestolibri, pp. 55–73. ———. 2013. Three Problems Without a Solution: The Militant Research Conundrum and the Social Condition of Migration. Postcolonial Studies 16 (3): 320–327. Grappi, G., and D. Sacchetto. 2013. La gestione e la produzione delle differenze: razza e razzismo nei processi lavorativi italiani, in G. Giuliani, a cura di, La sottile linea bianca. Intersezioni di razza, genere e classe nell’Italia postcoloniale, Studi Culturali, Anno X, N. 2, 315–322. IOM. 2013. World Migration Report 2013, Key Facts and Figures. Geneva. Kelly, Annie. 2014. Modern-Day Slavery Rife in Malaysia’s Electronic Industry. The Guardian, September 17. http://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2014/sep/17/modern-day-slavery-malaysia-electronics-industry

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Klein, Naomi. 2014. This Changes Everything: Capitalism vs. the Climate. New York: Simon & Schuster. Kuster, Brigitta, and Vassilis S. Tsianos. 2013. Erase Them! Eurodac and Digital Deportability. European Institute for Progressive Cultural Policies, February. http://eipcp.net/transversal/0313/kuster-­tsianos/en Landau, Loren B. 2012. Communities of Knowledge or Tyrannies of Partnership: Reflections on North-South Research Networks and the Dual Imperative. Journal of Refugee Studies 25 (4): 555–570. Mezzadra, Sandro. 2016. MLC 2015. Keynote: What’s at stake in the Mobility of Labour? Borders Migration Contemporary Capitalism. Migration Mobility & Displacement 2(1): 30–43. Mezzadra, Sando, and Brett Neilson. 2012. Borderscapes of Differential Inclusion. Subjectivity and Struggles on the Threshold of Justice’s Excess. In The Borders of Justice, ed. E. Balibar, S. Mezzadra, and R. Samaddar, 181–203. Philadelphia: Temple University Press. ———. 2013a. Border as Method, or, the Multiplication of Labor. Durham: Duke University Press. ———. 2013b. Extraction, Logistics, Finance: Global Crisis and the Politics of Operations. Radical Philosophy 178: 8–18. Mezzadra, Sando, and Maurizio Ricciardi. 2013. Movimenti indisciplinati. Migrazioni, migranti e discipline scientifiche. Verona: ombre corte. Rancière, Jacques. 2004. Disagreement. Politics and Philosophy. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Roediger, David. 2007. The Wage of Whiteness. Race and the Making of the American Working Class. 3rd ed. New York: Verso. Ross, Andrew. 2010. Nice Work If You Can Get It; Life and Labor in Precarious Times. New York/London: New York University Press. Sassen, Saskia. 2014. Expulsions: Brutality and Complexity in the Global Economy. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

PART II

Labour, Development and the Migrant Body

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CHAPTER 7

“If Only I Were a Male”: Work, Value, and the Female Body Shailaja Menon

Section I So free am I, so gloriously free, Free from three petty thingsFrom mortar, from pestle and my twisted lord Freed from rebirth and death I am And all that has held me down Is hurled away. (Tr Chakravarty and Roy 1991)

The Genesis of Servitude in India The term dasa, appearing in Pali, Prakrit, and Sanskrit literature has been accepted as synonymous with the word slave (Chanana 1990). It encompasses all forms of servitude, ranging from absolute control over a person, on the one hand, to limited, conditional, and temporary bondage, on the other (Chakravarty 2007). The slave and the free citizen subsisted as polar

S. Menon (*) School of Liberal Studies, Ambedkar University, New Delhi, India e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2022 N. Chowdhory, P. Banerjee (eds.), Gender, Identity and Migration in India, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-16-5598-2_7

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opposites. Women were seldom given the status of a citizen. Although slavery existed in various ancient societies, it took the form of debt bondage or penal labour, other mixed types of servitude, and constituted a very low category in an amorphous continuum of dependence and non-­ freedom (Finley 1964). Pali texts from the fourth and fifth centuries BCE describe the extreme poverty and destitution of the dasas and karmakaras, who lacked assets, land, and capital and were forced to sell their freedom or wage labour for survival (Kara 2012). Various law-givers accorded different status to the dasa. Kautilya defined nine categories of dasas, including the first definition of the concept of debt bondage (ahitaka) or an individual who becomes a slave upon acceptance of money from a master (Shamasastry). Any discussion on slavery in India would be incomplete without a reference to the caste system. Historically, the earliest reference to servitude was based on colour. The Rigveda mentions the arya varna and dasa varna. The tribal chieftains and priests acquired a larger share of the booty and naturally became wealthy at the cost of their kinsmen, thereby creating social inequalities within the tribe. Apart from the priests, warriors, and the commoners in the tribe, the fourth division, namely, the shudra, appeared towards the end of the Rig Vedic period. The term shudra is mentioned for the first time in the tenth book of the Rig Veda, which is the latest edition. There are frequent references to slaves who were gifted to the priests. These were primarily women employed for domestic purposes (Sharma 2007). The majority of these women were captured by the Aryans from the subjugated dasa population. These references are doubly significant as men slaves are rare in the Rig Veda (Sharma 1977). Women slaves are frequently spoken of in the context of wealth and are listed along with gold, cattle, and other assets in later Vedic literature (Chandogya Upanishad) in order to demonstrate the wealth of the master. In the early Vedic literature, cattle and women slaves constitute the only forms of movable property and are transferable unlike land (Sharma 1977 ibid.). As argued by Sharma, women are highly valued in the tribal context as they are “the producers of producers” (Sharma 1977 ibid.). No wonder that the dasis are frequently stated to be the objects of dana and dakshina and handed over to the chief priests by the king (Chanana 1990 op cit). When the economy gradually transformed into a full scale agricultural production, a measured division of labour took place and the dasis took over the burden of domestic work. The work of the slave girl is described as working in the fields, removing filth, fetching water, and performing

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other menial jobs. Within the household also, a graded distinction occurs regarding female labour, and the daughter-in-law was just one step ahead in status vis-à-vis the dasi. The two most arduous tasks for the dasis was fetching water and de-husking rice, apart from milking the cows, cooking, making the beds, lighting the lamps and even acting as wet nurse. However, what rendered the slave girl’s existence most vulnerable was sexual abuse. The sexual exploitation of the slave girl did not constitute any infringement of the law and it was for the master to decide how he abused her servitude. The Arthasastra provided very detailed instructions regarding the master’s relationship with the dasis. A pledged dasi cannot be violated which would cause the master to forfeit the value of the pledged amount. Sexual violence or rape against a pledged dasi by the master or his friends meant freeing her and compensating her with money (sulka or nuptial fee) and also a fine to the state. A dasi also has to be cared for during her pregnancy. Significantly, all these injunctions apply only to the ahitaka dasi or bondswomen over whom the master only had partial control. They were exempt from impure work and physical violence unlike the ordinary slave women who had no such protective legislation. Though female slaves were integral to the smooth running of the household, very rarely are they represented in history. Frequent wars, natural calamities, gift exchanges were the means through which impoverished men and women entered the slave markets in medieval times. One could catch glimpses of the domestic workers and their close ties with their employers in many autobiographical narratives, especially during the colonial period. Unfortunately, there is a dearth of primary materials written by the labourers themselves, who were engaged in domestic work. They were seldom considered as a component of the working class though the household was their primary site of production. The repeated appearance of servants and maids in middle-class reminiscences testifies to the importance of this working population in the lives of their employers. Numerical evidence from the Censuses of India (1911, 1921, and 1931) also suggests that domestic service constituted one of the principal occupations of colonial Bengal. From the 1880s on, there was an increasing demand in the hiring of servants in Bengal and by the first decade of the twentieth century domestic service accounted for 12% of all occupations in Calcutta, as opposed to 7.3% in Bombay, 6.68% in Madras, and 6.1% in Delhi. It is only in the past few decades that scholars in South Asia are engaging with subaltern bodies, the working class, bonded labour, sex workers, criminalized bodies, et cetera.

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Feminizing Domestic Work It will not be an exaggeration to asseverate that domestic work and slavery have been inextricably intertwined in Indian society. The stigma attached to such forms of labour has ensured its low status, a menial occupation performed by women and children. The gendered notions of house-work, coupled with the accepted wisdom of caste purity characterizes the essentialized understanding of domestic labour even today and forms the prism through which the workers themselves ‘view’ their work. It is looked upon as unskilled and as such underestimated because most women have traditionally been considered capable of doing the work, and the skills they are taught by other women in the home are perceived to be innate. When paid, therefore, the work remains undervalued and poorly regulated. By contrast, studies that provide space for domestic workers to speak often reveal their belief in the dignity of their hard work, and, as such, it warrants recognition and respect and calls for regulation (Roberts 1997). Domestic work includes mental, manual, and emotional aspects, including care work that is necessary to maintain people and communities (Anderson 2000). Domestic work is thus viewed as reproductive work that creates not only labour units but also people and social relations. Anderson further draws attention to domestic work being rooted in the community. By the doing of domestic work, we literally reproduce our communities and our place within them (ibid., 14). In this context, it is important to note who does the domestic work as this reflects the relation between genders, caste, and class. The employer-employee relationship is also a complex one and is viewed as one of domination, dependence, and inequality. Also, this is an area of work where the employer and the employee are mostly females. As a home is the site of work, relations between employer and employee are often not limited to work but spill over as larger support systems. With the rise of the middle class in India, domestic work has emerged as an important new occupation for migrant women and girls. Mainly women and girls migrate for domestic work to Mumbai, Delhi, and other large cities from the eastern states of Bihar, Orissa, Chhattisgarh, Jharkhand, Assam, and Mizoram (Social Alert quoted in SCF 2005). Roughly 20% of these workers are under the age of 14. A study of domestic workers in Delhi shows that although domestic work has brought higher incomes to many women and their families it is still far from decent work, being characterised by long working hours, low wages, and hardly

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any social security. Domestic workers are more vulnerable than other kinds of workers because they are not officially classified as workers at all and are therefore not covered by laws that apply to workers (Neetha 2004). Each year approximately 20 million women in India move to live with their husband’s family after marriage. Marriage migration is by far the largest form of migration in India and is close to universal for women in rural areas. Although there are significant regional differences, most of India practices some form of patrilocal village exogamy in which women are married outside of their natal village, joining their husband’s family in his village. Across India three quarters of women older than 21 have left their place of birth, almost all after marriage. Only 15% of Indian men have moved from their place of birth. Women are typically married young, between 14 and 20, and are generally illiterate or have less than a primary school education. Although the distances are not always large, the mean travel time from her natal village is about three and a half hours and can be much larger. Sent to a new village, new brides are often subject to violence, and are forced to create a new life in a strange place only rarely of their own choosing. (Scott Fulford 2013). Within the contours of the universally and culturally sanctified marriage norms, women have very little space to manoeuvre. Once they relocate to a new geographical space post marriage, their spatial negotiations depend on their spousal/extended family relationships, education and skill levels, caste, and economic background. Many a time, they are forced to contribute their labour for the family, willingly or otherwise, and their body is valued for its capacity to toil for economic gains. A large proportion of the workers engaged in the urban unorganised sector are migrants from rural areas with poor educational, training, and skill background and are employed in low-paying, semi-skilled, or unskilled jobs. The productivity and earning levels in most of the enterprises are low and do not often provide full time work to those engaged. For the employees, the working environment is not conducive; working hours are long and most of the conditions of decent employment (e.g. paid leave, pension, bonus, medical support and health insurance, maternity leave benefits, compensation against accident, etc.) are nearly non-existent (GOI Report 2010). The sector now primarily comprises women domestic workers who are not recognized as workers while their work is undervalued. This is primarily due to the gendered notion of housework; value is not ascribed to women’s work in their homes, and by extension, even paid work in other’s homes is not given any value or regarded as work. It is also undervalued

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because it is often performed by poor, migrant women from lower castes. All these contribute to the inferior status of their work, both in their own minds and in society. The Emerging Care Economy in Cities Over the last few years, studies on domestic work in India have noted an increase in the numbers of migrant female domestic workers in the cities. They have also observed that domestic work is highly informal in its organization and highlighted the vulnerabilities of these workers who belong to the poorer and uneducated sections of society. These studies also note that women from marginalized castes form a substantial group of domestic workers (Mehrotra 2016). In the Indian context, domestic work is generally defined in terms of types of work performed and the time spent at work, that is, in the employer’s home. Live- out and live-in are two distinct categories of domestic work. Live-out work is primarily of two types: first, those who work in one house for the whole day and go back to their homes in the evening and; secondly, those who work in different houses, moving from one to the other, performing one or more tasks in each household. They may clean in one house, chop vegetables in another, and wash clothes in the third, while some others may perform only one task, such as cooking. Lower caste women often clean toilets in their employers’ homes. They often visit these households twice a day, though the requirements in some families may be limited to only once a day. Another form of part-time live-out work is in terms of piece-rate. It is often applied to washing clothes and wages are calculated on the basis of family size. Another critical issue is that of the age of the domestic worker. Despite laws to prevent it, child domestic labour is still prevalent in India. The Child Labour (Prohibition and Regulations) Act 1986, lists domestic work in the schedule of “hazards” whereby the permissible age for work is 18 years. The argument is that these children work long hours, are not given nutritious food, are often sexually abused and have no way of raising their voices. Domestic work is increasingly feminized in India with majority of the workers being female. This makes it one of the few sectors which has a female majority and one of the largest employment providers for women and girls in India. According to the National Domestic Workers’ Movement [NDWM], an estimated 20 million people work as domestics throughout the country. Of these workers, 90% are women and children

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between the ages of 12–75, while those below 14 years old make up 25% of the workers (NDWM). Transnational, globalised economy is brought into the private home, not just in goods consumed there, but at its very core in the organizing and delivery of “reproductive” labour. (Bridget Anderson op cit) This increase in the number of domestic workers is linked to the shift from agrarian-based economy to a manufacture- and service-based economy. It is also associated with the growth of the urban middle class, especially the increase in the number of women working outside their homes and the availability of cheap domestic labour. The migration from the tribal belt is ascribed to “ecological degradation, landlessness and land alienation, unemployment and poverty” (Kujar and Jha 2008). Migration of girls is also attributed to the transition in the tribal societies as educated tribal girls do not want to work in the agriculture sector (ibid.). The fragmentation of the domestic labour market by the area of residence and the class of the employer within one town/city is noticeable. The same broad tasks are elaborated and often performed differently under varied conditions of service. Segmented and niche markets have developed. Thus, for example, the rates paid by expatriates are among the highest. The treatment and wages paid to domestic workers also depend on their ethnicity and skills. The surplus availability of marginalized groups willing to be employed in this sector has meant increased vulnerability because of the flimsy protective cover made available to them. In India, there is the added dimension of caste, which plays an important role in allocating different forms of domestic work to different castes—cooking to be done by Brahmins and waste removal to be done by Balmikis (D’Souza 2010). In addition, C.P. Chandrasekhar and Jayati Ghosh point out that “more remunerative and desirable work is simply not available even for women who wish to enter the labour force, and they are forced to seek this employment as the only possible alternative” (Chandrasekhar and Ghosh 2012). In sum, the wage structure and service packages are complex and variable, making it problematic to arrive at a uniform wage rate for domestic work even for a specific locality (Neetha 2013). This brings difficulty in unionization and legislation and is used as an argument to justify the lack of regulation. According to Ghosh and Chandrashekhar, “despite its growing importance, domestic work in most countries remains largely unrecognised, generally undervalued, and almost always poorly regulated” (Chandrasekhar and Ghosh, op cit). Domestic work is not recognized as ‘work’ by the Indian government. The state does not value or recognize this work as a

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contribution to society and the economy. Trade unions and other organizations working with domestic workers have been pressurizing the state for a shift in its policy on domestic work. As in the case of anganwadi workers, limited recognition means that the economic value of non-­ familial care continues to be devalued. This is compounded by the fact that a workforce of women is constantly available to meet the rapidly growing demand. Poverty, lack of options, and lack of information about organizing forces these women to accept the working conditions. The underpaid and undervalued work also generates a public health crisis which is compounded by patriarchy. The crisis within the household is reflected if one ponders over the data of suicide in India. Fifteen people commit suicide every hour in India demonstrates the most recent data by the National Crime Records Bureau. Of these, around 17% are housewives. In contrast, suicide by farmers makes up only 3% of all suicides. The NCRB divides the total suicides into ten professional categories—housewife, service (government), service (private), public sector undertaking, student, unemployed, self-employed (business activity), farming/agriculture activity, retired, and others. The NCRB data for 2013 reflects that 1.3 lakh people committed suicide that year. Among suicides by women, a whopping 51.4% are committed by housewives (almost 23,000), despite the fact that the “non-worker and marginal worker” female population engaged in “household duties” make up only 33% of the entire female population, according to the 2011 Census. In 2018, the number of housewives killing themselves—22,937—increased by 6.9% when compared to 21,453 women in 2017, NCRB data show. This could be because of an increase in suicides or an increase in the reporting of such cases to the police. More than half—53%—of 1000 respondents from the states of Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, Jharkhand, and Chattisgarh, in a 2018 Oxfam India survey, said it was acceptable to harshly criticize a woman if she failed to care well for the children and 33% said it was acceptable to beat a woman for the same reason.

Section II Narratives* Case A (Savita) She migrated to Delhi after marriage from a village in Odisha. She had completed her graduation from the local college. Though her family belonged to what is now the Other Backward Caste, they had plenty of

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land and her eldest brother worked in the Army. All these made her very conscious of her status. When she joined her husband post marriage, she received a tremendous shock for he worked for daily wages in the Delhi University hostel and did domestic labour to supplement his income. When the marriage was being negotiated, her family was informed that he had a permanent government job and lived in the hostel quarters. As she did not know the local language—Hindi—she felt very lonely and depressed. After a few days she realized that actually they were residing in the servant quarters of a faculty. Her husband and his brother would rarely talk about their work and obviously she had no idea about his earnings. Later, they moved into the servant quarters of the researcher’s home. She was very reluctant to work as she was very conscious of her status as belonging to a landed family. Even her husband would never ask her to do any domestic chores neither in the researcher’s home nor in their quarters. He would get up early, do the cleaning work, and attend to his office. As he was on contract basis, he was at the beck and call of his seniors and often had to work late hours. In the initial days she would fight with him and think about going back home but knew that it is not a viable option. The dowry was negotiated by her husband’s elder brother who also pocketed the money saying it was for the wedding expenses. Before coming home, her mother-in-law had informed her that “we got an educated daughter-in-law so she should work and earn for the family”. Due to monetary reasons, she aborted her first child. Again when she conceived, the researcher took them to the hospital. Though the hospital was not very expensive, she did not consult a doctor again till her seventh month of pregnancy when she went to her natal home. Later she narrated as to how her mother fussed over her, gave her nutritious food and bore all the hospital expenses. When a girl child was born, neither her mother-in-law nor other members of her husband’s family came to visit her. The unfortunate thing is that the gendered neglect was transferred to her daughter, once they came back to Delhi post-delivery. Economics is one aspect of the matter, but coupled with indifference, it leads to violence which is very difficult to document. After all, how is negligence to be mapped? The researcher witnessed that many times routine vaccinations were not administered to the baby girl, though it was provided free by the state as the parents did not consider it important enough. The child was perpetually hungry and suffered from stunted growth. The diet never changed even when the child was growing up. The family used to save money and ultimately bought a piece of land both in his village and in

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Delhi also. After getting a government job on a permanent basis (Group D category) which was facilitated by the researcher’s family, a son was born and the nature of conversation changed. Now, every time the son sneezed, they rushed to the hospital, the pride in talking about the son, arranging the best quality milk. They even visited Haridwar to ritually tonsure the son. The parents’ level of happiness was very evident. They left working for the researcher’s family as they got government accommodation, but continue to keep in touch. The monetary situation has not improved much as her husband continues to work cleaning cars in the student’s hostel, et cetera, even after getting a government job as now they have two children. The second child was born in Delhi as they had access to government hospital because of their employment. Case B (Gulabi Devi) A Dalit girl, she was just 17 years old when she got married to a person who was more than a decade senior to her. Before joining her husband in Delhi, she did hard labour in her in-laws’ place, as eking out a living in the hilly terrain of Uttarakhand was not easy. Every day, she walked long distances for fodder and wood, took care of the cattle and did other domestic chores. Her husband worked in the university guest house on a contract basis and lived with his sister (who also lived in the servant quarters of another government colony). Feeling the space congested they were looking for a room when they got in touch with the researcher. Gulabi was a very quiet person, who failed her matriculation as she was more preoccupied with labouring for her family. She confessed that despite being in Delhi she never bothered to ask her husband to take her out. She calmly accepted her situation in life. One day, she casually remarked that her innermost desire was to have golden earrings. Her father had asked her before her wedding, but she refused thinking it might be too expensive. Now, she reflected that it might never happen. Very soon, Gulabi discovered that she was pregnant but neither she nor her husband went for medical advice. Gradually, she revealed that she had lost a baby boy a year earlier. The child was born in the government hospital but died after two days and they did not have any clue as to what was the cause of death or any document about any medical problem. After much persuasion that it is essential to seek medical advice to rule out any future problems, they went to hospital. By then five months had passed and her husband wanted to send Gulabi to his home. She begged us to dissuade him, saying that

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she will have to perform hard labour and no one will bother about her health. She refrained from having eggs or similar non-vegetarian food even though the doctor advised her as she was wearing an amulet (to beget a male child) and such food was forbidden to her. Her partner though had no such restrictions. She stayed back with the researcher’s family and it was very disconcerting to notice that her husband was least concerned about her pregnancy. She continued to do all the domestic work, without bothering about nutritious food or medical advice. Her husband never discussed his earnings with her and the entire day, the only sustenance she received was at the researcher’s house. Else, she would have to wait till nine or ten pm every night when her husband brought back the leftover food from his workplace. Many a time, the researcher and her partner would reason with Gulabi’s husband that she needs more care in her advanced stage of pregnancy. He used to get at least three hours free every afternoon before the preparations would commence for dinner and he could come then to do the domestic work. His work place was situated within walking distance from our residence. He never accepted the idea. Gulabi carried on with her labour and only her elder sister came to help her out for a fortnight. She was conscious of the fact that her husband was neglecting her welfare, but ‘accepted’ it as a normal occurrence. Finally, a daughter was born to Gulabi and suffered the same neglect. Her existence was simply ignored and thereby devalued. Never did the researcher observe the father carrying the small baby or showing any sign of affection. For the daughter, the only sustenance was the breast milk and after that no regular food. Even when the girl child was one and a half years of age, she did not attain the normal height or weight. In July 2014, Gulabi realized that she had conceived again and abruptly left the researcher’s place. They lived for a few months on rent but found it very expensive. Again, they shifted to another servants’ quarters in the university area. The arrangement worked for a few months and then Gulabi delivered a baby boy. Obviously, she could not work with two small children and a non-cooperative husband and was forced to quit the job. Case C (Vimala) Vimala belonged to Uttarakhand, a daughter of a sepoy in the Indian Army. She was very proud of her Kshatriya caste. Vimala managed to study till matriculation and her father’s early demise meant that she had to

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discontinue her studies. She had an arranged marriage albeit to a person who did not have a regular job. Her husband worked on a contract basis in the university. Often, she would reminisce about her life when her father was around and how he would pamper her. She would chide her husband that he is not able to get half the things for their daughter which her own father would bring her and would often talk with pride of her extended family who were all very well placed. She was very depressed, which impacted her ability to work. One reason was her fall from grace that she was reduced to domestic labour. She never informed her relatives that she was working as a domestic help and staying in the servants’ quarters. Another major cause of despair was her ‘perceived inability’ to bear a male child. She had a nine-year-old daughter and subsequently she was on medication to conceive again. She suffered repeated miscarriages. The social stigma about the lack of a male child deeply affected her psyche. At her previous colony on the outskirts of Delhi, where mostly migrants from Uttarakhand resided, she mentioned that many women would not allow their male kids to play at her place saying that she might bewitch them. She was undergoing ritual self-mortification to attain her dream of a male child. She would never eat non-vegetarian food and never even had a cup of tea at our place since we cook all kinds of food in our kitchen, which was ritually unclean for her. All the other domestic helps had meals or tea at the researcher’s place. Very diligently, she would perform rituals like “karva chauth etc” and would feel bitter that, compared to her more wealthy relatives, she cannot afford fancy clothes, et cetera. However, she was mindful of her appearance and observed that consuming all the medicines to conceive has made her put on weight and so, she was cautious of her diet. She was very much enamoured of television soap operas. Vimla was shocked to learn that the researcher and her partner do not have a biological child and had an adopted daughter. In her universe, we were inauspicious people and she was forced to ‘see’ our face every day which would impact her ‘dreams’ (male child) also. All this made sense when her daughter (who unlike similar kids of her age would not sing film songs or rhymes, etc.) used to recite a prayer to the goddess. She would tie a red bandanna over her head and one of the lines in the prayer was very significant—bless the barren woman with a son. Significantly, Vimala would call her husband ‘papa’. He would get up early, make breakfast for his family and do the chores in the researcher’s household before leaving for work.

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Since her discovery, her relationship with us underwent a drastic change. She reduced her interactions with us and her husband would do the domestic work. What really angered her was that on the day of Diwali, we cooked non-vegetarian food as our relatives had come on a visit. She asked as to why the researcher is breaking the norms. Our response was that if our relatives wished to enjoy a particular food, we will cook it. Abruptly, she walked off after two days and her husband profusely apologized for her behaviour. We came to know a few months back that she had delivered a baby boy. Case D (Ramadevi) The very first time she came looking for work, she proudly proclaimed, “we are pandits from Uttarakhand, we are very reliable and hardworking”. Ramadevi’s father is a lower level employee in the university and she got married at the age of 17. She constantly carries this grouse against her father that he got her married to a good-for nothing fellow. For three years, she stayed in the village with her husband’s family. He was working in a hotel in Delhi and did not meet her at all. She did all kinds of work including construction labour. She recalls that if the quantity of grass which she cut from the forest was not enough, her mother-in-law would deny her food as punishment. Relocating back to Delhi made her realize that her husband cannot earn enough for the family. Meanwhile she bore two sons. Both the times, she went alone for the pre-natal and post-natal treatments. He was never involved in the routine affairs of the family. He runs a small canteen and the larger part of the profit goes to liquor and some to the family. She started living in the servant quarters as that would entail both shelter and food along with regular wages. For the past 25 years that has been her life. Often, she yearns for a daughter as she too would have helped her in the domestic chores. She treats her sons as little princes who should not do any kind of work, but laze around the entire day. She also identified herself with the markers of purity and pollution. One previous employer (a Brahmin family in the university) asked her to clean the puja room as she was also a Brahmin and also mentioned that she would never give this privilege to any other domestic help who belonged to a different caste. Ramadevi also ensured that she would not enter the puja room if she was menstruating. Even in her home, she would clean all

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the bed sheets and other linen once her periods were over as she considered it dirty. (None of the other three respondents shared similar ideas.) Ramadevi has spent the longest period in domestic work compared to the others. She yearned to live a ‘free’ life without any restrictions. “Why did I get married? One should never get married. If only I were a male, I too would be free to enjoy my life. My father did a big mistake in getting me married to a lazy fellow. I pray that in my next birth I am born as a male. Even a rickshaw puller would be more hard working and would have built a house by now”. One day she asked me about my pet dog and I replied that she is neutered. Her prompt response, “wish I had also undergone an operation then no hassle of bearing children”. Very hardworking and a colourful character, Ramadevi yearned to enjoy life. She went alone to watch the film ‘Dabangg’, as her favourite actor—Salman Khan—is the film’s hero. She loved to attend weddings, meet friends and relatives, but her husband refuses to accompany her even to meet the extended family. If one were to observe Ramadevi’s natal family then fate has indeed been cruel to her. Her younger sister completed her post-graduation (took tuitions to fund her studies), worked for a private firm and then married a person of her choice, different community but from the same state. Her husband is also very supportive and she has employed a domestic help. Her younger brother is pursuing his doctoral research in China. He learnt Chinese and received a fellowship from the University Grants Commission for his studies. Many a time, she comments that whenever she runs into her old employers, they would ask her as to when she will ‘retire’ from domestic work. She dreams of the day when her sons would get government jobs, no matter even if they work as security men in the university. Ramadevi has worked in various houses within the university campus and can share delightful anecdotes about the homes and employees for whom she worked. In a way, this has made the males in her family more lazy and indolent. The servant quarters offer rent free accommodation, with free electricity and water. Any repair which is required is undertaken by the university authorities. She is also paid for her work. So, there is no compulsion on them to labour hard and achieve upward mobility. Though her husband is running a canteen for almost two decades, he hardly makes any profit due to his drinking. Often, he gets the leftover food for the family and she is saved the bother of cooking. If they were to stay outside, the cost of living would be high. Often she would point out that once she finishes her work in the master’s house, she feels lazy to cook or clean in her quarters.

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Some Observations Though all the four women worked/are working as domestic help, their lived experiences are shaped by their material existence. When the women’s natal families were supportive, they could depend on them for financial and monetary help. (Case A Savita and Case D Ramadevi) This helped them to tide over difficult times. In this aspect, Ramadevi is very lucky as her mother resides in the hostel quarters of the university. She provides her with medicines for common ailments from the health centre. In the winter of January 2015, Ramadevi fell sick with pneumonia and her father took her to the doctor and brought medicines, et cetera. Her parents keep trying to convince their son-in-law to pay more attention to family issues and quit his drinking. Amongst the four, only Ramadevi’s husband is a regular drinker which has hampered their economic prosperity. One fact which was very glaringly oblivious to the caste or economic background was that none of the women had any agency regarding their future. The marriage negotiations are conducted by the families and they are just expected to consent. If the marriage turns out to be bad, that is fate. They should not to rebel against their traditional values. Ramadevi was very vocal about her personal relationship. After her marriage, for three years, her husband did not visit her in the village and her mother-in-­ law would threaten her that if Ramadevi disobeys her, she would ask her son to throw her out and get married again. “Those days I was very scared and the only consolation was to visit my grandmother who lived in the adjoining village. Finally, she informed my father about my plight who came and took me back to Delhi. Initially, we stayed with my parents but after the children were born, we moved out and thus began my journey in various servants’ quarters”. She pointed out that many women in the village, fed up with domestic stress, jump into the river after tying a stone on their legs. Now she is more confident that her children are grown up and she need not bow to anyone’s diktats. The female body is an instrument—to labour, both for economic and reproductive reasons. The only fulfilment is once an heir—a male child is produced. Then she is freed from social stigma and can hold her head high—that is the greatest security she can hope to achieve. As Ramadevi observed, “even if my husband is useless; hopefully my sons will look after me. Once my sons start working, I will move out of the quarters and quit working as a servant”. She also yearns for a daughter, who will help in household chores. Except for Ramadevi, whose children are young adults,

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the rest all have very small children. For Savita and Vimala, their husbands are very cooperative and help with the domestic chores. Once Ramadevi happened to mention that she would tie both her kids to the bedpost and then work in the ‘kothi’, local word for the master’s house, else she can never finish her work. There was no one to mind her children, whether they had food, et cetera. They have internalized the neglect, the silent disregard of their needs and pleasures as something very normal and routinized. As Ramadevi pointed out, “you (meaning the researcher) can fight with your husband and still be respected because you are educated and employed. We can never do it”. They never consider their labour as ‘work’, whereas it’s because of their work that the family is enjoying shelter and other facilities. Savita’s husband got a permanent government job because of the domestic work. Now, her status has improved and she is no longer a domestic worker. Incidentally, in her husband’s family, he is the only one with such a secure job. The women realize that the only asset they possess is their bodies, but neglect to care for it. It does not carry any value in its own right. During conversations, they do not have any shared memories of intimacy with their husbands. Often, they reminisce about the fact that they could not continue their studies or they would be in a better position. Ramadevi’s husband comes home every evening after consuming liquor and just goes to bed. Her complaint is that he never took her for an outing. She would go alone and watch movies. As she observed, “when we were young, he did not pay any attention to me. Now what’s the point talking about it in the old age”. The husband of Gulabi never showed any affection for their daughter nor helped her in any chores during her pregnancy. They were conscious of bodily adornments, but neglected their own daughter’s well-being. In Ramadevi’s world, the husband’s worth lies in the fact that the wife is sitting at home and not worried about earning money. Interestingly, she enquired of the researcher’s partner as to why she goes out to work when her spouse has a government job? In all the cases, the golden period of their existence was in the natal family, where they were taken care of and their desires were fulfilled. However, they never questioned as to why the natal family did not educate them despite having the means nor asked for their opinion on crucial issues. Coincidently, in all the cases, the marriage occurred with the first person who approached the family. Ramadevi once pondered as to why her parents were in such a hurry to marry her off? They could have waited and seen some more suitable proposals instead of agreeing to the first

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person. On the contrary, her younger sister has done well in life. If their natal family is prosperous enough to care for them during their pregnancy or other illnesses, they can be more secure. Amongst all the four, Gulabi’s plight was more precarious as she cannot expect any support from her natal family due to extreme poverty. What is very interesting is once they start working as domestic help in the university campus, their lifestyle undergoes a quiet change. This was very evident in the conversations. For Vimala, there is no one to taunt her inability to produce a son as there are no prying neighbours. Gulabi found the campus very quiet without any hindrance from others. Ramadevi also echoed similar sentiments. For the most part of her life, she and her family have spent in the servants’ quarters in the university area. Before coming to work for us, they had moved to a nearby slum cluster as she failed to find any accommodation in the campus. She was shocked at the language people used and did not want her sons to be ‘spoiled’ by the bad company as she found them to be ‘dirty’ people. By virtue of being a government servant, Savita’s husband has got the official quarters, albeit Group D segment, but a far cry from staying in a slum. For all the other three women, their highest aspiration was that their husband/son will get ‘permanent’ in the university. The husbands of Vimala and Gulabi are working on a contract basis for many years. Ramadevi often pesters the researcher to appoint her sons as a security guard, a gardener, or even a peon in any university department. Her only aspiration is to secure government jobs for her sons and the best location would be in the university. Migration is considered as an opportunity for a better life, which would lead to upward mobility. There might be economic gains for the males; for the female counterparts, the labour increases as they have to engage in wage labour. In addition, they lack the cushion of a supportive kin network. They suffer the humiliation of working as domestic help, to be at the beck and call of everyone and to live with ‘unconcerned’ partners. Only Savita escaped the life of domestic servant, but, for the others, there is no immediate hope of doing so. If they wish to enjoy the comforts of a peaceful accommodation, they have no choice but to work in the ‘kothis’. ‘As Ramadevi admits that as long as our body works, as long as my hands and legs are capable of labour, I can eat or else I will be thrown out’. Inter-­ generational negligence is part of their life worlds. Even during their pregnancies, they need to work with only a short break for childbirth. The lack of nutrition and care affect the children, more so the girl child who becomes a victim of chronic negligence.

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In his Booker Prize winning novel, The White Tiger, Aravind Adiga wrote a tale of “two Indias”, capturing the desperation of the marginalized sections (in his story, the protagonist happens to be a domestic worker). “Do you know about Hanuman, sir? He was the faithful servant of the god Rama, and we worship him in our temples because he is a shining example of how to serve your masters with absolute fidelity, love, and devotion. These are the kinds of gods they have foisted on us … Understand, now, how hard it is for a man to win his freedom in India” (Adiga 2008). The researcher wishes to thank Dr. Nasreen Chowdhory  (DU), Prof Mary John (CWDS) and Prof N. Sukumar (DU) for their academic inputs on this research.

References Chakravarty, Uma and Kumkum Roy, tr. 1991. Poems of Early Buddhist Nuns, Women Writing in India: 600 B.C. to the Early Twentieth Century, ed. Susie Tharu and K.  Lalita, vol. 1, p  68. The Feminist Press, The City University of New York. Chanana, Devraj. 1990. Slavery in Ancient India: As Depicted in Pali and Sanskrit Texts, p. 64. Delhi: People’ Publishing House. Chakravarty, Uma. 2007. Everyday Lives, Everyday Histories: Beyond the Kings and Brahmanas of Ancient India, p. 71. Tulika Books. Finley, M.I. 1964. Between Slavery and Freedom. Comparative Studies in Society and History 6 (3): 233–249. Kara, Siddharth. 2012. Bonded Labor: Tackling the System of Slavery in South Asia, p. 18. New York: Columbia University Press. Kautilya, Arthasastra, (tr.) by R.  Shamasastry, https://csboa.com/eBooks/ Arthashastra_of_Chanakya_-­_English.pdf, p. 63. Accessed 28 June 2018. Kautilya, Arthasastra, (tr.) by R. Shamasastry, ibid. For details refer, R. S. Sharma, India’s Ancient Past, OUP, 2007, pp. 113–114. Sharma, R.S. 1977. Conflict, Distribution and Differentiation in Rg Vedic Society. Proceedings of the Indian History Congress 38: 177–191. p. 3. Chandogya Upanishad, XXIV.2 quoted by Uma Chakravarty, The Myth of the Golden Age of Equality -Women Slaves in Ancient India, Manushi, http:// www.manushi-­i ndia.org/pdfs_issues/PDF%20Files%2018/8.The%20 Myth%20of%20the%20Golden%20Age%20of%20Equality.pdf, pp.  8–12. Accessed 20 June 2018 Sharma, ibid., ‘Conflict, Distribution and Differentiation’, pp. 10–11. Sharma ibid., p. 3. Chanana, Opcit, Slavery in Ancient India, p. 21.

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Vinaya Pitaka, Vol. III, p. 135, quoted by I. B. Horner, The Woman Worker, (ed) Vijaya Ramaswamy, Women and Work in Pre-Colonial India, Sage Publications, 2016. Uma Chakravarty, op cit, p. 88. Ibid p. 89. Arthasastra, 3.13.9 (tr) Shamasastry, Opcit. Refer to Census of India, 1911, vol. 1, India. Part I, Report by E.A. Gait. Calcutta: Superintendent Government Printing, India, 1913. Census of India, 1921, vol. 1, India. Part I, Report by J.  T. Marten (Calcutta, 1924); Census of India, 1931, vol. V, Bengal and Sikkim, Part I, Report by A. E. Porter (Calcutta, 1933). Roberts, D.E. 1997. Spiritual and Menial Housework. Yale Journal of Law and Feminism 9 (51): p. 17. Anderson, Bridget. 2000. Doing the Dirty Work? The Global Politics of Domestic Labour, p. 1. Zed Books. Anderson, ibid., p. 14. Social Alert quoted in SCF 2005, quoted in Deshingkar. P and S. Akter, ‘Migration and Human Development in India’, Human Development Research Papers-­ HDRP 2009–13, New York, UNDP, p. 24. Neetha, N. 2004. Making of Female Breadwinners Migration and Social Networking of Women Domestics in Delhi. Economic and Political Weekly, April 24, pp. 1681–1688. Scott Fulford, The Puzzle of Marriage Migration in India October 2013 The statistics in this paragraph are based on the calculations from the Indian National Sample Surveys and the India Human Development Survey. 2013 World Bank/ CGD/AFD International Conference on Migration and Development at Al Akhawayn University in Morocco, p. 2. Annual Report to the People on Employment, GOI, Ministry of Labour and Employment, 1 July 2010, p. 35. Surabhi Tandon Mehrotra, A Report on Domestic Workers: Conditions, Rights and Responsibilities- A Study of Part-time Domestic Workers in Delhi, 2016. http://www.jagori.org/wp-content/uploads/2006/01/Final_DW_English_ report_10-­8-­2011.pdf Accessed 20 June 2018. National Domestic Workers’ Movement, http://ndwm.org/ Accessed 27 June 2018. Anderson, Op cit. Kujar and Jha. 2008. A Report on Domestic Workers Conditions, Rights and Responsibilities, A Study of Part Time Domestic Workers in Delhi, https:// docplayer.net/amp/57029128-­A-­r eport-­on-­domestic-­workers-­conditions-­ rights-­and-­r esponsibilities-­a-­study-­of-­part-­time-­domestic-­workers-­in-­delhi. html, p. 25. Accessed 27 June 2018 Ibid.

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(D’Souza 2010: 27). D’Souza, Asha. 2010. Moving Towards Decent Work for Domestic Workers: An Overview of the ILO’s Work, ILO Working Paper 2/2010, ILO Bureau for Gender Equality, http://www.ilo.org/wcmsp5/ groups/public/@dgreports/@gender/documents/publication/ wcms_142905.pdf, 2010, p. 27. Accessed 28 June 2018 Chandrasekhar, C.P., and Ghosh, Jayati. 2012. Changing Patterns of Domestic Work, Business Line, 12/11/2012. Retrieved from http://www.thehindubusinessline.com/opinion/columns/c-p-chandrasekhar/changing-patterns-­ of-domestic-work/article4091075.ece on 17/06/2013 Accessed 25 July 2018. Neetha, N. 2013. Paid Domestic Work: Making Sense of the Jigsaw Puzzle. Economic and Political Weekly 48 (43): pp. 35–38. Chandrasekhar, C.P., and Ghosh, Jayati. 2012. opcit. Kajal, Kapil. 2020. Why Indian Housewives Are Killing Themselves? India Spend, February 18. https://www.indiaspend.com/why-indian-housewives-arekilling-­­themselves/ Accessed 18 February 2020. All names have been changed to protect privacy. (Case A) She worked from 2008–2012. (Case B) She worked from 2012 June to July 2014. (Case C) She worked from August 2014 to November 2014. (Case D) From December 2014 till date. Adiga, Arvind. 2008. The White Tiger, p. 19. Harper Collins Publishers.

CHAPTER 8

Forced Displacement Studies in India: An Overview Biswajit Mohanty

Introduction The chapter is on the history of contested ideas and critiques of different theories of displacement studies. It outlines a brief history of planning and formulation of land acquisition law in colonial time and maps the evolution of forced displacement studies that came up after the process of planned development in post-independent India. The chapter analyses conceptual, theoretical appurtenants and major shifts in understanding displacement in post-colonial displacement studies. The chapter also situates the gender issue within the displacement studies and practice. It argues that core to the process of development is the co-existence of adversative phenomena of progress/growth and displacement/dislocation, growth and poverty, growth and inequality, and progress and ‘inequality of place’. The managerial theory, propounded by Cernea (2000a), when emphasises on the mitigation of the displacement risks,

B. Mohanty (*) Deshbandhu College, University of Delhi, New Delhi, India © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2022 N. Chowdhory, P. Banerjee (eds.), Gender, Identity and Migration in India, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-16-5598-2_8

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the politics of displacement theories have different understandings on the issue of development and displacement. Politics of displacement has four important theoretical variants. First, primitive accumulation theory of displacement as propounded by Kalyan Sanyal and recently been adopted by Chakravarti and Dhar (2010), Mitra et  al. (2017) and Samaddar (2017) conceptualises displacement within the capitalist system of production and displacement as ‘process of dissolution’ that expropriates powerless from their sources of livelihood (Chakravarti and Dhar 2010; Samaddar 2017). It produces and normalises labour forces for the capitalist system. Second, the movement of movements theory, propounded by Mertes (2004) believes that displacement is part of disembedded market which is unjust and non-inclusive. The approach discards the technological basis and the paradigm behind the development project and vouches for ‘Resistance and Reconstruction’ idea. Their model of resettlement shifts from ‘economics of compensation in monetary terms’ to compensation on the land for land policy. The third theory treats displacement as a state of exception imbricated within the development process. Every state of displacement is state of exception. The Calcutta Research Group, and recently published special issue of International Journal of Migration and Border Studies edited by Nasreen Chowdhory (2016) on the theme Displacement as State of Exception, highlight that displacement is not the norm but its presence itself is a deviation from the norm, where rights are violated with impunity, bodies are sacrificed but not killed: there develops a zone of indistinction where democracy and totalitarianism co-exist. Fourth, the spatial theory of displacement takes into account the analysis of meaning of displacement in relation to ‘spatial consciousness’ (Mohanty 2016). Displacement and rehabilitation reveal the terrains of power relationship associated with place. Place becomes ‘product of social activity’ whose meaning is acquired through spatiality of life-worlds of displaced people. It is the fact of ‘opaqueness’, fixity of place (land) or ‘illusion of transparency’, the constructed meaning of place (habitat/ home) that enables the formation of identity among the displaced people, that remains the major issue within this theory.

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Mapping the Trajectory Planned development started during the colonial regime. It started with the motive of expanding and reordering colonial topography and had implicit project of segregating Europeans and Indian population (Johnson 2011). It started with the establishment of British military cantonments, away from the ‘Native towns’, railway stations, hill stations to escape the sweltering heat of plain areas, bungalows and gardens. It created a ‘compartmentalised world’, where compound walls and checkpoints were erected, imposing structures were built to intrinsically differentiate the Raj’s subjects from European rulers. Acquisition of land to reorder land use for developmental purposes started during the colonial period and was guided by Lockean labour theory of property and ‘‘accumulation by dispossession’’: it appropriated landscapes of ‘already-inhabited and already-used territories’ (Whitehead 2010: 84) Locke’s category of wasteland guided the British administration in colonising land. This category helped to open major ‘fault lines’ in the colonial administration, where the governed were differentiated as ‘essentialised subject positions’. Castes were differentiated from tribe on the basis of their settlements. They were kept in binary opposition to each other, which influenced the policies of land use. The zamindary settlement system and ryotwari systems, on the one hand, and the forest legislations, on the other, manifested the same logic of segregation of caste and tribes and accordingly constituted differential law and administrative practices (Whitehead 2010; Guha 1984; see also Gadgil and Guha 2005). The wasteland management of Britishers shows how ‘populations thought to inhabit socially differentiated landscapes were also deemed to be essentially, racially dissimilar in ways that closely adhered to Lockean distinctions between the settled and the savage, states of culture and states of nature, and the propertied and the propertyless’ (Whitehead 2010: 84). The legitimacy of the state of acquiring land was based on compensation to the land holders and its use for public good. These two utilitarian provisions were overlooked by the concept of eminent domain that had the politics of ‘necessity’ tagged to it (Skinner and Feldman 2015). According to the authors ‘necessity, then, is the grounding of eminent domain of power… that the relevant governing body adopt a ‘Resolution of Necessity’ prior to eminent domain’ (Skinner and Feldman 2015: 397). These discursive colonial categories have been retained in independent India. There have been several pieces of legislation to acquire private

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property and colonising land to build roads, canals and administrative paraphernalia. The British government used different laws to acquire land. The Bengal Regulation I of 1824 was the first such legislation made in colonial India. In 1850, while developing Calcutta town and subsequently building Railways this provision was used extensively. In Bombay and Colaba, the British used the 1839 Building Act XXVIII to expand roads, construct new public roads, thoroughfares and other paraphernalia associated with city structures. In Madras, land acquisition laws were enacted after the 1852 Act xx was passed. With the crown takeover in 1857, Act VI was passed that had provisions related to taking over of land for the ‘public purpose’ falling within the jurisdiction of the colonial administration. It had the facility of paying compensation for land acquired (Bhattacharyya 2018: 48). All these acts enabled the East India Company to acquire private property in the name of public purpose on behalf of private companies, as well (Bhattacharyya 2018). These acts led to the formulation of the Land Acquisition Act, 1894 that entirely ‘remapped state authority, the subject’s rights and legal scope for imperialism.’’ The RTFCTLARRA (Right to Fair Compensation and Transparency in Land Acquisition, Rehabilitation and Resettlement Act) 2013 is a customised form of the colonial law. According to the Internal Displacement Monitoring Center (IDMC), a Norwegian organisation, in 2019 alone there were nearly five million people have been displaced in India that includes natural disaster, conflicts and political violence (Chacko, 2020). Due to lack of a consolidated database on development induced displacement in India, and an overarching authoritative institution to compiling data from various sources, one can state that at least 40–50 million people would have been displaced since independence till 1990, and about 250 lakh people in India have been displaced due to development related projects. Of these displaced 30–40% were tribes (Sen 1995: 243) Among the displaced 40% belong to the tribal community (Fernandes 2004: 1192). Three processes contributed to the growth of displacement as initially a subgroup of different disciplines and later an independent area of social inquiry. First, the building block of independent research on displacement was founded on the writing of independent researchers and ‘‘mono-­ ethnographies’’. Displacement was independently studied by anthropologists and mainly remained within the domain of, and appendage to, the Sociology and Anthropology disciplines. In India, and in the world, a pioneer in capturing the traumatic experience of displacement of the displaced

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tribes was B K Roy Burman (1961) with his study on the Rourkela Steel Plant in Odisha. This study ‘pre-dates’ many studies carried out in Europe and Africa on displacement. L K Mahapatra (1991) began a scientific inquiry into the complex processes of displacement (Cernea 2006: 9). Social Anthropological studies that maintained virtual ‘‘monopoly’’ on displacement and resettlement issues had a ‘‘slow and sporadic progress’’ from the 1950s to the late 1980s. Subsequently, the economic aspect of displacement was explored where concepts, theories and models were used to refine and develop displacement and resettlement studies (Cernea 1999: 2147–48). According to Cernea, the seven principal characteristics of knowledge developed on resettlement studies are: (a) it is more ‘intensive and substantive, ‘‘thicker‘‘ than before’; (b) it involves new sectors of economy as economy expanded beyond domestic border; (c) it has moved from description to prescription and subsequently into operational research; (d) quantification; (e) it has gone beyond the micro studies to macro studies and the supra-national domain; (f) thereby, generating theoretical models and hypothesis for further research; and (g) integration of political inputs by increasingly assimilating different kinds of participants into the decision-making processes. The second factor that led to the growth of knowledge on displacement as a distinct study with its own formulation of concepts, models and theories is the institutionalisation of displacement and resettlement within the realm of policy formulation (Cernea 2006: 9). The practical needs of the planners  – government official, international institutions like the World Bank and many non-governmental organisation – and policy formulations reinforced theory as well. The inquiry gave the policy makers inputs to codify guidelines while taking up developmental projects to mitigate the displacement risks and rehabilitation woes. The third process that influenced and is still influencing the displacement and rehabilitation studies is the popular resistance to development projects for the loss of livelihood in the course of displacement and rehabilitation processes. People’s resistance opened up hosts of issues and provided the empirical content for formulation, implementation as well as evaluation of projects. The number of displaced remained a benchmark for building a project. As the resistance to displacement grew in India against all kinds of major and medium developmental projects, of which many became successful in stalling the projects, a vast array of literature on politics, economics, sociology and cultural studies on displacement and rehabilitation were carried out contributing to refinement of knowledge on

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the subject displacement. The policies also got refined to take into account the nuances of displacement and institutional set-ups to minimise the loss. Within the history of the processes of physical displacement the basic conception of displacement had remained hidden.

The Changing Conception of Displacement Ideas have a life of its own which moves in a normative and causative way and permeated by contemporary developments and experiences. It is important to study the development of ideas for three distinct reasons. First, the ideas have the power to influence institutions and institutionalised policies; second, ideas create epistemic communities those put about society through their technical expertise; third, ideas are enabling that helps creation of agents to change not only themselves but also their surroundings (Weiss and Korn 2006: 7–8). In this context it is important to outline the development of the concept within the internal displacement studies. Population displacement is a process of expropriation, which is defined in terms of power of the state to force people out of their place of habitual and/or legal residence. It may be loss of house or land or lawful/moral habitations. The project-affected persons (PAPs) are compulsively made to yield the ‘right of way’ for construction of developmental or environmental projects (Cernea 2006). The conceptual history of forced eviction and the practice of resettlement based on those conceptual understanding can be broadly divided into utilitarian and substantive categories. In its utilitarian definition, specially used by administrative officers, displacement is conceived as the loss of place of dwelling. For them, though the loss of land tantamount to loss of productivity of population directly dependent on them but they are not evicted from their houses technically because they are not evicted from their house that provides them security. The substantive definition of displacement critiques this view on the ground that instead of emphasising on economics of displacement, it reduces the whole issue to geography. For them the land is a source of livelihood as well as identity (Cernea 2006). Dwelling does not mean just the house where people reside but it also means the places of dependence: land, forest, common properties and dependence on land owned by others. Hence, according to the substantive view, displacement as a process

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involves not just eviction from one’s place of residence but also deprivation resulting from severance of relations of dependence. Population displacement caused by development or any other projects was initially defined in terms of physical eviction from original place and/ or land of inhabitation. Equating home with land became the point of dispute among researchers. Those who equated land with hearth argued that even if land is taken over, the house can give them a sense of security. Many others disputed this and stated that one has to distinguish between ‘dis-placed’ from hearth and from the land. This narrow and reductive definition of equating land with homestead ‘belittles the core economic content of displacement and reduces it to geography’ (Cernea 2006: 14). The expropriation from home did not take into account the dependents on land and landless. There was a growing demand to include them as well as to include women as an independent category as they were left out of the provisions of compensation. In the environmental projects, for instance, the people live under constant threat to be displaced as they have no legal entitlement over land there. To cover all these categories many researchers have argued with documented empirical evidences that ‘enforcement of “restricted access” to resources vital for livelihood is tantamount to economic displacement, destitution and impoverishment.’ This definition based on ‘access-restriction’ of the displaced recognised and to some extent tried to pre-empt the impoverishment risk of the displaced who would suffer. The new definition became the benchmark for the international donor agency such as the World Bank. The World Bank recognised this and defined displacement as ‘involuntary restrictions’ and loss of access to sources of livelihood (Cernea 2006; Also see, World Bank, OP 4.12 art. 36 and Note 9). A new term was introduced by the scholars and activists to describe the displaced person as the ‘project-affected person (PAP). Seven years after the World Bank formulated the new conception of displacement, India adopted LAAR, 2013 Act or famously known as The Right to Fair Compensation and Transparency in Land Acquisition, Rehabilitation and Resettlement Act, 2013 where the definition of the PAP became very inclusive. It noted that the affected families are those (a) whose land and other immovable property have been acquired; (b) those persons whose livelihood is affected by land acquisition for the project namely, agricultural labourers, tenants with or without usufruct rights, share croppers, artisans working within that area for three years before the land acquisition; (c) the scheduled tribes and other traditional forest

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dwellers (OTFD) who have lost their forest rights. It also covers those families who have been dependent on forest or those water bodies for their livelihood; people who are the beneficiaries of land distribution by the state and the central government; (d) it covers people from urban areas who were residing in any land or land is the primary source of livelihood three years prior to the acquisition (RTFCTLARRA, 2013, chapter 1 section 3). In short, displacement is not just uprooting of community from a place. It is but also a process: a process of exclusion that ‘‘cumulates physical exclusion from a geographic territory with economic and social exclusion out of a set of functioning social networks’’, a ‘spiral of impoverishments’, disempowering in the sense of disentitlement and loss of rights and dehumanising process (Cernea 2000a: 3659). The process starts with the formal declaration of the project and ends up with physical removal from the place. Displacement became synonymous with impoverished risks, unjust and inequality. Displacement is ‘‘restricted access’’ to certain natural resources, even if affected groups are not physically relocated (Cernea 2006: 8). In the post-Cold War era, the world is witnessing displacement of various kinds. Several factors have contributed to the internal development of people in large scale. There have been violent ethnic conflicts and cleansing, natural disasters, disease, and economic deprivation and lack of job opportunities leading to mass migration from rural to urban areas within the confines of the nation-state. The movement of people from their original habitat has increased manifold. Displacement became synonymous with forced or involuntary displacement (Dwivedi 2002: 715–16) and internal displacement where the concept became a ‘‘polymorphous form of dislocation’’ where expropriation of space, both mental and material form, got associated with the hegemony of development process created by the state. It is a ‘‘totalising form of expropriation of space of living’’ and surreptitious disruption and dismantling of the space of living (Chakravarti and Dhar 2010: 7). There was an attempt to link the refugee studies and the displacement studies as both the categories are dealing with forced displacement and involuntary resettlement. There are very striking similarities between the two in terms of dealing with the social and economic problems. There was a lot of interest shown to bridge the gap. It was thought that both the studies would gain immensely empirically, theoretically, methodologically, and politically (Cernea 2000b: 17). In order to achieve the end both

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agreed that each should do theory-building by using overarching theoretical concepts and categories and structured comparison and models (Cernea 2000b: 17). Voutira and Harrell-Bond state that ‘impoverishment is a consequence of virtually all types of displacement. This is certainly true, and methodologically it (impoverishment) allows for a common denominator in refugees and oustees experience.’ For them, the common meeting ground is the ‘reconstructing livelihood’ as the development-­ induced, displaced or conflict-inflicted refugees’ restoring livelihood is an important policy challenge (Voutira and Harrell-Bond 2000: 56). Though there are meeting points, the challenges differ. On the one hand, the oustees remain as citizens, maybe with a few exceptions, with right to compensation, but, on the other hand, refugees are no longer citizens but are dependent on the host countries and international protocols and policies implemented by the multilateral agencies in a host country. A lot of things are dependent the physical protection before and after returning and situation in the host countries. The expropriation of space became an important theoretical scaffolding to understand displacement as a place for creation of marginality, power and governmentality. According to Ranabir Samaddar ‘Marginalities indicate marginal situations, marginal actors, processes of making segments marginal, techniques of producing marginal situations, the asymmetric power play in society, but more than all these, marginalities indicate strategies of inclusion, exclusion, differential exclusion and, most important, techniques of turning spaces into marginal enclaves—and all these in the interest of effective government’ (Samaddar 2009: 17–18). The evictees, those marginal farmers, landless, dislocated tribes claimed for justice, which was a by-product of marginality. The principles of equity or proper compensation for displacement to live a dignified life became an important issue within the rehabilitation debate (Jones 2009; Nayak 2013). It demanded ‘equal life chances’ where people should control the outcome; ‘equal concern for people’s need’ i.e. distribution of basic goods for a dignified life and fair opportunity to avail fair competition (Jones 2009: vi). Though there are problems in the equity framework but it became a rallying point for the social action groups opposing displacement and resettlement and the policy makers sympathetic to their cause. The Indian government followed this principle to some extent as the basis of the economics of compensation and formulation of rehabilitation policies. Gradually the term displacement was replaced by the concept of dislocation. Dislocation expropriated everyday life of people from their living

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spaces, which created a condition of exception in the life-world of the displaced. Displacement became synonymous with ‘‘states of exception, state of transition with little and no social and political rights’’. Dislocation is a ‘‘bare life’’ where life is reduced to biological conditions (Chowdhory 2016: 95). Though there are citizenship rights guaranteed under the constitution, the condition of displacement which is imposed on people violated those very rights with impunity. Democracy and totalitarian conditions exist in a zone of indistinction (Mohanty 2016) where citizens have no access to the elementary rights. The state became the very problem for its citizens.

Perspectives on Forced Displacement Development of conceptual history of displacement is not bereft of its theoretical antecedents and precedents. The following sections deal with those theoretical frameworks where displacement as an area of analytical-­ study-­developed theories, models and tested hypotheses based on empirical evidences from the ground. Economics of Compensation Approach or Managerial Approach It was first Kaldor (1939) and subsequently Hicks (1939 and 1941) within the broad frame of welfare economics developed the idea of providing compensation to people who have given up their resources for achieving greater common goods famously became Kaldor and Hicks model. This approach was a critique of Pareto-Optimality principle that believes that the resources distribution should be made in such a way that one or more individuals become better off and no individual worse off. Hicks and Kaldor critique that the Pareto optimality model cannot order who would be better off in the process of redistribution (for details Chakravarti and Dhar 2010; Martin 2019). They proposed a theory that went beyond individual economic agent to include community. For this model, from the gains accruing due to the project to a community or individual compensation can always be parted from this to those losing out in the process and still can accrue a net gain despite the compensation paid (Martin, 2019, P2). Subsequently, Michael M Cernea (2000b) adopted this model and improvised this and added the Impoverishment Risk and Reconstruction or IRR approach. He believed that by identifying risks one can mitigate

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them by taking socio-economic measures. According to Cernea, two factors have to be taken into account for the ‘self-destroying prophecy’ to succeed. The first factor is that the institutions should provide cushions by providing basic amenities to the resettlers and displaced to at least to minimise the risk. They should provide proper rehabilitation package and areas of relocation in accordance with the social and cultural needs of the community life. The second condition for Cernea is a built-in compensatory package within the project to compensate the temporal loss to the growth of community from the very process of getting displaced to getting resettled. The basic assumptions of the model are, first, displacement is integral to development that colonises physical space. The colonisation of space is aimed at expropriating people from land where land is used to reproduce life. The expropriation has an economics attached to it where development is defined in terms of economic growth. Hence, people are to give up their claim over physical space that they occupy. In short, development is inevitable so is displacement. Hence, the logic of development should not be disturbed by dislocation processes and hence should be solved independent of the logic of development; second, to upset the loss of dislocation an ‘economics of compensation’ should be charted out. In lieu of giving up the physical space, the displaced people are to be compensated as a larger canvass of the poverty management exercise; third, they all believed in ‘the epistemological arbitrariness of utility comparison following the absence of any common denominator to compensate the displaced’; fourth, all the policy makers believed in monetary compensation method that meets the ‘Pareto optimality criteria’, which is for them scientifically objective and epistemologically neutral; fifth, in terms of an area of study, there an alliance of economics and sociology. For instance, Cernea and McDowell (2000) in their book Risks and Reconstruction: Experiences of Resettlers and Refugees, taking the case studies across the world, have highlighted the success stories of managing and minimising risks of the displaced and refugees. For them, reconstructing lives of displaced is feasible and possible if ‘enlightened policies’ are effectively practised taking into account the question of human dignity and economic entitlements into account. According to the authors the Risk and Reconstruction model uses sociological concept of risk, which is borrowed from Anthony Giddens, to indicate ‘the possibility that a certain course of action will trigger future injurious effects  – loses and destruction’ (Cernea and McDowell 2000:

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19). For them it is counterpoised to security. The reason for taking concept of risk to understand displacement is that it can be objectively measured, even though there remains the possibility of cultural construction of risk. For them the ‘modeling of displacement risks results from deconstructing the syncretic, multifaceted process of displacement into its identifiable, principal, and most widespread components’ (Cernea and McDowell 2000: 19). The slogan thus remained resettlement with development. To achieve this end, Michael M Cernea devised the impoverishment risks those are frequently associated with the dislocated groups. They are (i) landlessness, (ii) joblessness, (iii) homelessness, (iv) marginalisation, (v) increased morbidity and mortality, (vi) food security, (vii) loss of common property and (viii) social disarticulation or community breakdown. The model had four functions, namely, the predictive, the diagnostic, the problem resolution and research function. It has ‘dual’ emphasis. On the one hand, it had the objective of preventing risks and on the other, a successful implementation of strategies of reconstruction. They envisaged that it would be efficient and have trickle-down effect. Mathur (2016 and 2013), Scudder (2012), Modi (2009) and many others have also taken up this framework to formulate as well as evaluate the implementation of resettlement and rehabilitation policies in India as well as in South Asia. India had no integrated resettlement policy since independence to deal with resettlement and rehabilitation arising out of development projects, disaster and political violence. The resettlement score was abysmally dismal till the 1990s.There has been prolonged resistance among people and movement groups, especially opposing the construction of dams and other mega-development projects. Some of the important movements during 1990s were the Narmada Bachao Andolon, Kashipur Andolon, Indravati Movement and Nandi-Gram movement. It was because of the pressure of the movement that in the year 1994 a draft rehabilitation policy was formulated by the Ministry of Rural Development. It had many drawbacks; those were highlighted by an Alternative Draft Policy submitted by the civil society actors to the government on 5 October 1995. It was in 2004 that the first draft of resettlement and rehabilitation policy was secretly getting circulated within the different ministries. These movements forced researchers to rethink to change the terms of discourse as formulated by the World Bank through its think tank. The conceptual categories were reformulated. Many academicians critiqued the very concept of displacement and resettlement. Ranjit Dwivedi (2002), for instance, states that the term displacement is ‘nothing short of a

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political objective’ (Dwivedi 2002: 716) and so also as the term ‘involuntary resettlement’. The term involuntary resettlement takes away the force of displacement which is equivalent to ‘forced eviction’ that connotes the use of state power. By highlighting the centrality of resettlement, the managerial approach ignores the ‘dynamics of displacement, its heterogeneity of causes, political resistance, and the struggles over rights.’ Similarly, the term resettler defines the identity and constitutes the subject. The subject has no agency; it seems as the administrator is ‘telling the resettlers’. The second criticism, thus, is that it ignores the politics of displacement and relies on mitigation of displacement problems through policy intervention alone. Thus, the subject is not ‘talking to’ and the policy makers are not ‘talking with’ the participants. Thirdly, the model ignores the sequential and composite nature of risk’ (Dwivedi 2002: 719). Risk is not static but spirals across space and context in which it occurs. It is a subjective calculation dependent upon social, economic, cultural and most importantly political contingencies. The model thus ignores the politics of dislocation. Nilsen (2010) argues that the displacement is an historical process where the dominant social groups who consciously and collectively deploy their greater transformative powers relative to subaltern groups so as to enhance and extend their control of social relations in a given ‘spatio-­ temporal location’ (Nilsen 2010: 19). The impoverishment risk does not take into account the operation of unequal social relations and historically operating adversative inclusionary process that prevents the subaltern from entering into the dominant social and economic structure of the society. The subaltern is adversely affected by displacement by losing access to means of subsistence and production, thereby becoming the part of the capitalist accumulation process.

Politics of Dislocation Development-induced displacement causes various types of disruptions those include production processes at the economic level, social disharmony at societal level, politically disempowerment and cultural disruption such as loss of cultural networks within and among local communities. It marginalises the already marginalised groups. In response to the menace of marginalisation, people have been engaged in movements against the developmental projects in India since the late 1970s and are continuing even now. Those movements contested the very notion of displacement

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and in response to that the academics tried to provide an alternative conception to include the political aspect of displacement. The disruption that ensued due to displacement creates uncertainties in the life-world of people while negotiating with the question of survival and deprivation (Dwivedi 1997). This situation has been imposed on them by the state. Displacement is thus embedded in the politics of development. To capture this new concept was devised by the researchers: dislocation. For theorists dislocation is a term used to express ‘subtle and surreptitious forms of expropriation’. It is about the everyday existence of the very forms of ‘bare life’. Varied forms of dislocations are experienced upon this: a ‘totalizing form of expropriation’ of physical space that people belong to, and at other times, it becomes surreptitiously disruptive and dismantles the spaces of living (Chakravarti and Dhar 2010). The dismantling of space includes the involuntary resettlements as it is forced upon people and that disrupts political, economic, and cultural life of the displaced. The policy makers should remain alert against the development discourse Politics of dislocation has four variants, with the central emphasis on capitalist political economic processes, state of displacement, movement and sense of place. (i) The ‘Primitive Accumulation’ Approach or Displacement as Surreptitious Expropriation of Space within Development Process The primitive accumulation theory is built on the Marxist approach of creation of surplus value that keeps the capitalist system moving. In this approach dislocation is the part of the larger process of primitive accumulation that passes through the following stages in a capitalist political economy. This theory is propounded by Kalyan Sanyal (2007) and more recently Chakravarty and Dhar (2010). First, dislocation is the ‘story of process of dissolution’ in the development process based on a specific form of accumulation. The process frees the means of production from the owners of land. The direct producers, dependent on land, now become wage laborers who sell their labour power in the labour market for subsistence. The direct producers now feel alienated from society and from the process of production (Sanayal 2007; Nilsen 2010; Samadar 2017). Second, dislocation is imbricated in the primitive accumulation process is marked with the exercise of power in its various forms. The displaced

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people are deprived of their rights over land that they traditionally enjoyed through the ‘restructuring of entitlements’ to create the new regime of private property. This is organised through the juridical power of the state—the power restructures property relations and entitlements—and is deployed to bring about the structural changes that are necessary for the inauguration of the capitalist system of production. To tackle encroachment on the common resources the state power is explicitly used thereby bringing in a new property regime that prevented people to acquire subsistence. It creates other conditions those enable people to sustain them within the system, for instance, free sale of labour without any inhibitions. The condition was that the people are freed from the ‘dependence on land but subjugated to the rule of capital’ (Sanyal 2007: 120). Third, the subjugation of the subject happened with dislocation that destroyed all forms of ‘self-provisioning’. There were common properties to which people had accesses to. It allowed the landless, the displaced tribes, small and marginal farmers to sustain their families. There was a certain degree of ‘tolerated illegality’ that was a condition for the lower strata of the society to acquire subsistence by transgressing the rights to property. Dislocation extracted people, ‘through the coercive power of the state, from their life-world.’ It is the familiar world with known environment where they subsisted and produced use values. Now they are thrown into a world of ‘fuzzy zone of law and property rights’ losing control over their productive power, writes Kalyan Sanyal (Sanyal 2007: 123). With dislocation and resettlement package, individual property rights were recognised for compensation. The earlier common property resources became the property of the state. Fourth, in the process of dislocation and under the supervision of state’s coercive power ethico-moral notion of labour or work underwent change. Wage labour was extolled and the idyllic life of the tribes and rural life was considered demeaning. The labour for self-sufficiency and subsistence was degraded. Systematically, they were disposed to form the minions of labour force. The coercive methods were used with ideological justifications to dispossess people and make them integral part of the capitalist system. Finally, parallel to the coercive power of the state, dislocation was created through a regime of ‘capillary form of power’. It subjected the human body to a network of continuous surveillance at various micro sites and created ‘bio-power’ through their spatial distribution and continuous surveillance at micro sites such as resettlement colonies. It also produced the

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subjectivities by applying different techniques to re-articulate and interiorise practices and the idea of current development discourse. The issue is whether the act of dislocation is the structural rule of capitalist political economy or is an exception within a democratic polity. Secondly, the voices of structurally constrained groups go missing. For them the new political economy may offer a space for liberation so long as they think they remain politically free. The camp approach is adopted by the Calcutta Research Group in their interesting study Voices of the Internally Displaced in South Asia (Calcutta Research Group (CRG) 2000). The CRG talk of dense invisibility which is part of what in Agamben’s framework is called state of exception. The report takes up two issues: the first issue is how the displaced stay, i.e. the state of displacement; the second issue is whether ‘state of invisibility is a state of exception’. The report explains the existence of bare life through the voices of the displaced. For them, there are complementarities of voices and camps. Camps are sites of ‘emergence of the political subject’ heavily supervised, governed, administrated, and watched’ (CRG 2000: 19). The resettlement colonies or shelters are akin to camps—camp not in the Agambanian sense but in the sense of being ‘a stigma’ who are victims, vulnerable and powerless with no rights and autonomy. They have no voices and cannot author their destiny by taking decisions on their own (CRG 2000, P19). Democracy and authoritarianism are marked by the sign of indistinction. Democracy and the equality of citizenship are crippled by mighty state to prove the point that the victims are vulnerable ‘government actions, public laws, and administrative measures carry a mark of legitimation of harshness used to enforce state power—to protect or to kill.’ Resettlement colonies become the ‘threshold’ for the dislocatees to lead a ‘bare life.’ By doing this the political authorities created three things: first, it created administrative machinery with immense power and wide range of consequences; second, it created ‘terra incognita’, that is, places beyond legality and responsibility hence lack of accountability in a democracy; third, in the name of humanitarian aid and resettlement the state legalised governmental power and it reinforced authoritarianism by suppressing dissents and killing people (Mohanty 2016). The rights are violated, authority gives up their responsibility and judiciary failed their own citizens. Communities are ‘excluded in a way as if they have been included; and politics has been foreclosed’ (CRG 2000: 20).

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How inclusion and exclusion (I/E) is visible? Or is it the invisibility that becomes more prominent than visibility of the subject? Inclusion and exclusion are related through invisibility which becomes more prominent in the rehabilitation camps. Their invisibility is manifested in their location: in resettlement camps, out of sites of the prominent public spaces. They have fractal presence as that of the other impoverished groups those remain invisible along the highways, in the slums, around the projects and in the camps. They lack basic right to lead a decent life—education, health and even daily provisioning for everyday existence—but sacrificed for the greatest common good (CRG 2000). Visibility becomes prominent when they are killed by the state, protest against the project or any untoward incident happen during the construction of project. For instance, in Kalinganagar project in Odisha at least 10 tribespeople were killed by the police during a protest against the TATA Company (Mohanty 2016). Similarly during the construction of the Indravati Project in Koraput district the earthen dam collapsed and the workers were washed away in the process. Such types of events get visibility and others remain hidden from the public gaze. They are deliberately kept hidden as protests against projects are viewed as protests against the legitimacy of the state. In my chapter, (Mohanty 2016)I have argued that Kalinganagar is at the intersection of exception where the sovereign with impunity has killed the dissenters thereby creating a void in law. The inclusion of the tribes has been done successfully by absorbing them as the daily wage labour in the production system but simultaneously excluding them from the bigger advantages of development: their education, health and other bases of their freedom, I have termed as bhitamati, an overarching space that include land, forest and other community resources that establishes relatedness among the members of the tribes for survival and sustain freely without the state intervention. The above studies do not answer the question about the perpetuity of condition or negotiations, and conditions of engagement in the resistance movements by the abandoned or yet to be abandoned to escape conditions of state of exception? (ii) The ‘Movement of Movements’ Approach: displacement as unjust and non-inclusive development A genre of literature came up in response to ‘new social movements’ started all over India with multiplicity of visions in the 1970s and 1980s.

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Many of these movements were against the development projects, such as Chipko Movement (1973) in Uttarakhand, Anti-BALCO or Gandhamadan Movement (1983), Anti-TATA or Chilika Bachao Movement (1984) and Anti-Missile Range or Baliapal movement (1985) and most importantly Narmada Bachao Andolan (1985). In the late 1990s many other movements came up, for instance, Anti-Posco movement and Kalinganagar movement. The focal point of resistance hovered around the central theme of dislocation. The twenty-first century movements were against the neoliberal projects of acquiring more land for the companies that would dispossess many people of their livelihood. Many of these movements merged and formed NAPM in 1992 to coordinate resistance to the Indian government’s ‘New Economic Policies’ of liberalisation, globalisation and privatisation. It is an unprecedented movement anywhere in the world. It symbolised what Tom Mertes calls ‘movement of movements’ that ‘rhizomatically’ links autonomous groups. Peasants, petty producers, fisher folks, indigenous communities, and slum dwellers have seen their lives and livelihoods uprooted by the manifestations of what Polyani calls ‘double movement’ of our time. The market societies are pulled by two opposite movements: on the one hand, expansion and penetration of market into every aspect of social life, and on the other, a counter movement to oppose the penetration gets organised by the affected people. In this, all affected parties get involved (Polanyi 2001: xxviii; For an extensive discussion see Levien 2007). The constitution of NAPM is the material and symbolic manifestation of the counter movement against the ‘dis-embedding economy’ from social relations. The NAPM’s motto thus became ‘Sangharsh and Nirman’ or ‘Resistance and Reconstruction’: the master frame that articulated the constituencies of all kinds of displaced due to dis-embedding market forces. These movements are the response to the various forms of social and economic injustice that forced upon them by the market in connivance of the government. The new movement was different from the traditional Left organised movement organised by the labour class. It commenced a new politics or what Gail Omvedt called ‘reinventing revolution’ (Omvedt 1993). The NAPM drew upon all kinds of ideological discourses that include Gandhianism, environmentalism, feminism and various other shades of socialism to form new kinds of political practices. The aim is to safeguard traditional livelihoods of people and strengthen grassroots democracy with participation of the disempowered in the decision-making processes. The movement has been very successful in building up grassroots organisation all across the country.

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The NAPM’s view on rehabilitation has shifted from that of the ‘economics of compensation in monetary terms’ to compensation on the land for land policy basis. It questioned the way compensation is calculated without taking social, cultural, and other aspects of life. It also stated that while calculating compensation it should look into the value of livestock, fruit-bearing trees, the crematoria and other intangible assets that people possess and have not been valued by the authorities. By 1998, NAPM’s view on displacement has become clear. In a chapter Medha Patkar questions the very notion of development and raised the question of rationale of displacement. She states, ‘Whether the evaluation of resources of the affected people, which includes their social, cultural and other aspects of life, could recompensate them adequately? The consent of people becomes the important factors. The new movements have raised the pre-­ displacement rights of the affected people along with their post-­ displacement rights’ (Patkar 1998: 2433). In the same chapter she demands that the struggle of people against dislocation is linked with development policy and the projects. The organisations are asserting their rights to question the project in its entirety as it is making people destitute. There is a growing demand to take the consent of the prospective oustees before a project is conceptualised and formulated. All these aspects have radically ‘altered the discourse regarding displacement and resettlement into an issue of development and displacement and if need be of ideal resettlement’ (Patkar 1998: 2433). It challenged the technological basis and the paradigm of the development project. The NAPM has proposed the following steps to upset the risk: (a) Instead of resettling the individual household the NAPM demands for ‘community resettlement’. The resettlement plan should aim at improving the living standard of the displaced in comparison to the previous standard of living. The pre-condition for displacement should be full and just resettlement and rehabilitation package. People should have a meaningful participation in the processes of the construction of the project. (b) The first beneficiary of the project would be the displaced person. They should get shares of benefit accruing to the project, such as, in irrigation, in the ‘profits of an industry and the remaining resources in the vicinity of the project, viz, the fisheries, the forest and land’ (Patkar 1998: 2433).

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(c) The people’s movement demanded to abrogate all the land acquisition acts and evolve a new and comprehensive policy for displaced persons. (d) NAPM also put forward the proposal of novel ways of resource mapping, finding alternatives to the anti-people and environmentally destructive projects. They stress on ‘small-scale, sustainable, eco-friendly projects which give more power in the hands of community’. To this effect the NAPM has formulated an alternative model to the present development process. Medha Patkar, in a chapter co-authored with Amit Bhaduri, has laid a blue-print of an alternative path of development where people should have employment guarantee scheme with no wage difference between the rural and urban people. Poverty eradication would be the priority of the government. For them any project should take into account people at the local level with the principle that ‘those who hope to benefit from these local projects must take the responsibility of their decision’ (Bhaduri and Patkar 2009: 12). They have provided a few practical steps to achieve this goal. To achieve the objective the essential legal step is to implement the 73rd amendment and with Chapter 243 of the constitution to actualise it. Secondly, the cost that would accrue would be borne by the government even when the government suffers budget deficit. Tax regime must be strong to tax the rich people and raise public expenditure on alleviating the impoverishment of people and cutting on the symbolic resources like expenditure on public figures. Thirdly, the government should focus on alternative pattern of industrialisation focusing on rural development and development of local population with local initiative. It would help the peasantry dependent on them. They would also help in saving common property resources such as forests, cultivable lands, and river and sea coasts from destructive forces (Bhaduri and Patkar 2009: 13). Ashish Kothari (2009) critiques this model very sympathetically. In his chapter he argues that, first, the model leaves out the environmental aspect and, second, it leaves out other alternative modes of production. He states that it is an anthropocentric model with little scope for other species of the earth. The model is also ‘impractical’ and ‘romantic’ as it ignores the imperatives of the modern times. The contributions of the movement approach to the displacement studies are the ways it de-centred development and brought displacement

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within the discourse of social justice. The social justice is sought through providing the marginalised group’s resettlement with dignity, allocation-­ centric, redressing grievances, restorative, equity and rights. As Samaddar argues, justice of the state differs from the justice demanded by the marginal citizens or subjects (Samaddar 2009: 10). In the hegemonic development discourse, the governmental idea of justice depends on ‘the juridical idea of test’, when it comes to giving justice to the marginalised section of the society (Samaddar 2012: 150). The governmental way of justice has produced legal system where ‘justice has become a system of operative controls.’ Justice system is internally incongruent and follows uneven norms in giving judgments. Justice has become, what Samaddar says, ‘a system of certain ethical symbol’ (Samaddar 2012: 152). Samaddar argues further that within this justice system ‘the figure of the political subject seeking justice’ is borne. It was created through the agencies of moral and material: the idea of justice is manifested in the constitution, first, through articles and clauses and, secondly, through actual ‘procedure laid down by law’ as believed by the citizens. Ultimately the political subject always remained outside the juridical system. Justice ‘tells us of the existence of a remainder; it characterises a void; it demonstrates what remains outside the operations of governmentality. It speaks of arrangements of social spaces’ (Samaddar 2009: 10). (iii) Displacement as Loss of Sense of Place and Belonging Place as an analytical category remains integrated to the study of development and dislocation. The above approaches do not take into account the politics and culture of place in a temporal dimension. The meaning and context of place change along with the changing perspectives on development discourse. Displacement connotes rupture when geographical movement is accompanied by forced relocation from the place of habitual residence where a person or community culturally and spatially belongs. It denotes a sense of loss of place. Belongingness is a circular journey. It entails that people’s place-making activity is naturalised and the everyday routine work of the community is in harmony with the nature and natural resources. It is an affective bond between people and nature, people and people, people and things that surround them. It makes the members of community ‘being in common’. The sense of belonging what I have termed as bhitamati (Mohanty 2016) or ecologic border (Mohanty 2019).

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Community here is a social and cultural reality that begins with its relation to land and nature before it becomes a political and economic reality. Land is the basis for the creation of sense of place or belonging to a place, which means that place is a ‘way of seeing, a way of framing and imagining the environment as well as the organization… it is a relational meaning’ (Brighenti 2007: 69). Uprooted thus meant expropriation from their land of belonging hence from their livelihood, from their identity and natural self. Co-dependency of land and human beings is manifested in the community life of the people. It is relational in the sense that they take care of each other for their survival. Topophilia is the appropriate cultural concept to describe the relationship. The idea of place as the ‘field of care’, which is a part of human perception and experience, gets manifested in the affectivity of place. Place is as a ‘chance of attachment’ that exists at various scales (Tuan 1974). For him, place is a ‘product of ‘pause’ and a chance of attachment it exists at many scales’. It provides them an identity through continuous place-making activities. Dwelling within nature has a referential function where each thing has a proper place connected to the whole. It is a ‘source of freedom and a source of individuality’ (Mohanty 2019: 129). Displacement ruptures the sense of place. Visuality and sense of community along with value attached to place is lost with the rupture. Displaced are deterritorialised. Their identity is lost: they became synonym for movement between spaces, in mind and body, and lost sense of home. Displacement meant ‘subtle and surreptitious forms of expropriation’ that disrupted social, economic, political and cultural ways of life (Chakravarti and Dhar 2010: 09). The common property resources and their dependence on them have been appropriated by the government under the title ‘eminent domain’. The market relation has replaced the communal relation. The displaced become footloose labourers losing their freedom to industrial organisations: middle-man, contractors, human relation officers and so on. Thus, displacement becomes the opposite of ‘emplacement.’ The sense of place as essence that gives meaning of home and habitat to the dislocated citizens and thus an identity evaporates. The rootedness prompts the displaced to resist against the dominant political economy: the resultant dislocation and state of exception.

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Conclusion The coherent corpus of theoretical literature on displacement began during the late 1980s as the scale of forced mass displacement increased and new evidences were gathered by the activists and researchers on the life and loss of livelihood of the displaced due to modern projects undertaken by the Indian state. Initially, especially during the 1970s the anthropologist who had the monopoly of study of displacement studied the cultural impact of displacement on the social fabric of the displaced. In the 1980s, the state-led development process created massive displacement that led the donor agencies to think about the managing the displacement syndrome. In the 1990s with the troika of development—globalisation, liberalisation and privatisation—entering into the Indian political economic environment the developmental projects spawned creating huge-scale displacement. Displacement studies tried to understand the politics of displacement and rehabilitation and the formation of new subject in the Indian politics. The political economy of project was studied from the perspective of the larger accumulative processes. The categories of displacement and resettlement were reexamined. At the beginning of the twenty-first century, the politics of dislocation was studied from radically different perspectives. The process of displacement was examined from the perspective of governmentality where sovereign created spaces of exception subjecting citizens to lead a ‘bare life’ to be sacrificed for the greatest common good. Finally, the displacement studies took cognisance of the sense of place and belongingness as the way forward to do research.

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CHAPTER 9

The Facilitators and the Reproductive Laborers of the Indian Gestational Surrogacy Market Namreeta Kumari

Introduction Commercial surrogacy or “market of lives” (Rudrappa 2015) changed the entire terrain of human reproduction. It separated gestation from the biological mother and brought reproduction, which is a most intimate part of personal sphere into the public sphere of the market. Pregnancy or reproduction is considered legitimate only in the institution of family and marriage; commercial surrogacy challenged this traditional understanding and defined reproduction in a new form. In gestational surrogacy, an embryo which is formed in a petri dish with the gametes of intended parents (at times the gametes are donated eggs or sperms which were bought and sold in the reproduction market) is implanted in the uterus of another woman who acts as a surrogate mother, for which she is paid compensation money thereby commercializing the entire process. It made the reproductive activity of women a productive activity which was accorded

N. Kumari (*) SHSS, Sharda University, Greater Noida, India © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2022 N. Chowdhory, P. Banerjee (eds.), Gender, Identity and Migration in India, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-16-5598-2_9

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economic value, where otherwise women do not receive any money for reproducing children in the familial sphere. The discussion of commercial surrogacy in a third world or developing country like India is like opening a Pandora’s box due to the different ethical and moral issues associated with these “biomarkets” and “bioeconomies” (Rose 2007) which result in the generation of a new form of capital referred to as “biocapital” (Rose 2007). The paper discusses the role of the surrogate agents who are the facilitators of this market, as they convince women to act as surrogate mothers and become egg donors. Along with it they are a mediator or act as a bridge between the IVF clinics and the egg donors & women who want to act as surrogate mothers. The role of surrogate agents facilitates in comprehending the functioning of this market as they play an important role in this market. Their profession entails a lot of risks and has to be carried out responsibly, as this profession involves life whether it’s the life of the surrogate mother or the child, which has to be produced and relinquished on birth. I bring narratives of two surrogate agents from my field study in Ahmedabad district of Gujarat. These agents make use of different strategies to convince women and their families to agree for commercial surrogacy. The patriarchal control of husbands becomes evident in commercial surrogacy as the consent of the husband is mandatory for a woman to become a surrogate mother; unmarried women are not eligible for becoming surrogate mothers. The starting point of persuasion begins with the financial benefit and is followed by valorizing it as a virtuous act which will help a childless couple who are unable to procreate a biological child. The next section discusses women who act as surrogate mothers who are the ‘reproductive labors’ of this industry. This section reflects how women construct their world as surrogate mothers. As the act of being a surrogate mother is stigmatized and often associated with sex work or as selling the baby, which is not considered ethical. To obscure this stigma associated to commercial surrogacy, surrogate mothers justify by arguing that they are not doing any dirty work, instead they are giving happiness to the childless couple and even to their families as well. This section also argues the precarious nature of contractual reproduction which the women who act as surrogate mothers are unable to recognize. This section is followed by a conclusion which weaves the arguments laid in the chapter and recognizes the role of the surrogate agents and how, at times, for their own benefit, they force women to act as egg donors and surrogate mothers.

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Facilitators of the Reproductive Market Reproduction industry in India is facilitated by many stakeholders, ranging from IVF clinics or hospitals, doctors, surrogate agencies which run the surrogate homes and the surrogate agents who play a leading role in running this industry, and so on. This section focuses on the surrogate agents who are in direct contact with the women who act as surrogate mothers. I discuss the narratives of two surrogate agents from Ahmedabad. Most of the surrogate agents I met during the field study either had been egg donors or/and surrogate mothers and later became surrogate agents. Their profession as surrogate agents resulted in a huge difference in their lives as they have enormously prospered at a financial level after entering this market as surrogate agents. These surrogate agents are key facilitators of this industry as they work at ground level and since it’s easier for them to find all the details of the women who intend to become egg donors or surrogate mothers, and almost all the clinics avoid recruiting women who want to act as surrogate mothers directly. Recruiting women to act as surrogate mothers directly is always risky as women might run away way with the child during the pregnancy or might terminate the pregnancy. In order to avoid such risks, clinics prefer to recruit women as surrogate mothers facilitated by a surrogate agent, as they often live in nearby localities of these women and they know their personal details, and even if someone tries to run away or escape, they can easily trace these women. The narratives of surrogate agents help in understanding the role they play in convincing women to act as surrogate mothers and or donate eggs. The surrogate agents employ various means to convince women and their husbands to become surrogate mothers or egg donors. First they lure them with the financial benefit they will receive for egg donation and commercial surrogacy. They even convince them by explaining the need of this money in their lives which they are otherwise incapable of earning in such a short period of time. They persuade women and their husbands by giving them ‘hope’ of a better future. The money offered in lieu of the reproductive services is a huge amount for women who are from economically vulnerable backgrounds. Surrogate agents, apart from showing a ray of hope, also help them in imagining the change it will bring in their lives once they act as surrogate mothers. Secondly, apart from luring them with economic gain, the surrogate agents emotionally persuade them. The persuasion is done by valorizing it as a virtuous deed as they will help a couple who are childless by acting as a surrogate. The agents manipulate women

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by portraying the intended couples as helpless entities who can’t become biological parents. Their kind act of becoming surrogate mothers and egg donors will not only benefit them financially but will also receive the blessings from the childless couple for reproducing an infant for them. Surrogate agents are the nearest points of contact with women who act as surrogate mothers and it’s the sole responsibility of surrogate agents to ensure surrogate mothers don’t disappear or indulge in activities which are dangerous for their health and the health of the fetus growing in the womb. In this chapter, I bring narratives of surrogate agents who were working for IVF clinics in Ahmedabad and which did not had surrogate homes and the surrogate mothers had to stay at their respective homes. Sitara Ben1 I met Sitara ben through an NGO in Ahmedabad and she was assured that all her details will be kept anonymous. During my field study, I met Sitara ben a number of times. Sitara ben is 45 years old and has two children, a daughter (who was then studying in the 12th standard) and a son (who was in the 5th standard). She even took me to her house where I met her family and proudly told me that she had purchased this flat recently and only some amount is left which has to be paid. Her husband Ramesh bhai runs a garage. She keenly told me about her educational qualifications; she had joined an undergraduate BA program course but was unable to complete it. Sitara ben, apart from being a surrogate agent, is also a teacher in an anganwadi close to her house where she teaches children in the morning. Her husband picks her up from the anganwadi and drops her at the IVF clinics as well. In the afternoon, she does her work of surrogate agent, so she simultaneously juggles two professions, first as an anganwadi teacher and secondly, as a surrogate agent. She has been working as a surrogate agent for more than 10–12  years. Unlike most of the surrogate agents whose journey in this reproduction industry started either as a surrogate mother or egg donor, Sitara ben’s started as a surrogate agent. Initially it was not an easy ride for Sitara ben as she had to establish links and trust with the clinics. Slowly she developed links with many clinics and started taking women to become egg donors or who wanted to act as surrogate 1  In this chapter, all the narratives are from Gujarat and there is a practice of using the suffix ‘ben’ with all the women’s name, which means sister.

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mothers. In the beginning she had to go to women and tell them about surrogacy and convince them to act as a surrogate mother but, with time, it spread among the people and the women started coming on their own or the women who had already become surrogate mothers brought other women to Sitara ben. Sitara ben is unhappy as some of the clinics have started taking women as surrogate mothers brought by the ex-surrogates, which has resulted in many agents and a competitive market. When she started as a surrogate agent, there were few surrogate agents and clinics did not take women as surrogate mothers brought by ex-surrogates, it was only possible if they had started their work as a surrogate agent. Sitara ben asserted, “now everyone wants to become a surrogate agent and are not even aware about risks and responsibilities of being a surrogate agent. They think it a easy way to earn money where nothing has to be done.” As an agent, persuasion was integral to staying in this profession, which was visible in Sitara ben’s case. During my field work in another clinic, I met Sitara ben coincidentally and there was one widow who had come with her relative; while waiting to meet the doctor, I listened to their conversation. Sitara ben started by asking, why had she come to the clinic? Is she pregnant or is accompanying someone? The widow replied, “I have come with my relative who is pregnant. I am widow and stay with my brother and his family.” Sitara ben probed her further and asked, “Do you work or your brother takes care of all your needs?” She replied, “I have a two year old girl child and I am completely dependent on my brother as 4 months back my husband passed away. My in-laws did not keep me nor my daughter after he passed away.” Sitara ben was sympathetic towards her and explained to her about egg donation and surrogacy. She emphasized it will be helpful for her and her daughter’s future. She even asked for her contact details so that she could tell her everything in detail. Later, when we met, I asked Sitara ben whether she was able to get in touch with her not? She narrated, “I talked to her later and even met her and I explained her about both egg donation and surrogacy. She doesn’t have anything and is completely dependent on her brother  financially. She is reluctant to act as surrogate mother as she a widow. I told her if she wants to do it I can take her to clinic where there are surrogate homes and she can stay there for entire duration of pregnancy and nobody will get to know about it. But initially she  want to do egg donation and later will think about surrogacy.” This is an instance which reveals how surrogate agents persuade women into surrogacy or to become egg donors. They convince them that the only way to come out of a financially vulnerable

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situation is by either becoming a surrogate mother or by donating eggs. Women are made conscious of their vulnerable position and the path of surrogacy is shown to sway through the economically vulnerable position which will fulfill their needs and desires. An intriguing aspect of the commerical surrogacy industry unraveled in during the field study conducted at Ahmedabad. There I came across a instance where,  if women were unable to get the consent of their husbands to become egg donors they “fake a husband” with the help of surrogate agents to donate eggs by paying some money to these men. At times women don’t inform their husbands as they need money and maintain secrecy about this money as they want to save it for their children’s future. In some of the hospitals, the consent of the husband is required even for egg donation and the signatures are taken in the hospital in the presence of hospital staff. One day I received a call from Sitara ben to ask if I have a male colleague or a friend who could sign on behalf of the egg donor’s husband as her husband in the hospital. I questioned Sitara ben about the possibility that the hospital staff might get to know about the fake or proxy husband. Sitara ben casually explained they don’t get to know as most of the identification proof doesn’t have clear images, though we show the original husband’s id, as the address of the donor and the husband should be the same. Later during the day, I met Sitara ben and asked her whether she was able to find a fake husband or not? She was successful in finding one and the egg donor for whom the fake husband was arranged was also along with her, her name was Kavya. She confidently suggested that it is not that difficult to find men for this work but at times it becomes help and that’s why asked for my help.  Sitara ben had some work so she left Kavya with me for some time and I asked her how did she get to know about surrogacy and egg donation. Why has she kept it hidden from her husband? Kavya was quite friendly and eloquent with me and told “it is normal here to fake husbands in such a situation and Sitara ben know men who do this work and charge for it but somehow she couldn’t find one for me and that is why she called you for help. I am donating egg for second time and my husband is unaware about it. It is only my mother-in-law who knows about it as my husband doesn’t want to put my health2 at any risk and I was not even in a dire need 2  Kavya told me donating eggs also has an impact on women’s bodies. “I feel bloated when hormonal injections are injected in my body and I have also put on weight since my first egg donation and I feel lot of changes in my bodies.” Women who are economically vulnerable

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to earn money right now. My husband was going through a major financial crisis when I became egg donor for the first time and no doubt Sitara ben had supported me a lot and instantly took me to hospital for egg donation on my request. But this time she has forced me to become an egg donor because the hospital needs a donor with features like me and if she is unable to do so, some other agent might do it and she will lose on the commission she receives” From Kavya’s narrative it is evident that there is a complex network that runs in the reproduction industry. At times, the surrogate agents cross the line of persuasion and even force women to become egg donors just to earn money. Neelam Ben While conducting interviews at Bhaskar hospital in Ahmedabad, I was introduced to Neelam ben who is a surrogate agent. She entered this industry as a reproductive laborer or a surrogate mother eight years back. Neelam ben had completed her bachelor’s degree and was a clerk3 before she became a surrogate mother. Her husband was a carpenter so the income of the household was dependent on the availability of work. The surrogacy counselor at the hospital suggested that if she wants to earn more money and doesn’t want to act as a surrogate mother again she could instead become surrogate agent and bring women who are in need of money to become egg donors or surrogate mothers. For Sitara ben, it was not easy, in the beginning, as people were then not aware about the entire arrangement and the most immediate concern and curiosity was how a child can be reproduced without sleeping with anyone. The persuasion was at multiple levels, firstly, the entire process had to be explained to the women to convince them. If the women were unsuccessful in convincing their husbands, Neelam ben had to explain to them as well and sometimes to the entire family. “It is a profession which has to be carried in a responsible manner. As an agent I am responsible if the surrogate ignore such health impacts and continuously donate eggs until and unless the hospital refuses to do so. 3  She had to leave her job as a clerk after delivering her own child as there was no one to take care of the child; her in-laws lived in the village. Before going to work, she had to leave her child at her mother’s home which was far from her house and which increased her work more. Neelam ben has three kids of which two daughters are married and the youngest one, a son, is not married yet. Neelam ben utilized the money she received from becoming a surrogate mother for her daughter’s wedding.

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mother doesn’t goes to the clinic for her injections or regular checkup. Nowadays everyone is becoming an agent but this was not the case earlier when I entered as a surrogate agent.” All the details about surrogacy are explained to the women who act as surrogate mothers and her family so that there is no trouble in future. Neelam ben suggested, “In this arrangement there are four parties involved- clinics or the hospitals, intended party, surrogate agent and the surrogate mothers. All the parties benefit from this arrangement. The surrogate mothers are from an economically poor background and in need of money and intended parents are in a need of biological offspring. So the needs of both parties are fulfilled. Both the parties receive blessings from each other as one gets the money which they couldn’t have earned in nine months no matter how hard they work and the intended parents receive their biological off spring which they were unable reproduce after trying very hard.” Vartika ben is a surrogate mother in Bhaskar hospital and it was Neelam ben who told her about commercial surrogacy. Vartika was then 26 years old and had two children and was six months pregnant. When Vartika heard about surrogacy for the first time, she was sure she will never do it again. But she was ready to act as a surrogate mother when Neelam ben explained to her the entire process and the financial benefit she will receive after becoming surrogate mother. Vartika ben stated, “Neelam ben explained commercial surrogacy is good and there is nothing wrong in it as everything happens with the help of medicine. The childless couple gets the infant and you will get the money. It also an act of piety as well which will bring blessings to your family along with the money. Neelam ben is like a mother and like god for me and my family as she told me about surrogacy. It will help in fulfilling my needs and aspirations of my family and children.” This narrative highlights a respectful position of agents in the eyes of surrogate mothers as they would have never dreamt of such economic enhancement in their wildest dreams. These narratives of surrogate agents and surrogate mothers reveal the strategies adopted by surrogate agents in order to run their business. It begins with persuasion and valorizing the pain of women caused due to economic vulnerability. The manipulative strategy of luring the women and their family members with the compensation money and to convince them to become surrogate mothers, they give a push by putting forward the argument of virtuous act. These agents are not only recruiters but also play the role of surrogacy counselor, where they have to explain to them

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thoroughly that it’s not their baby and has to be relinquished on delivery. At times, surrogate agents, in an attempt to earn more money, force women to become egg donors and if their husbands don’t consent to it they arrange proxy husbands for signing the documents. Raymond (1993) aptly suggests this technological reproduction results in medical ethics violation with the reproductive trafficking of women’s bodies and live gametes. This reveals the unethical practices of the reproduction industry as well. Though the journey of being a surrogate mother is also not a smooth ride as they have to ensure that the surrogate mothers go for regular checkups and injections to the clinic and these agents have to be in touch with them continuously in order to avoid instances where the surrogate mothers run away with the child of the intended parent. If any such instance occurs, it’s the sole responsibility of the agent to find the surrogate mother. To avoid any such instance, the agents keep these surrogate mothers under surveillance by regularly visiting their houses and at times these are surprise visits in order to check whether these women are taking proper rest or not and living in a hygienic environment or not. Both Neelam ben and Sitara ben had faced a situation in their journey as surrogate agents, where, in the former’s case, the surrogate mother did not want to relinquish the child and, in the latter’s case, the surrogate mother ran away to her parents’ home so that the relinquishment of the child was not possible. They had to convince these women and also promised some extra compensation on relinquishment. The narratives of both the surrogate agents reveal the important position of these agents in this market and it also reveals unethical practices which women adhere to with the help of surrogate agents to earn money in circumstances where their husbands don’t give consent for egg donors, which is rarely mentioned in the previous studies conducted on commercial surrogacy in India. The next section puts forward the experience of women who act as surrogate mothers. An in-depth analysis of the reproduction industry brings to light the vulnerable position of women who act as surrogate mothers who are the service providers of this industry, as these women rent their wombs for monetary compensation.

‘Laborers’ of Surrogacy Industry in India The patriarchal institutions limited women’s access only to the private sphere of family and kept her out from the paid formal labor force of public sphere. With different feminist movements and struggles, women came

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out into the public sphere and entered the labor markets, though the workplace environment is also unsafe for women. But commercial surrogacy brought pregnancy into the public sphere and her gestational capacity into the labor markets. The reproduction industry pays women for their gestational services and reproducing an infant in lieu of her services, for which they were never paid in their private sphere. The reproductive services offered by women in the gestational surrogacy market are termed differently by scholars like “sexualized care work” (Pande 2014), “stratified contract labor” (Twine 2011) and so on. Commercial surrogacy was legalized in India in 2002 and flourished in an unprecedented manner due to the non-existence of a law to regulate this industry. It was only the ICMR guidelines of 2005 which were available at the outset to keep a check over the clinics, but since these guidelines lacked any legal sanctions, these guidelines were openly flouted by IVF clinics and the hospitals. I analyze the commercial surrogacy arrangement from a radical feminist lens. This lens facilitates in comprehending the vivid realities of this market and whether there is anything wrong in reproductive labor or reproductive capacities being bought and sold in the commercial surrogacy market. A cohort of radical feminists (Rich 1986; Rothman 1996; Klein 2008) argue that the existence of this industry results in the oppression of surrogate mothers as this industry results in fragmentation and commodification of women’s bodies, and the surrogate mother is expected to alienate herself from the fetus growing inside her womb and have an “emotionally distant relationship” (Teman 2010). With the fragmentation of women’s bodies in gestational surrogacy, women were seen only as persons who could procreate and separating her from her individuality to procreate children of others for which she is compensated. The question arises, what is wrong even if women’s bodies are commodified in the commercial surrogacy market? Marway and others (2014) lucidly explain what entails commodification, …to commodify is to take something of intrinsic worth (such as “persons”) and to objectify it by giving it a use value (so it has – or is subjected to processes that liken it to – the status of “things”) and to commercialize it by giving it an exchange value, or by implying that it could be sold, (further degrading it to the level of tradable “things”). Thus, individuals and their parts become thought of not as “persons” but as “things.”

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This understanding of commodification of body illuminates how commodification makes persons with intrinsic worth as something tradable in the market by attaching exchange value through commercialization. Similarly, the reproductive material or gametes and the womb of the surrogate mother are perceived as things which are of intrinsic worth or importance which are attached with an exchange value in this commercial surrogacy market. This process of commodification makes women as disembodied entities and Pande (2014) calls it an “embodied labor”. Everything can’t be brought for sale and purchase in the market, there are things which are “market inalienable” (Radin 1987); referring to commercial surrogacy, Radin asserts this practice will result in an inferior kind of human flourishing where everything will be a transaction and commodity which is available for sale and purchase. This commodification and fragmentation of bodies also resulted in alienation of their self from their bodies and the fetus growing in their womb. Surrogate mothers are expected to alienate themselves from the infant growing inside their womb and not attach herself in any manner with the infant. When these women are counseled, they are given the example of a room which is given for rent and her womb is also compared to a room which is available for rent in commercial surrogacy market and rent will be paid when the child is relinquished by the surrogate mother. Whereas the liberal scholars argue commercial surrogacy empowers the surrogate mothers as they exercise their agency to become surrogate mothers. This exercise of agency results in financial empowerment of women as they receive compensation in exchange for their reproductive services in the gestational surrogacy market. The liberal feminists premise their argument on agency, choice and consent, but all these arguments fall apart when a critical interrogation of commercial surrogacy market, particularly in a country like India, is done. I allude to the arguments given by radical feminists which are premised on a nuanced understanding as to why it is problematic to bring the reproductive capacities into the market. The commercial surrogacy market is seen as an arrangement which is a nexus between patriarchy, technology and capitalist, as argued by Rothman in her work. This market is based on inequalities (Anderson 1990) and the observation from the field in Ahmedabad confirms the existence of an unbridgeable gap between the sellers and buyers of this market. The surrogate mothers belong to economically poor households with low levels of educational qualifications because of which they are unaware and unable to negotiate the contract

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with anyone, and the contract has medical jargon they are incapable of comprehending even if they were literate and could read the contract.  In a few cases, the situation was so vulnerable that the household income was not even enough to meet the bare minimum necessities of life. In such a constrained social and economic position, women tended to confirm to act as surrogate mothers. The narratives of Jeena ben and Laila ben tell the story of women who act as surrogate mothers and the effect of their social positioning and income of the household have on their decisions. Jeena Ben Jeena ben and her husband Ganpati bhai stay in Ahmedabad far from their native village. Ganpati runs a tea stall in Ahmedabad which is the only source of income for the household. She needs to buy a house for the family since their household income is not fixed and there are times when they are unable to pay the rent of the house. The couple has two young boys who are 10 and 7 years old. She is becoming a surrogate mother for the second time. The compensation received for the first surrogacy was used for repaying the debts and very little money was left, so she deposited the money in the bank. With the left over compensation and the compensation she will receive this time, she intends to buy a house so that her children have a roof over their heads. Jeena came to the same hospital a second time for surrogacy as she stated, “In this hospital the facilities are good and the staff is also very friendly that is why I have come here again. I will buy a house once I receive the compensation. Surrogacy helped me financially and the party will also receive what they need. We are in a troubling situation and in need of money that’s why I have become a surrogate mother. Without this we couldn’t have imagined of owning our own house.” The couple has kept it hidden from the family as they live in Rajasthan in a village and they will not understand. So, to avoid any kind of trouble or defamation, the couple has kept it secret; only Jeena ben’s family know about it and have no problem with it. I asked her if anyone comes from their home to meet with them and ask later about the child what will they tell? She confidently explains, “Nobody is going to help me and my family financially and even if they get to know I am not doing anything wrong and not sleeping with anyone. My husband doesn’t have any problem with it so I don’t care about anyone else. What matters is the happiness of my family and a bright future of my

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children. Only surrogacy can help me accomplish these goals. Even if someone comes and know I am pregnant we will later tell them that I suffered a miscarriage and or the baby was born dead. I know I am not doing anything wrong we are just helping a family to get a child which they have been deprived of due to medical reasons. Like our financial necessity the couples are in need of a child.” What matters is the approval of the husband for them and she is not scared even if people in her family get to know about it as she is backed by her husband’s support and consent. Laila Ben I met Laila ben at Bhaskar hospital with her husband. It was the second day after she had delivered and relinquished the child. I met her in a room where women who had delivered children were kept. It was not a very big room and the room was divided into compartments with the help of curtains. These compartments could barely accommodate a bed and there was a stool kept in every compartment and if anyone sits on it the person automatically moves to the other compartment. This view brought forward the image of the surrogate house at Anand put forward by Amrita Pande in her work. Laila ben and her husband Parmeswar bhai, who is a security guard, live in a joint family. Parmeswar stated, “because of the low economic position he had to allow her wife to become a surrogate mother.” I asked Laila ben, “Did she see the baby and how is she feeling after giving the child away?” Laila ben had an emotional breakdown when I asked this question. She stated, “It was a baby boy and they did not show the child to me and took the baby to children’s hospital immediately after birth. It is only today we were shown the pictures of the baby. The parting away with the child is a sad feeling after all it was inside me and I could feel it grow inside my body. But I knew it’s not my child and had to be given.” Parmeswar bhai was not letting Laila ben speak even though the questions were directed to Laila ben, it shows how men dominate women and their voices as well. The couple explained “We have done it out of economic necessity and are in low economic position and did it not for leisure. We have seen lot of troubles and difficult situation in life that’s why we took this decision not for ourselves but for a bright future of our children. It is a good work, people who are unaware and unable to understand consider it as a dirty work. Or they think we are selling our own baby to someone else. We don’t care nor get affected with what people say. The reason we have kept

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it hidden from the neighbors and our extended family is because we live in a village where people are uneducated and it will be difficult to make them understand and we do not want our children to suffer that’s why we haven’t told anyone that it’s not our child. When we go back we will tell them the child was born dead.” Both the narratives of Jeena ben and Laila ben reveal that the association of stigma is pertinent with commercial surrogacy in India not only in the villages but also in cities. In order to legitimize their work as surrogate mothers and obscure the stigma associated with the commercial surrogacy, they argue they are not doing any wrong or dirty work. Pande (2014) also had a similar experience when she conducted her interviews in Anand in a surrogate home, where surrogate mothers stated that even if they are renting their womb they are not sleeping with anyone else. Since these women are conscious of the stigma associated with surrogacy, they hide it from their families or neighbors so that they don’t have to face any humiliation because of surrogacy. Surrogate mothers who live in rented houses change their houses and shift to other localities just before the delivery is due and if they don’t change their houses, they lie about the loss of the child. Surrogate pregnancy is an alienating experience for surrogate mothers as they are expected to alienate themselves from their bodies and not develop any bond with the fetus growing inside them. I challenge Deomampo’s (2018) understanding that surrogate mothers are neither victims nor powerless in this market. I argue that a critical interrogation of the surrogacy industry reveals that the surrogate mothers, along with the intended mothers, are victims of patriarchy. Apart from this, it controls the bodies of women and their role as an individual as it essentializes motherhood for every woman. Though the surrogate mothers are compensated for their reproductive services, the damage done is more than the compensation received by the surrogate mothers, which is not only physical but also psychological in nature. The physical experience of women as surrogate mothers is not an easy ride as she has to take injections regularly for at least 2–3 months and there is a constant feeling of nausea and so on. Apart from physical pain, a woman goes through psychological trauma as a surrogate mother. This pain is intensified after relinquishment of the child. The “markets of life” would not have existed if women were not associated with their social role as a mother. The patriarchal construction of motherhood and institutionalization of motherhood (Rich 1986) is problematic, which oppresses women and associates her only with her procreative capacities. This only accomplishes the goal of

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pro-natalism and reproductive fundamentalism (Robertson 1994), which is promoted by assisted reproductive technologies in the form of gestational surrogacy. The liberal account of commercial surrogacy is premised on consent, agency and choice and advocates it to be empowering for the surrogate mother. The critical interrogation of these premises reveals that all these premises fall apart and the reality is completely different. It has been argued that women give their consent for becoming surrogate mothers. How far is this informed consent? Women who become surrogate mothers, usually in a third world country where there is rampant poverty are often not in a position to give informed and conscious consent. Women are not even told what happens with their body in the surrogacy arrangement. They are not even in a position to understand the complexity of the entire arrangement due to their low level of education. The only thing they are concerned about is that they are not sleeping with other men for reproduction. It is a contract between the two parties, the surrogate mother and the intended parents, but it is surprising that a copy of the surrogacy contract is not given to the surrogate mothers. It is either kept in the IVF clinic or hospital or with the surrogate agencies that run the surrogate homes. Women give their confirmation (Raymond 1993) for the available option to become surrogate mothers and, in the real sense, don’t give their consent as it involves complete awareness and consciousness of the act and often these women are not in such a position and don’t even care. Their primary objective is to earn money and this is the best option for them to earn a big sum of money in a period of 8–9 months. Women do exercise their constrained agency and negotiate with their husbands to become surrogate mothers and egg donors. It has to be recognized that women, while exercising their agency in an economically vulnerable context, are unconscious of the oppression which they will go through as surrogate mothers as this practice operates within the larger structure of patriarchy, technology and capitalism. They only prioritize their families and aspire for their better future. The “patriarchal bargain” (Kandiyoti 1988) and negotiation which women do while they exercise their constrained agency to act as a surrogate mother place them in a vulnerable position. Not all women who become surrogate mothers come on their own, as a significant section of women are pressurized, and at times forced, by their families to become surrogate mothers so that they can contribute to family income.

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Women who are negotiating with their husbands and families to become surrogate mothers are motivated by the economic need of the family. Either women can let their family suffer or become surrogate mothers for the welfare of the family. Adritti et al. (1984) have argued that how can women make choices freely where the right to choose is sold and bought? Is becoming a surrogate mother for a woman who is often in a perpetual state of poverty an autonomous choice? In such a social context, these decisions cannot be called choices. With the help of technology, gestational surrogacy only made available choices to women who earlier did not have anything to choose from (Gupta 2000). The compensation received in lieu of the reproductive services is a huge sum of money  which women who act as surrogate mothers  surrogate mothers are incapable of earning no matter how hard they work in a period 8–9 months but this doesn’t mean that it is a sustainable option of livelihood. The contractual agreement of surrogacy also results in leaving their jobs with uncertainty of getting them back. It’s not only the women who leave their jobs but also their husbands, where it’s mandatory to live in the surrogate homes in order to take care of the children as most of them keep the matter hidden from their families and stay at surrogate homes. This might be financially empowering for women, but this empowerment is short-lived and sustains till the time the money is there, and once money is exhausted, the position is the same as it was earlier. The compensation received is often controlled by the husbands of the surrogate mothers. Often they are the ones who decide what has to be done with the money or how it will be utilized. A critical interrogation reveals it is not empowering for women to become surrogate mothers. It is the low economic state and lack of education and an urgent need of money which are the only motivating reasons for women to become surrogate mothers. In order to obscure the stigma associated with commercial surrogacy, women argue that they are not sleeping with anyone (Pande 2010) and it’s a virtuous act which gives a child to a childless couple. These decisions lead to multiple forms of oppression which surrogate mothers don’t recognize as oppression and they only argue that to get something one has make sacrifices. The unethical and oppressive practices of the commercial surrogacy industry cannot be denied. Both the narratives of Jeena ben and Laila ben illustrate a similar perspective. It is evident from the narratives that no one became surrogate mothers out of free choice or willfully, instead it is their necessity

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and an economically distressful context which pushed them into the reproduction market. It has to be recognized that commercial surrogacy is not a sustainable option of livelihood and it also results in the disruption of lives of women as they have to give away their jobs (SAMA 2010) with an uncertainty whether they will be employed again or not if they were employed, as being a surrogate mother requires complete bed rest. The valuation and validation of surrogacy as work is integral for women who act as surrogate mothers. They accord value to their work in two ways, first, in terms of money, which is received as monetary compensation for their reproductive service. The economic valuation of reproductive services made it a productive activity. As a result women made there wombs available for rent in lieu of financial compensation which neither she nor her family could have ever imagined. Since surrogacy as a work is stigmatized, they try to validate it by arguing that they are not sleeping with anyone and instead are helping a childless couple. This act is a virtuous act and for them their families are important and if their husbands are supporting them to act as surrogate mothers they don’t care about what the world thinks.

Conclusion Commercial surrogacy might seem a beneficial transaction for all the parties involved, but it is camouflaged under the rhetoric of agency, choice, consent and empowerment. This industry accomplishes the patriarchal goal of eugenics and pro-natalism, which is premised on medicalization of reproduction and furthers the capitalist goals of generating capital and profit. This chapter highlights and builds on the narratives of surrogate agents who are facilitators of this industry. The narratives of both Sitara ben and Neelam ben make the role of surrogate agents evident. These agents employ different manipulative strategies to convince women to act as surrogate mothers and become egg donors. The persuasion is not only limited to the women but are also used to convince and counsel their families as well. They are lured with economic benefit which will help them in fulfilling their basic needs and result in economic upliftment followed by the explanation that it is also a virtuous act which helps a childless couple to become parents. In this market, surrogate agents also engage in unethical practices by forcing women to become egg donors even if they are not

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interested since they want to earn more commission which they get from the clinics and hospitals. The second section argues how economic vulnerability and necessity is a guiding factor for women who become surrogate mothers and egg donors for the welfare of their children and families. Low income of the households, coupled with low literacy level, resulted in conforming to the available option (Raymond 1993), that is, contractual reproduction without even negotiating the contract. Commercial surrogacy commodifies women’s reproductive labor and gestation becomes like any other kind of work for women who are in need of money. Commercial surrogacy, is not a sustainable option of livelihood and does more harm than the benefit firstly the physiological risk women put them by making their wombs available for rent. Secondly it even impacts them psychologically as well, as this practice put them in a position where they have to alienate their selves from their bodies and completely detach themselves from the baby growing inside their wombs.  The harm done by these reproduction markets is visible from the vantage point of the commodification argument which gives a clear view of the problematic nature of commercial surrogacy. Commercial surrogacy results in human rights violation (Klein 2017) of women who act as surrogate mothers as it invades the bodily integrity of women. To understand the complex reality of commercial surrogacy, I think it is important to move beyond the binaries which are often adhered to, which are perpetrator and victims, oppressor and oppressed and so on. Restricting oneself to these binaries while interrogating these bioeconomies at times results in stereotyping or essentialization, which results in blurring the true picture and experiential reality of the women who act as surrogate mothers, which is also visible in the narratives of Jeena and Laila ben. For both the women, it was an economic necessity to act as a surrogate mother or it can be argued that the lack of other options which could have assisted her in earning the same amount of money, which makes women as mere wombs (Raymond 1993) and test tube women (Adritti et al. 1984) and living laboratories (Rowland 1992). Instead of technologically assisted reproduction, the focus has to be on humanitarian-­ assisted conception which is not coerced on women and their vulnerable economic position is not used for benefiting economically well-off people.

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References Adritti, Rita, Renate Duelli Klein, and Shelly Minden, eds. 1984. Test Tube Women: What Future for Motherhood. Pandora Press. Anderson, Elizabeth S. 1990. Is Woman’s Labor a Commodity? Philosophy & Public Affairs 19 (1): 71–92. Deomampo, Daisy. 2018. Transnational Reproduction: Race, Kinship, and Commerical Surrogacy in India. New Delhi: Sage Publications. Gupta, Jyotsna Agnihotri. 2000. New Reproductive Technologies, Women’s Health and Autonomy: Freedom or Dependency? New Delhi: Sage Publications. Kandiyoti, Deniz. 1988. Bargaining with Patriarchy. Gender and Society 2 (3): 274–290. Klein, Renate. 2008. From Test-Tube Women to Bodies Without Women. Women’s Studies International Forum 31 (3): 157–175. ———. 2017. Surrogacy: A Human Rights Violation. Mission Beach: Spinifex. Pande, Amrita. 2010. “At Least I Am Not Sleeping with Anyone”: Resisting the Stigma of Commercial Surrogacy in India. Feminist Studies 36 (2 RE-INVENTING MOTHERS): 292–312. ———. 2014. Wombs in Labors. New York: Columbia University Press. Radin, Margaret Jane. 1987. Market Inalienability. Harvard Law Review 100 (8): 1849–1937. Raymond, Janice G. 1993. Women as Wombs: Reproductive Technologies and the battle over Women’s Freedom. New York: Harper Collins Publishers. Rich, Adrienne. 1986. Of Woman Born: Motherhood as Experience and Institution. New York/London: W.W. NORTON & COMPANY. Robertson, John A. 1994. Children of Choice: Freedom and the New Reproductive Technologies. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Rose, Nikolas. 2007. The Politics of Life Itself: Biomedicine, Power, and Subjectivity in the Twenty-First Century. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Rothman, Barabara Katz. 1996. Beyond Mothers and Fathers: Ideology in a Patriachal Society. In Mothering: Ideology, Experience, and Agency, ed. Grace Chang, Linda Rennie Forcey, and Evelyn Nakano Glenn. New York/London: Routledge. Rowland, Robyn. 1992. Living Laboratories: Women and Reproductive Technology. London: Lime Tree. Rudrappa, Sharmila. 2015. Discounted Life: The Global Surrogacy in India. New Delhi: Orient Blackswan Private Limited. Sama – Resource Group for Women and Health. 2010. Constructing Conceptions: The Mapping of Assisted Reproductive Technologies in India. New Delhi: Impulsive Creations. Teman, Elly. 2010. Bithing a Mother: The Surrogate Body and the Pregnant Self. London: University of California Press. Twine, France Widdance. 2011. Outsourcing the Womb: Race, Class, and Gestational Surrogacy in a Global Market. New York: Routledge.

CHAPTER 10

Gender and Invisible Migration: Understanding Sex Trafficking in India Skylab Sahu

Introduction Across the world, 258,000,000 people are migrants and, as per the United Nation’s report (2017), over 60% of all international migrants live in Asia (80 million), followed by Europe (78 million), Northern America (58 million), Africa (25 million), Latin America and the Caribbean (10 million). Legal migration supported by appropriate policies, can contribute to inclusive and sustainable economic growth and development in both home and host communities. As far as migration is concerned, a larger number of migrants move between developing countries as against the perception that all forms of migration is from poor to rich countries. The rate of migration within Asia is higher than migration to Europe from any other part of the globe. Labour migration is conventionally viewed as economically benefiting for the family members, who are left behind, through

S. Sahu (*) Miranda House College, University of Delhi, New Delhi, India © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2022 N. Chowdhory, P. Banerjee (eds.), Gender, Identity and Migration in India, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-16-5598-2_10

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remittances (Zachariah and Rajan 2015; Calì and Cantore 2010).1 Migration can be hugely effective in a few cases in improving the income, education and participation of individuals and families, and enhancing their children’s future prospects. Migration provides additional physical and financial resources for both the destination country and the country of origin. Well qualified and better skilled migrants from poor countries taking the jobs of local jobseekers may increase the concern of the destination country. Rachel M. Friedberg and Jennifer Hunt (2000) have argued that most attention has been paid to the potential negative effects on the labour market outcomes, the competition of the native-born workers with the immigrants in the labour market is often highlighted, and it is argued that the native born labourers or workers will be displaced in the process. Hunt states that less attention has been dedicated to the potential profit of immigration. She argues that the addition of the immigrants in the labour market may complement factors of production in the source country, which would bring overall welfare to the economy and also would benefit the immigrants. The recent theory on international migration cherishes on the “win-win” situation where the source country, or for that matter, the receiving country is seen to be benefited out of the process of the labour transport, their engagement in economic affair and making profit for both the countries or states. In the case of internal migration too, the theorists don’t deviate much and rather see migration as a mechanism of upward mobility and development (Bhagwati 2003; Bhagat 2014). However, migration may not be at all a win-win situation, especially when the labour migrates under deep compulsion and also lives in inhuman living conditions in the place of receiving to earn money for the family. When migration becomes a compulsion and not a choice and takes place in some adverse situations, such as crop failure, no opportunity of work in the place of origin, environmental degradation, caste/communal violence or seasonal availability of work. Although, village could be the best place possible for growth if it could have availed all the basic resources 1  There are several literatures that show brain drain taking place in the developing countries or countries of sources because of migration (Bhagwati 1976). Segregation of families due to migration may have negative effects on education, health, labour supply response in the origin country or state. The permanent or seasonal absence of the main caregiver can adversely affect children’s education and may lead to dropping out of school. Migration can reduce labour force participation for family members left behind, especially for women (Beine et al. 2008; Démurger 2015).

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for development of the people such as decent work with adequate wage, education and health facilities, necessary to improve their life chances. However, such a situation does not exist in most villages in India and in order to search for availing basic necessities and an improved life style, people migrate. The situation becomes worse when the labour or migrant herself or himself is trafficked and forced to do work which he/she never desired to do. If a person is forced to sexual slavery, face more vulnerability. Women, men and children are trafficked for various reasons, such as exploitative purposes, bonded labour, domestic services, forced marriage, removal of organ, begging and illegitimate adoption and so on. Trafficking restricts freedom as the trafficked individual remains not free to choose issues related to abandonment of the trip, to search for alternative employment, place of stay or to return home. Historically, the term “traffic” was first used at the turn of the twentieth century to refer to movement of persons for immoral reasons, for example, prostitution (Howard and Lalani 2008). Until the 1970s, trafficking was limited exclusively to prostitution and sexual exploitation (Pearson 2000). After the 1970s, trafficking was widely referred to as modern slavery in the global economy, and ‘as rape for profit that includes forced labour of various kinds’ (Bayles 2002). In 1949, the UN formed the convention for the Suppression of the Traffic in Persons and the Exploitation of the Prostitution of others trafficking. The 1949 convention declared that prostitution hampers the dignity of the human person (Coomaraswamy 2000; Doezema 2002). It supported the criminalisation of all acts associated with prostitution and anyone facilitating prostitution—although not prostitution itself (George et al. 2010; Doezema 2002; Saunders 2005). A silence in anti-trafficking activity lasted until the 1970s, when Global North feminist groups revived the anti-trafficking movement, driven by concerns about sex tourism in South-East Asia. In Nepal and Bangladesh, women activists highlighted the cross-border prostitution of young girls and women who were lured and taken to brothels in India. In Sri Lanka, child sexual exploitation by tourists became a major issue of concern (Pattanaik 2006). The UN created Special Rapporteur on Violence against Women (SRVAW) in 1994, and included trafficking as a key area in its purview, broadened the perspective of trafficking beyond prostitution. The international focus on trafficking concluded in the adoption of the UN Convention against Transnational Organised Crime in 2000 and added three protocols, one of which was the Protocol to Prevent, Suppress

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and Punish Trafficking in Persons, especially Women and Children. This protocol, is usually known as the Palermo Protocol (UN 2000). These international conventions have influenced the Indian legal system in dealing with trafficking.

Invisible Migration and Sex Trafficking Trafficking pertains to recruitment, transportation, procurement, sale, transfer, port, by threat, use of violence, kidnapping, use of force, fraud, deception without consent. If a person’s consent is received through bribe or by giving or accepting money then also it is labelled as trafficking. If a person is used exploited for prostitution or keeping such person, either for pay or no pay), forced for labour as slaves trapped in a community distinct from the community to which a person originally belonged is also perceived as trafficking (The United Nations 2010). Trafficking has emerged as a global phenomenon and a disturbing factor is the rising share of children in the total trafficked population in India. Annually, there is an estimated 1.2 million children trafficked in India (Bhatty 2017). India as a nation is being used by the traffickers as receiving, sending and transit country. There is also widespread within state or intra-state sex trafficking. The statistics projected by the Ministry of Women and Child Development indicates that in 2015, 15,448 women and children were trafficked and in the year 2016, 19,223 women and children were trafficked. It is further highlighted by the ministry that the highest number of victims were from West Bengal. Across various countries in the world, around 80% of trafficking is for sexual exploitation. Moreover, an estimated 1.2 million children are purchased and sold into sexual trade every year. According to National Crime Record Bureau (NCRB), incidents of sex trafficking has been increasing steadily since 2008 in India. As per National Crimes Record Bureau (NCRB), 72% out of all kinds of trafficking is for sex trafficking of women and girls. In India, the Immoral Trafficking (Prevention) Act (ITPA) 1986 bans trafficking of women and girls for the purpose of prostitution and sexual exploitation. The law, however, does not cover other forms of trafficking such as exploitation for domestic work, child labour, organ harvesting, et cetera. Indian Penal Code Sections 366-A & B, 372 and 373 also relate to sex trafficking. Prostitution of minor girls’ accounts for the second largest number of reported cases of all human trafficking cases in the country. The state of

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Table 10.1  Various reasons for human trafficking in 2016 Sl. no

Name of states

Sexual exploitation for prostitution

Other forms of sexual exploitation

1

Andhra Pradesh Karnataka Kerala Madhya Pradesh Maharashtra West Bengal Tamil Nadu Uttar Pradesh Rajasthan Total States

736

11

0

429 20 585

25 28 1926

9 0 101

1020 155 1087 25 30 4941

33 165 9 24 118 2589

2 121 9 27 8 349

2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10

Forced marriage

Source: National Bureau Crime Record Note: The data is based on the reported cases

West Bengal reported the highest number of trafficking cases (3569), followed by Maharashtra (1066 reported cases), Tamil Nadu (1064) cases, Rajasthan 975 cases and Karnataka (786). The highest number of child trafficking (below 14 years age) was found in West Bengal, where 2687 female children were trafficked. In case of trafficking, a few cases come to notice and most importantly extremely limited cases are convicted. As far as trafficking for prostitution and other forms of sexual exploitation is concerned, it is high in Madhya Pradesh with 2511 reported cases followed by states such as Tamil Nadu (1096), Andhra Pradesh (747) and with 454 reported cases in Karnataka in the year 2016 (Table 10.1).

Sex Trafficking, an Integral Part of Sex Work In order to understand the issue of trafficking for sex work, one needs to contextualise the whole issue of trafficking within the discourse of the sex work itself. Sex work as a profession is often seen as highly derogatory work, and an evil deed and ‘not a work’ at all. Women who are engaged with the work are considered as fallen women in the society. In India, sex work is a means of ensuring livelihood for many to survive from poverty and unemployment. The sex work seen as an undesirable influence of a failure welfare policy or the income generation programme (Frederick

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2000; Lim 1998). Some women are forced into sex work by their family members to make regular payments to their families (Joardar 1984). According to Lim (1998), the scale of sex work has increased to such an extent that it can even be called ‘commercial sex sector’. The ILO (1998) has stated that commercial sex work as a profession provides major economic gain to people who are either directly or indirectly related to the sex work. Within the sex work brothel owners, sex workers, pimps, nearby shopkeepers, close by restaurant or hotels used for the work and even the police make money or earn money because of sex work. In many countries such as in Kenya and in India commercial sex work is a way to manage with the unpredicted non-labour income jolts. Edlund and Korn (2002) have argued that the remuneration of sex workers is quite high, therefore some women do choose to enter the profession due to its associated economic benefits. However, in India, sex work remains an invisible labour. The government of India does not take into account the money earned by the sex workers, they do not pay taxes and, most importantly, sex work is not addressed under the Labour Ministry. Recently, 4000 sex workers marched to Parliament to demand enlisting of sex work as an occupation by the Ministry of Labour. As far as the law is concerned, in India, a woman can opt for sex work on her own choice with adherence to some limitations, as mentioned by law. The foremost law dealing with sex workers in India was the Suppression of Immoral Traffic Act (SITA) of 1956. This was amended as the Immoral Traffic in Women and Girls (Amendment) Act, 1986. The law does not criminalise prostitution or prostitutes. The law punishes the act if it is mediated by third parties and if the act is done through continuation of brothel. Moreover, sex workers approaching customers in the vicinity of public places is prohibited under law.2 These spheres of operation by sex workers can be categorised into the legal sphere and the illegal sphere. The illegal sphere of operation is more repressive and the possibility for operation of the female sex worker (FSW) is more in this illegal sphere. A sex worker could face oppression by the pimp, the brothel system and many other actors. The brothel system encourages trafficking in a concealed manner as the entire sex work business operates on the dimension of demand and supply. Some pimps or brothel owners therefore do not hesitate the illegal and inhuman practice of trafficking directly. Girls and women who were trafficked and were 2  A female offender will be punished not less than two years and not more than five years, as the court thinks fit.

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forced to adopt the profession remain very much vulnerable to infection and violence. They hardly get any opportunity to resist or a chance to be free. The section below highlights some of the causes and consequences of sex trafficking.

Reasons and Consequences of Sex Trafficking The skewed processes of socio-economic and political development in the state of India have been one of the responsible factors for the supply and demand side of trafficking (D’Cunha 2002). Poverty creates the most vulnerable and precarious economic condition that compels people to sell or to believe on false assurance of job given by some people. Socially, in the patriarchal society, women occupy a lower status and are often seen as a burden. The gendered development processes marginalise women from education and employment; enhance gender inequalities and feminisation of poverty that include violence against women, creates a need among people to abandon the girls. Some family members (immediate and distant) do not hesitate to sell girls. Scholars such as Aengst (2001), Manohar (2002), Sarkar et al. (2008) have mentioned that traffickers are often family members. Trafficking takes place in the guise of false hope of employment or marriage-brokering, as well as the direct selling of children into prostitution by their families (Aengst 2001). Another group of vulnerable women and girls are those who might have faced armed conflict and were forced to leave and escape their country for survival. There could be girls or women who might be the worst victims of the internal displacement either because of internal strife or mega-development projects. Calamity-stricken areas hit by earthquakes, floods, cyclones and other natural disasters also influence the affected people who often get attracted to jobs and income in the urban areas (Manohar 2002). Furthermore, in the era of globalisation, increasing unemployment, breakdown of existing livelihood options due to economic and political instabilities and changes in trade regimes impact employment patterns in developing countries (George et al. 2010). Women and children who are trafficked for sexual exploitation or prostitution face severe social, psychological and health consequences. In most

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of the cases, the experience is related to violence and physical injury. Women and girls who are compelled to work as sex workers face physical problems and especially children sex workers remain susceptible to adverse physical injury and psychological trauma. They remain vulnerable to violence, health problems and HIV/AIDS, overall, their life, health and well-­ being remain in peril. Once a girl or a woman is trafficked to be engaged in sex work, they are forcefully kept in a brothel, and tortured. In case any girl or woman manages to escape, they often face stigma and discrimination.

Methodology of the Study The current study is based on both secondary and primary data sources. At the secondary level, it takes into account statistics published in governmental and non-governmental report, and critically analyses the laws and policies. The primary study is based on the qualitative analysis of the 15 girls from Kolkata, who were trafficked and pushed to prostitution. Most of these girls were living in abject poverty, were trafficked, faced fraud and a few were abducted, transported to other places and were sold to brothels. Against their will, these girls were exposed to sex work. A few of them stated that they were more in demand as they were young girls. They were exposed to sexual exploitation, and violence. As a result, most of them contracted sexually transmitted diseases and HIV/AIDS. The paper discusses a few case studies to highlight the socio-economic condition, the trauma they underwent through trafficking and health implication that they faced after they were trafficked.

Sex Trafficking in West Bengal West Bengal has three international boundaries with neighbouring countries, such as Nepal, Bhutan and Bangladesh, through which continuous migration of population takes place. An estimated five lakh sex workers operate in West Bengal (Deccan Herald 2020). Young girls from low socioeconomic backgrounds are more susceptible to sex trafficking and sex work. Specifically, in countries, such as India, Nepal and Bangladesh, a sizeable number of people are poor and women and girls are also more susceptible to recurrent violence and injuries caused by the traffickers. Young girls who are trafficked and forced to join the sex trade are exposed

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to sex at a young age which make them vulnerable to HIV infection among young sex workers. From our sample in Kolkata, in West Bengal, we interviewed 15 girls who were trafficked. In most of the cases, girls were trafficked with the false promise of providing decent jobs, and all the respondents were from very poor families. In a few cases, the young girls were kidnapped or became subject to fraud during their childhood and were pushed to sex trafficking. Some brothels encouraged trafficking in a clandestine manner as the entire sex work business operates on the dimension of demand and supply. It was also found that although it was illegal and inhuman, yet young girls were preferred more in the business. Some pimps or brothel owners therefore do not hesitate to practise illegal and inhuman trafficking directly. They buy girls directly or indirectly. Girls and women who were trafficked and were forced to adopt the profession remain very much vulnerable to sexually transmitted diseases, infection and violence. Girls and women who were trafficked and sent to brothels, especially children, remained very powerless and prone to violence, both by the brothel-­ keepers as well as customers. In case of child sex workers, the work itself remains unbearable and they lacked the physical strength to counter or resist the oppressive system. Thirteen out of fifteen trafficked women and girls interviewed were trafficked to sex work during their childhood. Girls from 13 to 17 years of age were brought from nearby adjacent districts of Kolkata (for example Midnapur, Siliguri, 24 Paraganas), two girls from Bangladesh and one from Nepal were forcefully engaged in sex work in Kalighat, Sonagachhi or Mumbai red light areas. In one of the cases in Kolkata (KaliGhat), a 17 year old girl named Sana (name changed), her family was from Nepal and settled in Kolkata. Her father was a daily wage labourer. She mentioned during the interview that because of abject poverty she mistakenly and accidentally got herself engaged in sex work at the very tender age of 15. She went to a well-to-do woman of her region herself and asked her to do some household chores or any other job, and then Sana was asked to do the job of prostitution as the only option available; she was also lured with the assurance that she would earn a lot from the profession. In the beginning, she did not agree to do the sex work. However after four months, when she did not get any other job, and forced by dismal poverty and helplessness she went back to the madam or the brothel-keeper and got engaged in sex work to save her family from hunger. She said the day she joined her, the next day itself customers started demanding her with high price and she was compelled

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to attend to more than seven or eight customers a day. She said the work itself was painful, and subsequently she got the HIV infection, yet received no proper medical attention, and she had to continue her work. One day, there was a police raid in the brothel, and she was handed over to a rehabilitation home run by a Non-Governmental Organisation. The NGO helped her to get a job in the organisation itself and also supported her for her medical needs. In the above case, the woman running the business in Kalighat could have simply rejected Sana’s request. On the contrary, she lured her at the age of 15 without making her aware about the horrendous repercussion of the work in the brothel. She, in turn, was exposed to sexually transmitted disease and subsequently HIV, yet she was not provided with any medical attention by the pimp. It was also found out from other respondents that the brothel owners often bribe the police, due to which the police keep quiet and the trafficking continues. Another girl named Amba (name changed) from Nadia district was merely 12 years old. She was the eldest daughter of her father who had died when Amba was 9 years old. Her mother worked as a labourer and worked in other’s agricultural field. She already had three more siblings. It was difficult for her mother to bear the burden of the entire family and to feed all her siblings. In the same village where Amba was living, there was a wealthy woman’s home. Once Amba, without informing her mother, went to request the wealthy woman to give her a job. The wealthy woman then asked Amba to meet her the next day. When Amba went back to the woman the next day, the woman gave her some food, after eating which Amba became senseless. When she woke up, she was in the city of Kolkata and she did not find the wealthy woman around. She was confused and did not know how she travelled to Kolkata from the home of the woman of her village. She was worried, as she had not informed her mother when she had gone to meet the wealthy woman in the village, Amba was sure that her mother would be worried. However, she did not know the full address of her home. She was kept as captive surrounded among some women and girls and she was forced to engage in sex work. One day, when there was a raid in the brothel, she along with many girls were rescued from the brothel. She was helped by an NGO to get her medical tests done, whereby she was detected as HIV positive. Furthermore, the NGO called Sankalp provided her with a place to stay and a decent job in another organisation and also helped her to contact her parent. Now she sends money to her parent monthly.

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Once trapped and become victims of the sex trafficking, it becomes immensely difficult for the girls to escape or to be rescued. The sex work often is considered as a ‘dirty job’ and even when a few women and girl children are rescued, most of them are not accepted by their own family and face social stigma. A large number of them are compelled to stay in rehabilitation homes, some of which provide an ambience far from the feeling of home. Bela (name changed) a woman of about 19 years now was trafficked from Bangladesh border area by a middleman who paid some money to Bela’s family with the assurance that Bela would get a decent job across the border, in Kolkata. Bela was also happy as she always wanted to do something to earn and to help her family. Her father had died and her elder brother’s income (daily wage) was insufficient to run the family of five. Her brother was also an alcoholic and often could not give any financial support to the family. Although they had a little land, and her mother and Bela herself and her siblings were engaged in the farming, the production was not sufficient for the survival of the family. She said they often used to have only rice to eat. Bela, as the second child in the family, always felt like helping her young siblings and her mother so when she came to know that a few women go to Kolkata and earn their livelihood and send some money, she tried to contact the middleman, who was a known person in the village. Then her family was given 5000 rupees with the assurance that until Bela starts sending money regularly to the family they could manage surviving at least with that money, and Bela was taken to Mumbai (she was unaware about the place for a long time). She said she was not willing to do sex work, she was beaten, tortured and was told that her youngest sister will also be brought to the place if she does not co-operate. Then she had no other go, however, she said that she was never given any money to send to her family. She said she did not have any contact with her family, as she was not allowed to write letters and there was no phone in the family. However, after a few years, I was brought back to Kolkata by another madam (pimp), and now she sends money for the survival of her family. The case below is a deviant case, where a customer turned lover rescues a trafficked girl and she was also accepted by the family of that man. However, the trafficked girl, after her rescue, could not be accepted by her own parents. Indrani (name changed) was 21 years old during the time of the interview. She shared her story as to how she was trafficked during her school

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age, when she was in the 8th standard, and one day, when she was going back home after school in the lonely road she was kidnapped, forced to drink a cold drink and became unconscious. When she gained she found herself in a brothel. She was shocked and became speechless seeing herself in the brothel. She had no clue where she was (city, or place). She was kept in a locked room for several days and months. And only during lunch and dinner she was allowed to interact with other girls and women. She was forced to have physical relationship with men; however, she said she was lucky that a wealthy, compassionate guy came to her one day. He assured her that he would not harm her in anyway, rather he would help her. She said she had never seen such a customer earlier in the brothel. She said the guy started coming every day and started paying the prescribed amount to the madam, and they developed a friendship. She said he already had asked her several times if she would be interested to marry him. Thinking about her fallen status, she always refused him. When he used to ask that whether she would like to go back home, given a chance, she used to say, the first thing she would do was she would go home. However, she also thought that her family in the village would not accept her. As the guy was from a reputed family and wealthy, he convinced the brothel owner once to take Indrani for an outing for a few hours. Because of the money he offered for the outing, and as he was a regular customer (the madam had some faith in him), she was allowed to go with him. She said the day when she was allowed to go out was the greatest day of her life. He took her direct to the police station, filed an FIR against the madam and then took her to his home. When she arrived there, everyone at home already knew her name, they accommodated her like a family member. Then, within a few days, she was convinced by the family members to marry him. She said, ‘didi (sister, lovingly), doesn’t it sound like a film story, but it has happened with me in real. But the only problem is that now I am surviving on AntiRetroviral Therapy (ART) medicine to deal with HIV/AIDS.’ In 12 cases, the girls got HIV/AIDS and other sexually transmitted diseases. For the young sex workers, it was difficult to make any negotiations with the customers regarding the usage of condom. They shared their experience that they faced several kinds of violence in their profession. Yet there was no one to listen to them or to rescue them. A few, five, trafficked girls were rescued (three by independent police raids), two cases were informed by a customer. They were kept under strict surveillance by the pimps. When they refused to do sex work, they were tortured, beaten

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and often kept on an empty stomach. If anyone tried to escape, they faced the wrath of the pimps and were subjected to physical abuse and torture.

The Law Against Sex Trafficking in India and Issues of Concern The ITPA addresses the child sex trafficking or trafficking of women, whereby a police officer could be bestowed with some special power such as the Central Government may point out a number of police officers who can investigate sexual exploitation cases, and as trafficking police officers, they shall exercise all the powers and discharge all the functions as are exercisable by special police officers under this Act.3 The law also ensured rehabilitation of the applicant is satisfied and that an order should be made under this section, the magistrate, for reasons to be recorded, make an order that the applicant be kept (i) in a protective home, or (ii) in a corrective institution, or (iii) under the supervision of a person appointed by the magistrate. The Indian state has recently prepared the Trafficking of Persons (Prevention, Protection and Rehabilitation) Bill, 2018.4 ‘The Bill addresses one of the most pervasive yet invisible crimes affecting the most vulnerable persons especially women and children’. The Union cabinet, of India approved a proposal for making the apex anti-terror body called as National Investigation Agency (NIA) on February 28, 2018. The trafficking of Persons (Prevention, Protection and Rehabilitation) Bill, proposes a punishment of 10 years in jail to life term and a fine not less than Rs. 1 lakh for the trafficking of human being for the purpose of begging, marriage and injecting hormones for early sexual maturity, among others. The Trafficking of Persons (Prevention, Protection and Rehabilitation) Bill,

3  15. Search without warrant. – (1) Notwithstanding anything contained in any other law for the time being in force, whenever the special police officer 4 [or the trafficking police officer, as the case may be,] has reasonable grounds for believing that an offence punishable under this Act has been or is being committed in respect of a 5 [person] living in any premises, and that search of the premises with warrant cannot be made without undue delay, such officer may, after recording the grounds of his belief, enter and search such premises without a warrant. 4   The Bill requires the central or state government to set up Protection Homes, Rehabilitation Homes, to provide shelter, food, counselling and medical services to victims of trafficking.

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2018 was introduced in Lok Sabha on July 18, 2018 and passed in that House on July 26, 2018. The Bill aims to prevent the trafficking of persons and provides mechanisms for the rescue, protection and rehabilitation of the victims of trafficking. It classifies certain purposes of trafficking as ‘aggravated’ forms of trafficking. These include trafficking for forced labour, bearing children, begging, or for inducing early sexual maturity. Aggravated trafficking attracts a higher punishment. Secondly, the Bill creates a law for investigation of all types of trafficking, and rescue, protection and rehabilitation of trafficked victims. It states that anti-Trafficking Units will be established to rescue victims and investigate cases of trafficking. Liberated persons will be produced before a Magistrate or Child Welfare Committee (in case of child victims). The Rehabilitation Committees will provide care and rehabilitation to the rescued victims. The Bill continues with a ‘raid-rescue-rehabilitation-criminalisation’ model to resolve a largely socio-economic issue of trafficking (Pabreja and Sharma 2019). It is silent on its relationship with various laws dealing with bonded and contract labour, inter-state migrant work and sex work, which is likely to lead to definitional and operational inconsistencies (Kotiswaran 2018). The provision for punishment proposed under the Bill is regressive and may then prevent many new cases of trafficking to be registered. It introduces strict liability of offences which impose high burdens on third parties like owners of property where trafficking is committed, and create offences that are cognisable, non-bailable and punishable with high, often minimum, mandatory sentences, including imprisonment for the remainder of one’s natural life. When the punishment is severe, there is likelihood that the trafficker would be extremely cautious to be noticed and in order to be free from severe punishment, may become more violent to the extent that they may think of leaving no proof of trafficking or any evidence. In the process, the trafficked girls may face more susceptibility of consequences, resulting in the murder of trafficked person by the traffickers. In recent times, while Protection of Children from Sexual Offences (POCSO) Act is in place, there is report of girl children being raped and murdered. One of the reasons for the increasing rate of murder after rape of the girl could be the stringent punishment for the rapist. Strict punishment may not act as prevention to crime, rather it may lead to a grimmer level of crimes. D’Cunha (2002) rightly has stated that the unequal socio-economic and political development process is responsible for the supply-anddemand side of trafficking. Until and unless the socio-economic inequality

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is redressed, it would not be feasible to combat sexual trafficking merely with the help of the legal measures. There is need of long term measures to be considered along with the legal methods to prevent sexual trafficking. In 2016, police investigated 5217 trafficking cases and the judiciary completed the prosecution of 587 cases. Of these cases, the courts convicted 163 traffickers and acquitted individuals in 424 cases. The acquittal rate for trafficking cases increased from 65% in 2015 to 72% in 2016. The conviction rate on the contrary remains low (UNHCR 2018). As far as the focus on sex workers is concerned, it gained importance only in the late 1980s when HIV/AIDS emerged as one of the epidemics in India. Sex workers as a community also got much visibility during the emergence, and development of the discourse on HIV/AIDS. However, the state has been playing a paradoxical role in this situation. The state government has been implementing HIV intervention programmes among the sex workers. In the process, it addresses the sexual health needs and problems of sex workers. It also provisions free HIV tests and medications to sex workers.5 However, the Public health interventions, while dealing with sexual health of sex workers, maintained silence towards addressing trafficking as a forceful illegal way of sex work. It was found that the state, while dealing with the health issues, has not adequately addressed the issue of trafficked sex workers’ welfare and rehabilitation. The girls who were rescued, were rehabilitated by NGO-run rehabilitation homes. However, two girls also complained that when they were rescued by the police followed by the information of the two customers, they had no place to go. Then they were sent to a state-run rehabilitation home where they had no source of earning and nothing to do. As their family members did not accept them, they were compelled to stay in the rehabilitation homes. Both the girls said they wanted study further and do some job but had very little avenues to do so from the rehabilitation homes.

Conclusion Around the world, 258,000,000 people are moving as migrants. On the one hand, migration ensures better remittance, or socio-economic development of the migrant family, and migration can be a benefiting factor for both origin and receiving states. On the other hand, invisible migration

5

 The ART is also free for all AIDS patients in India.

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and especially the trafficking of human beings bring annihilation of human rights and socio-economic impediments. India as a nation is being used by the traffickers as a receiving, sending and transit country. There is also widespread proliferation within state or intra-state sex trafficking. Almost 80% of all worldwide trafficking is for sexual exploitation, with an estimated 1.2 million children being bought and sold into sexual slavery every year. According to data released by National Crimes Record Bureau (NCRB), a department under the Ministry of Home Affairs, 72% of the total cases registered for sex trafficking of women fall under the Immoral Trafficking (Prevention) Act (PITA) 1986, which shows that the trafficked girls and women were pushed to sex trafficking. Women and children who are trafficked for sexual exploitation or prostitution face severe social, psychological and health consequences. In most of the cases, the experience is related to violence and physical injury. Women and girls who are compelled to work as sex workers face physical problems, and especially children sex workers remain susceptible to adverse physical injury and psychological trauma. They remain vulnerable to violence, health problems and HIV/AIDS; overall, their life, health and well-­ being remain in peril. West Bengal has three international boundaries with neighbouring countries, such as Nepal, Bhutan and Bangladesh, through which continuous migration of population takes place. There are two spheres of sex workers’ operation, that is, one is the legal sphere and the other, illegal. The illegal sphere is more oppressive and the chance for ill treatment of the female sex worker (FSW) is more in this sphere, where a sex worker remains subordinate to the pimp, the brothel system and many other actors. The brothel system encourages trafficking in a clandestine manner as the entire sex work business operates on the dimension of demand and supply. Some pimps or brothel owners therefore do not hesitate to practise illegal and in human trafficking directly. They buy girls and women for their business, and on the other end, the trafficked sex worker hardly gets any opportunity to resist or get a chance to be free. Girls and women who were trafficked and were forced to adopt the profession, remain very much vulnerable to infection and violence. From our sample in Kolkata, West Bengal we interviewed 30 sex workers out of which 15 were trafficked. The ITPA addressed the child sex trafficking or trafficking of woman and the Indian state has recently prepared the Trafficking of Persons (Prevention, Protection and Rehabilitation) Bill, 2018. The Bill continues

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with a ‘raid-rescue-rehabilitation-criminalisation’ model to resolve a largely socio-economic issue of trafficking. However, the girls who were rescued were rehabilitated at NGO-run rehabilitation homes, and a few others who were sent to the rehabilitation homes mentioned that the facilities of rehabilitation were highly inadequate. The state has been playing a paradoxical role in this situation; on the one hand, the police conducted a few raids to rescue the trafficked girls and the effort was not adequate. However, the Public health interventions, while dealing with the sexual health of sex workers with HIV/ AIDS, maintained silence towards addressing trafficking as a forceful illegal way of sex work. It was found that the state while dealing with the health issues has not adequately addressed the issue of trafficked sex workers’ welfare and rehabilitation. A few young girls who escaped with the help of police or otherwise from the brothel, however, lacked adequate state support in rehabilitation.

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United Nations Development Programme. 2021. “Overcoming barriers: human mobility and development”. Human Development Report 2009. New York: United Nations. (18) (PDF) Internal Migration in India. Available from: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/343093233_Internal_Migration_ in_India [accessed Dec 20 2021]. Zachariah, K., and C.S.  Irudaya Rajan. 2015. Dynamics of Emigration and Remittances in Kerala: Results from the Kerala Migration Survey 2014, Working Paper 463. http://cds.edu/wp-­content/uploads/2015/10/WP463.pdf. Accessed 24 May 2020.

PART III

Identity, Borders and Borderland

CHAPTER 11

Being with Difficulty and Uncertainty: Young Rohingyas in Children’s Homes of West Bengal Suchismita Majumder

Introduction The Rohingya Muslims, a stateless ethnic minority from the Northern Rakhine1 state (previously known as Arakan) of Western Myanmar,2 have been bearing the brunt of ethnic conflict for more than 40 years. Exclusion, persecution and resulting displacement are the everyday reality of the community in some form or other. They are the victims of repeated waves of discrimination and dislocation. The emergence and attack of Rohingya insurgents, the counter hit by the Myanmar military and the massive displacement of Rohingyas towards Bangladesh have shaped the total 1  Arakan is the old name of Rakhine. Old and new names are used simultaneously in this paper. 2  Burma was renamed as Myanmar by the then State Law and Order Restoration Council (SLORC) military government in 1989. Both the names are used interchangeably in this paper.

S. Majumder (*) Department of Sociology, Raiganj University, Raiganj, India © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2022 N. Chowdhory, P. Banerjee (eds.), Gender, Identity and Migration in India, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-16-5598-2_11

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situation into a galvanic one since August 2017 (Human Rights Watch 2017). The Rohingya issue took a more complicated form following the involvement of a section of this population with ARSA or Arakan Rohingya Salvation Army.3 In India, the Rohingyas were announced as ‘illegal’ immigrants by the Union Government. It was declared by the Government on September 2017 before the Supreme Court that the continued stay of Rohingyas in this land posed “serious national security ramifications”. However the honourable Supreme Court of India, following the tradition of hospitality of the country, said that Rohingya refugee problem was of a ‘great magnitude’ and the state would have to play a ‘big role’ in striking a balance between national interests and human rights while dealing with the contentious issue. A bench headed by Chief Justice Dipak Misra suggested to the Centre not to deport the Rohingya refugees. The apex court imposed a stay order on the process of deportation of Rohingyas instantly (PTI 2017a). As a response to Central Government’s choice of deporting the Rohingya Muslims by labelling them as ‘terrorists’, WBCPCR (West Bengal Commission for Protection of Child Rights) filed a petition in the Supreme Court of India to protect the Rohingya Children who were under the custody of the State on September 2017. The Commission’s point was that “the children are not terrorists and they cannot harm the national security”. As per the Commission’s estimation, there were 24 Rohingya Children in different Children’s Homes4 of West Bengal. They were locked up for their illicit entrance in the Indian province (Bhattashali 2017; Roy 2017). The Cases filed by the Central Government as well as by WBCPCR brought the Rohingya community, particularly these helpless kids and adolescents, in front of civil society.

History and Rohingyas The identity of Rohingyas, their connection with Rakhine, their stateless situation and finally their present rootless existence have some deep root in history (Majumder 2019). Arakan is known as the “traditional 3  Formerly known as ‘Harakah al-Yaqin’, ARSA or Arakan Rohingya Salvation Army is a Rohingya insurgent group. Myanmar security forces were attacked by ARSA on October 2016 and again on August 2017. 4  See ‘http://wbscps.in/User/aic’ for details of Children’s Homes in West Bengal.

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homeland of the Rohingya community” (Basu Ray Chaudhury and Samaddar 2018). However, they are related to the Chittagonian Bengalis just across the border which is separated from Arakan by the river Naff. Rohingya language is also related to the Bengali people of Chittagong. As opposed to the majority Sino-Tibetan people of Burma, Rohingyas are originally related to the Indo-Aryan peoples of India and Bangladesh (Rahman 2015). Since independence of Myanmar (1948), and more specifically since the 1960s, Rohingyas were never recognised as the natives of that country. In the colonial period, a huge migration took place from Chittagong to Arakan with no restriction of movement between the two regions. The conflict between the majority Buddhists and Rohingya Muslims in Arakan could be traced back to colonial period mainly at the time of the Second World War. In 1947, with the creation of the Mujahid party, marked the beginning of Rohingya separatism in spite of the attempts of Rohingya leaders to be with Bogyoke Aung Sang endeavour to bring the diverse population of the country under an umbrella. After independence, some Rohingya elders did join national parliamentary parties and represented their constituencies in the Burmese parliament. And Mujahid party, founded in 1947, carried to employ young Rohingyas “for whom a separate Muslim Autonomous Region in the northern part of the province was the only way the community could protect its rights and enjoy some share of political power” (Bhaumik 2013). The post colonial period of Myanmar was marked by troubled ethnic nationalities, unrest, and counterattack by the military junta (Tatmadaw, the main army). The short era of multi-ethnic parliamentary democracy came to an end with the military takeover by General Ne Win in March 1962. The Counterinsurgency, with the application of the Four Cuts Policy (Pya Ley Pya in Burmese), was a regular activity of the military for destroying seditious actions by targeting its civilian support base since the 1960s (Basu Ray Chaudhury 2005). The emergence of Bangladesh as an independent country in 1971 had far-reaching consequences for Arakan, more specifically for the Rohingyas. Being equipped with weapons from the Pakistani military, the ‘Rohingya Mujahid’ division reorganized themselves and made a tactical agreement with the CPB (Communist Party of Burma, the second largest political party of the country) Arakan unit in 1973 to fight the Burmese army together. Burma’s military ruler General Ne Win was determined to abolish the alliance between the CPB and the RPF (The Rohingya Patriotic

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Front, the Mujahid groups were rearranged under the name). As a reaction to all these autonomist activities, Operation Nagamin, or King Dragon, was launched in 1978 with massive brutality, to erase “the Mujahid groups in the Rohingya-dominated areas so that they could hardly help the CPB wriggle out of a tight corner” (Bhaumik 2013). The unending series of misfortune of the entire Rohingya community started mainly from 1978, the year of the first exodus of Rohingyas towards Bangladesh escaping inhuman torture of the Burmese military. In 1982, the revised Myanmar Citizenship Law did not include the Rohingyas in the list of 135 national ethnic groups. Rohingyas became stateless overnight and the emergence of a stateless community began to take place gradually. The second mass departure of Rohingyas took place in 1991–92 following Operation Pyi Thaya (or Prosperous Country), commenced by the Myanmar military to expand the military forces and to develop a border task force named Nay-Sat Kut-kwey Ye (or Na sa ka). Since mid-1992, Bangladesh had closed its door formally to the Rohingyas; however, their constant flow from Arakan to Bangladesh could not be restricted because of the spongy border between the two countries (Cheung 2011). Continuous imposition of restrictions in every fundamental aspect of life since the 1990s has led the Rohingyas to cross the boundary of their homeland, each and every day. Persecution, including rape and other types of violence against women, inhuman living conditions and flight of the Rohingyas are regular events in Arakan over time and some years like 1978, 1991–92, 2012, 2017, have been marked for extreme breach of human rights and huge displacement of Rohingya community from the land of Myanmar towards Bangladesh and other adjacent countries. In 2012, violence erupted in Arakan between the Muslim Rohingyas and the Rakhine Buddhists first in June and then in October. It “caused some of the 140,000 internally displaced to attempt to flee across the border” (Goodman 2014). Loaded with more than 660 Rohingya people, mainly women and children, 16 boats were forcefully turned back while attempting to cross the Naff River in June 2012 by the Bangladeshi security guards (AFP 2012). Following the mass migration of Rohingyas to Bangladesh in 2017, the vigilance had intensified on all borders with the purpose of checking the infiltration of the Rohingyas to India. “According to BSF officials in the South Bengal Frontier, 175 Rohingyas were apprehended by the BSF in the last few years, of which seven were caught in 2017” (PTI 2017b). This kind

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of checking and alertness were not in place before the second half of 2017, and it may be assumed that the maximum infiltration of Rohingyas in India had taken place prior to this time. In the entire process of repeated conflict, violence and dislocation, the most affected segments of the community are children, adolescents and teenagers. They are becoming increasingly vulnerable and defenceless. In Myanmar, they are left without identity, education and security. To save their lives, many a time they are forced to escape, leaving their parents behind. The neighbouring lands are equally harsh to them. Frequently, the Rohingyas are found to be victims of trafficking, smuggling and other deviant as well as unlawful activities, as statelessness limits their right to legal existence. Because of its geographical location, Bangladesh has been bearing the maximum pressure of this population since 1978. But other adjacent countries like India, Thailand and Malaysia are also facing the stress of this crisis for years. In India, the Rohingyas are haunted by same kinds of problems, including identity crisis, educational obstacles and scarcity of other resources needed for the development of a young one. In addition, they are faced with the hazard of detention many a time for illegal entrance into the country. Their victimization may be explained from several angles under a number of adverse situations. With an attempt to illuminate the intense difficulty of imprisonment, the present study particularly focuses on confined young Rohingyas in Children’s Homes of West Bengal. Since birth, these youngsters have been living with uncertainty and, after confinement in an alien land, they become poorly trapped within the chain of legal complications.

Rohingyas, West Bengal and the Present Study West Bengal and Bangladesh share a long and porous border of 2216.7 kilometres (“Tackling Influx Major Challenge” 2012). For a quite long period of time, these borders have been the common routes of migration, often without legal documents. Infiltration of the Rohingyas through West Bengal borders, their arrest, detention and other legal harassment have been highlighted in some reports and papers for last few years. The AnandabazaarPatrika, a Bengali daily, on March 2014, has stated that only in West Bengal Prisons the number of locked up Rohingyas counts for 100. The number has been increasing rapidly for the last two years (Mitra 2014). A senior intelligence official informs The Hindu (a newspaper) that “more than one thousand” Rohingya refugees had been detained in prisons “in

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the State in the last six months. But the West Bengal government has no clear idea of the actual number of the undocumented immigrants who entered the State in the past few years” (Bagchi 2014). Majumder (2015), in her research shows the visible presence of 58 Rohingyas in different prisons of W.B. in February 2015. In her more elaborated study, she can trace the existence of 100 incarcerated Rohingyas from February 2015 to July 2015 (Majumder 2018a). As per the account of the Correctional Home Authority, this particular group of people began to be visible since 2012/13. Other than Prison5 (known as Correctional Home since 1992), Children’s Home is another dimension of confinement in West Bengal as well as the point of separation between the family members who are arrested together for the unlawful entrance in the country. Not only the Rohingyas but also Bangladeshi nationals are the victims of this two-­ dimensional confinement on the basis of age of the offender (Ghosh 2018). Children’s Homes are meant for the individuals who belong to the age group of 6–17 years. After arrest, when someone is detected and suspected in this age category, they can’t be placed in prisons that are meant for adults of 18 years and above and for the children below six years. It is mentioned in earlier studies that a good number of Rohingya children and adolescents have reached different Children’s Homes of the state (Majumder 2015; Chakraborty 2015). In their attempt to seek refuge in this land, they become captives after crossing the West Bengal–Bangladesh border. Many a time, they are separated from their families and relatives after arrest either because of their age or because of the escape of their relatives from the clutches of vigilance on the journey. With the application of data triangulation6 as well as methodological triangulation,7 the research explores the complexity and difficulty faced by 5  In accordance with the “West Bengal Correctional Services Act” the jails/prisons of W.B. are known as Correctional Homes since 1992. In this paper, the terms ‘jail ‘and ‘prison’ are also used along with Correctional Home. 6  Triangulation is a process of mingled data from several sources to study a particular social phenomenon. It is based on the belief that more can be learnt by watching from multiple standpoints than by looking from only a single viewpoint. In the social sciences, the use of triangulation can be traced back to Campbell and Fiskel (1959). Denzin (1970) identified four basic types of triangulation. Data triangulation is the use of multiple sources of data. For the purpose of validation these are used in the same study. There are three types of data triangulation; namely, time, space and person. 7  Methodological triangulation is done by application of two or more techniques of data collection.

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Table 11.1  Number of Rohingyas interviewed in different Children’s Homes Serial number

Name of the Children’s Home

District

Time of visit

Respondents

1

Sneha (Sanlaap)

South 24 PGS

1

2 3

Vidyasagar Balika Bhawan Silayan Home

West Midnapur Murshidabad

November 2016 June 2016 March 2017

Total

2 7 10

the Rohingya youngsters in Children’s Homes of West Bengal. The researcher’s interaction with 10 Rohingya girls who belong to the age group of 12–18 years (at the time of interview) in three different Homes, namely, Vidyasagar Balika Bhawan, Sanlaap Home (also known as Sneha) and Silayan Home, is included as the primary data (Table 11.1). Secondary information is mainly provided by Prajaak and Sanlaap, two NGOs of West Bengal. The study has attempted to fulfil the following objectives: . To highlight the Visibility of young Rohingyas in Children’s Homes. 1 2. To look at the background of these Rohingyas before imprisonment. 3. To enquire into the difficulties that these young ones are experiencing during confinement. 4. To explore the consequences of the ongoing Supreme Court Case on this section of the population.

Sanlaap and Flows of Rohingya Girls Sanlaap Shelter Home (also known as Sneha) at Narendrapur (South 24 PGS District) accommodated a good number of Rohingya girls (25 approx.) previously in 2014–15. Chakraborty (2015) conducted group interviews with seven minor Rohingya girls at Sanlaap. But all these girls were handed over to their parents/guardians, when I approached the Organization in February 2016. The institution helped me a lot by sharing their knowledge about those girls with whom it was in constant contact for some months. From my meeting with Priyanka Biswas (Senior Social Worker & Internship

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Coordinator of Sanlaap) on 2.03.2016 as well as with Sutapa Basu (Chakroborty) and Manabi Nag (Shelter Home Programme In-Charges) on 12.05.2016, I could grasp the deep imprint left by those matchless Rohingya girls on these Home employees. All the girls came in certain flows and they were released from Sanlaap at different points of time. • The first flow came in 2009/10 when three Rohingya sisters came with their 3-year-old brother. • In 2012 came one Rohingya girl named Nur Kalima. • The third group of three girls came in May 2013. Nine Girls in the fourth and eight girls in the fifth batch came in June 2013. Total 25 girls (Approximate) spend 1–2 years of their life span in this shelter home. It was guessed from their appearance that ages of these girls varied from 6–7  years to 19–20  years. No valid age proof of them was available. They were all born in Burma and the majority of them left that country after the riot of 2012. Initially, they didn’t understand Bengali. When they were talking among themselves, other girls thought that they were using abusive language. So primarily there was an adjustment problem between the Rohingya girls and the others. Moreover, they were very unhygienic. It was also a problem for the rest. None of these girls was found to be rape victims. Their medical examination was done. The Way of Coming of the Girls to Sanlaap and Their Way of Going Back to Family • From the border of Swarupnagar/Bongaon, the BSF (Border Security Force) arrested them • They were handed over to the district police of 24PGS (N) and were sent to the Nearest Police Station of the border • They were produced before the Juvenile Justice Board (JJB)8 • They were sent to Sanlaap • These children were first treated as JCL (Juvenile in Conflict with Law), but then they were viewed as CNCP (Child in Need of Care & Protection). When JJB released them, they came under CWC

8  According to The Juvenile Justice Act, 2000, it is mandatory to have one Juvenile Justice Board (JJB) in each district. It manages matters of juveniles in conflict with law. For more information, see http://wbscps.in/User/jjb

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(Child Welfare Committee).9 After having consent from CWC, they were handed over to their parents or other family members from Sanlaap time to time. In the initial stage, the JJB itself was confused to give any verdict regarding these children because repatriation/ restoration was not possible for them. The girls’ parents/relatives who managed to escape came back in search of their children after acquiring refugee cards. With those papers or cards, they approached the JJB to know the address of their lost children. The imprisoned parents who could not escape tried to find out their lost children after being released on bail. They first contacted the police station who produced them in court and, from the Case Number,10 they located the address of their confined children. In some cases, Sanlaap tried to find the relatives of these girls using the Case Number. Though the total process was really very complicated, ultimately all the girls could be traced and they went back to their families in Jammu, Uttar Pradesh and some places near Delhi. The presence of Rohingya girls in Sanlaap has disclosed some facts and reality about this population. Without uncovering these cases, it is not possible to have knowledge about those truths. Three Rohingya Sisters and Their Brother In 2009/2010, three Rohingya sisters along with their 3-year-old brother were sheltered in Sanlaap. Because of the age factor, the other three brothers were sent to Dhrubashram JCL Observation Home. The mother of these seven children was locked up in Dumdum Central Jail and their father had escaped to Jammu. So a family of nine members, after entering India, got separated and distributed in four different places. One day their father, after having obtained a refugee card from Jammu, came to the Sanlaap gate in search of his daughters. They entered India through the Bashirhat–Bangladesh border from where the mother and the children were arrested and handed over to the police. The father of these children 9  Child Welfare Committees exercise powers and carry on the duties bestowed on them in relation to Child in Need of Care and Protection under Juvenile Justice (Care and Protection of Children) Amendment Act, 2006. See http://wbscps.in/User/cwc_list 10  When a group of people are arrested together, they are assigned with the same Case Number. For this reason sometimes, the members of a family and sometimes members of different families in a particular group bear the same Case Number.

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was guided by Sanlaap so that he could get back his children and wife. After a long gap of his first visit, he once more came to Sanlaap. On his second visit, it was known that he again married a woman from Jammu and became father of some children in the last three years (as informed by the man to the Sanlaap staff). Ultimately, his four children were handed over to the man following the order of CWC (Child Welfare Committee). But as per the knowledge of Sanlaap, the man did not take any initiative to get back his first wife. The poor woman was sent most probably to a jail of Delhi. The eldest daughter of the man once called from Jammu and informed Sanlaap about her marriage. Entrance of Three Girls in May 2013 A chaotic condition was created in May 2013 when two sisters with their niece stepped into Home. Their condition was extremely poor, dresses were worn out and were so unclean that no one was able to tolerate the stench. Moreover, they could neither speak nor understand Bengali. In the same way, their language was not comprehensible to anyone. Seeing their dirty condition, not a single inmate was willing to share room with these three newcomers. In this situation, Nur Kalima, another Rohingya girl who came alone to Sanlaap before this group in 2012, identified them as Rohingyas and, with the help of Nur, the Home authority was able to communicate with them. They were given new dresses and other required materials. For a time, Nur worked as an interpreter. Because of her earlier arrival, Nur had learnt to speak Bengali in the course of time. The ages of these three girls were 17, 12 and 6/7 years. Sabana, the eldest one, was married, and within a few days, she was found to be pregnant. She gave birth to a baby girl on December 25, 2013 in a hospital in Kolkata. The baby was provided with a birth certificate. At the time of leaving Burma in 2012, they couldn’t take a single thing with them. Sabana informed Sanlaap that her husband was beaten and killed in front of her eyes. But at the time of release, to her extreme surprise, Sabana found that her husband who was known to be dead came to take her back along with her mother. After the arrival of these three girls, 17 more girls arrived in June 2013. Some facts concerning the life of these girls in Burma, their migration and their condition in the Home were known from Sanlaap. Agriculture was the main source of earning of their families and rice was their main food. Two or three girls said that their fathers were catching fish in the sea.

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None of them attended any school in Burma. Illiteracy is the exclusive feature not only of Rohingya girls and women but also of boys and men. At the time of taking back these girls, all of their parents gave thumb impression. Except the first three sisters along with their brother, the other Rohingya girls left their houses after being attacked by the Buddhists in the 2012 Riot. One girl always lamented by saying “They beheaded my father in front of me.” Some escaped to see the torture on their neighbour. They left their home in the midst of riot with an aim to reach Jammu, India. A Senior Social Worker realized from the narrated story of these girls that the riot was characterized by the murderous kind of violence. It was aimed to kill anyhow all the community members. These girls entered Bangladesh crossing mountains and jungles. Bangladesh border was very close to their residences. In their narratives, they were running bare-footed throughout the whole night. They did not notice when the sun rises, but they discovered that their feet were bleeding. None of these girls had any relative in Bangladesh where they were floating for 1/2 months and then reached the West Bengal border. No one had the experience of living in Bangladesh. They did not acknowledge any help from any tout. They came out from their home in a group with other family members. While escaping, some of their near and dear ones were murdered in front of their eyes. The others ultimately managed to cross two international borders and entered into Indian land. After crossing the border, they were arrested by the BSF from the border areas. These girls were traumatized at the beginning. Murders of parents, burning of houses created a shock among them. They were extremely silent. Sometimes they wept very badly. Some girls told that they used to see the happenings of their torture whenever they closed their eyes. But they were calm and quiet by nature even after such horrible days of their lives. Depression was common to them. But internally they were very sturdy. Communal affinity was also very strong. No suicidal tendency was found among them. They were straightforward and did not hesitate to put their demands before others. No submissiveness was observed among them. They didn’t have any fear regarding the foreign land, more specifically regarding India and Hindu people. These girls did not have any feeling towards Burma as their homeland. They never wanted to go back to that country. They always wished to go back to their parents. Whenever one girl departed, the others lamented because they became eager to see their parents. In Sanlaap, they went

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through counselling. These girls became literate in this Home where they had to attend classes. They could sign their names in Bengali, Hindi and English at the time of release. They also learnt tailoring and embroidery in Sanlaap. Manabi Di (Shelter Home Programme In-Charge) informed that the girls were very energetic. They went to the classes of their own will. These girls also helped in the cooking at the Home. Sanowara, at the time of release, earned Rs. 13,000/- from Sanlaap through her involvement in embroidery. She gifted her mother a “Saree” of block print from Sanlaap with her earning. She was offered it at free of cost by the authority but her empowerment guided Sanowara to gift something to her mother with her own income and not with the mercy of others. These Rohingya girls are also taught to play ‘Ukellele’ [A musical instrument like Getter] by Lorik, an American (who spends a certain amount of time of the year with the girls of Sanlaap and teaches them to play the ‘Ukellele’). Umal Phasal, Ramida and her sister Jhunjhun played it well and they also performed on stage in some programmes arranged by Sanlaap. These programmes include Rabindra Jayanti and a presentation in American centre on the occasion of foundation day of Sanlaap. Lorik gifted ‘Ukellele’ to Ramida and some other Rohingya girls also. At the time of discharge, they took this gift which was most probably the first gift in their life. It is not known whether they would get any opportunity to have a gift in future. I observe that both Sutapa and Manobi are concerned about these girls. They believe that the learning of Rohingya girls starts and ends within the confined walls of Sanlaap. Amina (Table 11.2) I met Amina, the only primary case from Sanlaap in November 2016. Amina came to Sanlaap in the second half of 2016. Amina’s story is unique  as it reveals some shocking reality about the continuous voyage of Rohingyas to India from Burma via Bangladesh. Amina was arrested along with her father Md. Unus while coming from the Bangladesh side at the time of her second entrance in India. Md. Unus shifted to India in 2009 with his wife and children, including Amina, who was only seven years old then. She sought asylum and received the refugee certificate. But after two years, her Nani came to Jammu and the old lady became emotionally unstable at the question of going back to Burma without Amina. So a tout was arranged to take Amina and her Nani to Haripara, Maungdaw. From 2011 to 2016 June/July, Amina lived with

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Table 11.2  Details of the respondent in Sanlaap/Sneha Home, November 2016 Age

Sex

Birth place

Marital status

Entrance in India

13

F

Burma

Unmarried First in 2009 & then in 2016

Imprisoned relative

Imprisoned relative’s location

Father

DCCH (Dumdum Central Correctional Home)

her Nani in Burma. Amina’s name was added with her Nani’s family after paying a considerable amount of money to the Burmese authority. The house of Amina’s Nana was made of rattan. There were four rooms. They had a vegetable shop attached with the house. Amina used to play in her village with Ashai, Noor Bibi and her other friends. She went to a Burmese school for a few days before coming to India for the first time. But after her return to Burma, she was not allowed to go to school. She was interested to read, but her Nani told her that reading the Quran-Sarif is enough for a girl. Amina cooked prawn curry, prepared rice and roti and helped her Nani at home. She used to talk to her parents over the phone from Burma. She could not inform much about the violence of the 2012 riot. In 2016, Amina’s Nani took her to Bangladesh and handed over Amina to her father Unus. After entering India, they were running through some wet grassland. At that time, they were chased by the BSF. When the BSF asked her where she came from, Amina could not understand. Her father translated the question and she replied “From Burma”. After that she came to Sanlaap, having been separated from her father (Unus) who was imprisoned in the Dumdum prison. She talked to her mother who lived in Hyderabad over phone from Sanlaap. Being unable to speak Hindi or Bengali Amina’s mother, a housewife could not come to meet her daughter. Now Amina could sign her name in English that she had learnt in Sanlaap. She had also received training in Block print from here. However, Amina was not interested to attend the school of Sanlaap. She was craving for her mother and repeatedly asked me about her uncertain future. The emotion regarding motherland was not found in her conduct. Along with Amina, there was another Rohingya girl in Sanlaap in the same period of time. But the day I met Amina, the other girl was not available due to her legal proceedings and after that she went back to her family soon.

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During my visit to Dumdum Prison in October 2017, I came to know from Unus that Amina is no more in Sanlaap. Her mother finally approached Sanlaap three  months earlier (July 2017) with the help of some NGO from Hyderabad and took her daughter with her. But Unus was still undergoing imprisonment because of the ongoing Supreme Court Case.

Prajaak and Vidyasagar Balika Bhawan Speaking of some young detainees in an unknown language in a number of Children’s Homes since 2013 attracted the attention of Prajaak, an NGO working with children in some Homes of West Bengal. It was guessed by Prajaak that Rohingya children were coming in West Bengal Children’s Homes from 2012. These kids and teenagers were arrested by different authorities like BSF, G.R.P. (Government Railway Police) and police from different places and times. They also suffered the same kind of trauma as reported by Sanlaap about their girls. These Rohingyas were released in the same way mentioned in case of Sanlaap. The NGO provided some information about the presence of Rohingyas in the following Children’s Homes on April 2016: • Dhrubashram JCL Observation Home • Kishalaya Children’s Home (for Boys), North 24 PGS • Subhayan Children’s Home • Vidyasagar Balika Bhawan • Malda Shelter Home for Girls. Prajaak has also shared their knowledge regarding the number of Rohingyas (Put in Table 11.3) in April 2016 as per their knowledge and contact. With the help of Prajaak, Vidyasagar Balika Bhawan was visited in the first week of June 2016. There were two teenage girls named Maher (Serial No: 1, Table  11.4) and Sura (Serial No: 2, Table  11.4) who had their husband and father in the MCCH (Midnapur prison), respectively. Sura entered India with her father, brother and uncle. Her brother was locked up in another Children’s Home (for boys) in Midnapur. Both the girls were really beautiful and very soft-spoken. They talked to me for hours. Because of their long confinement, they picked up Bengali well.

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Table 11.3  Estimate of Rohingyas in Children’s Homes by Prajaak on April 2016 Names of homes

Number of detainees

Number of released

Kishalaya (Boys)

2

Subhayan (Boys)

0

Vidyasagar Balika Bhawan (Girls)

2

12 are released and went to their parents in Jammu 2 escaped 5 Rohingya boys went back to their parents in Jammu 1 went back to her parents in Jammu

Table 11.4  Details of the respondents in Vidyasagar Balika Bhawan, June 2016 Sl. No

Age

Sex Birth place

Marital status

Entrance in India

Imprisoned Imprisoned relative’s relative location

1

18

F

Burma

Married

2012

Husband

2

16

F

Burma

Unmarried

2012

Father

MCCH(Midnapur Central Correctional Home) MCCH

Both Maher and Sura were 2012 riot victims. After confinement, they spent two years with tears and the horrible memories of riot. Whenever they closed their eyes the fire, the murder what they had experienced came in front of them. They couldn’t sleep at night. I came to know that for the last 1 (one) year they did not meet their family members in Midnapur prison. They had been living a confined life within the walls of that Home for more than three years. None of them had any knowledge whether their mothers and other siblings left in Burma were dead or alive. After visiting these two women, I went to Midnapur prison. Knowing that I met their daughter and wife, Md. Salom and Md. Karim asked me about their health. The distance between Midnapur prison and Vidyasagar Balika Bhawan is just a few kilometres but they had not seen their most dear and near ones for a year. Mala (a staff of Prajaak) used to visit Midnapur Home as a part of her job. I was in constant touch with her for keeping trace of Maher and Sura after my meeting with them in June 2016. In August of the same year, Mala informed me that both Maher and Sura became very impatient and they wanted to know from me what would happen to them.

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But the answer was not known to anyone. They became adults with the passage of time. Finding them in an extreme depressed situation, the Home authority made arrangements (most probably in the month of September or October, 2016) of their meeting with their family members who were transferred from Midnapur prison to Dumdum by that time. Maher and Sura were brought to Dumdum in a prison van. After that, up to June 2017, there was no contact between these girls and their imprisoned relatives. Karim and Salom were released from Dumdum in April 2017 (Tentatively). They were among the few lucky Rohingyas who were released from prisons after having their refugee cards. But the distressing fact is that these two poor girls Maher and Sura are still suffering as per my latest knowledge in December 2017. They are trapped because of the Supreme Court Case like many other confined Rohingyas. It is known from an advocate that refugee cards of Maher and Sura have come from UNHCR, but the cards cannot be handed over to them because of the ongoing case.

Silayan and Seven Rohingya Girls Silayan is a Home for Girls in Murshidabad district of West Bengal. At the time of my visit, I met seven Rohingya girls in that Home. They were arrested from Samser station of Malda district in 2016 along with their mothers, aunt and other relatives comprising a group of a total of 19 members. This Home was covered with the help of some Government officials. These girls were also affected by the riot of 2012. Akhi Tara and Jannat Ara (Serial Number 1 & 2, Table 11.5) Akhi and Jannat are two Rohingya young women of 18 and 17 years. One of their brothers is in Ananda Ashram, a Children’s Home for boys in Berhampore. While going to Delhi, they are separated from the Police Station. Their mother, Ayesha is locked up in Malda jail. It is known from Ayesha that after their arrest one of her daughters (another sister of Akhi and Jannat) living in Delhi has spent 3–4  months in Malda in a rented house of a Muslim man. That lady knows tailoring and she earns in that way while living in Malda. The purpose of this staying is surely to keep contact with imprisoned family members and to arrange lawyers for them. Twelve siblings together with Akhi and Jannat were scattered in six different places, including four countries.

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Family Tree of Akhi andJannat Ayesha, Mother (MDCH) + Father (Dead) 4 Daughters–Burma

1 Son—Delhi

2 Daughters—Silayan Home (Respondents) 1 Daughter—Delhi

1Son—(Ananda Ashram) 1Son—Saudi Arab 2 Sons—Malaysia

Johora, Taslima, Samiya and Dalabi (Serial Number 3 to 6, Table 11.5) Johora, Taslima, Samiya and Dalabi are four sisters. Their father had migrated to Delhi five or six years earlier. They are 12, 14, 15 and 17 years old. Their other two sisters are in Delhi with their father. They have two brothers. The youngest one is Hairul Amin who is in MDCH (Malda prison) with their mother and other one is in Thailand. They just wish to be free from their misfortune. All of them got admission in a Burmese school, but none of them could complete their primary education. Since the outbreak of riots, they spent days by taking only rice with salt and chilli. They talked to their father in Delhi using other villager’s mobile phone. In 2016, they were threatened by Moughs. They came to know that soon their house would be set on fire. So they came out.

Table 11.5  Respondents from Silayan Home in March 2017 Sl. No Age

Sex

Birth place

Marital status

Entrance in India

Imprisoned relative

Imprisoned relative’s location

1 2

18 17

F F

Burma Burma

Unmarried

2016

Mother

3 4 5 6 7

12 14 15 17 17

F F F F F

Burma Burma Burma Burma Burma

Unmarried

2016

Mother

MDCH (Malda District Correctional Home) MDCH

Unmarried

2016

Aunt

MDCH

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Family Tree of Four Sisters (Johora, Taslima, Samiya and Dalabi) Mother (MDCH) + Father (Delhi)

Silayan (4 Respondents) (Four Daughters)

Delhi

MDCH

Thailand

(Two Daughters)

(One Son Imprisoned with Mother)

(One Son)

Kamaru (Serial Number 7, Table 11.5) Kamaru, a girl of 17  years of age, lost her father when she was only 2/3 years old. After class IV she couldn’t go to the local Burmese school anymore. She and her mother lived in the house of her Nana (mother’s father) and maternal uncles. Because of the increasing life risk in Burma, her mother decided to send Kamaru to Delhi, where her maternal uncle and other relatives from the mother’s side had migrated earlier. Kamaru was coming with her aunt (mother’s sister) Tamanna. In Silayan, she was crying all day. She did not speak to anyone other than six other Rohingya girls who were also locked up in the Home.

The Likeness among Primary Cases of the Study The narratives and case studies discussed above disclose some threads that are common among these girls, (primary cases) of the study. • All the girls were born in the land of Arakan. None of them could continue their education beyond the primary level. Some had to drop out even before class IV. • They were present in Arakan in 2012 and, except Amina, all others experienced the horrible features of riot. • They were arrested from either border or stations along with other family members. All of them had relatives in some prisons. Detainees of Vidyasagar Balika Bhawan, Sanlaap Home and Silayan Home had their family members in Midnapur, Dumdum and Malda prisons, respectively, at the time of my interaction with them. • Children’s Homes are meant for minors below 18 years of age and so mainly teenagers and adolescent are found here. I didn’t find little children (6 years–9/10 years) during my visit, though Sanlaap has encountered some girls in this age group.

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• Some of them have their brothers in other Children’s Home. So separation is not limited between two places (Prison and Children’s Home) in some cases. A family is parted among three places also— prison and two Children’s Homes as found in cases of Akhi and Jannat (Silayan Home) as well as of Sura (Vidyasagar Balika Bhawan). • Other than imprisoned relatives, they also have family members in different places of India. • At the time of interview, only two girls were 18  years old. They became adults while remaining confined in Children’s Homes. All of them were below the age of 18 at the time of arrest. • Family members of all the respondents are divided among three to four places. • Except Sanlaap, other Children’s Homes are in a very poor condition. Children’s Homes are more monotonous for Rohingyas than Correctional Homes. The main problem is no activity in maximum cases. They are living with the horrible and unhappy memories of the past and with the extreme uncertainty and pain of separation from family in these places. Only in Sanlaap, the girls are involved with different kinds of activities, but uncertainty can’t be avoided. • They do not get any news of their parents who are left in Bangladesh/Burma. • They have no connection with family members who are locked up in other settings. The two girls of Midnapur are not at all informed about the transfer of their guardians from Midnapur to Dumdum prison. • These ten girls were the victims of not only the 2012 riot when they were physically present in Arakan but also the 2017 violence when they were not physically present in Arakan. Confined Rohingyas of Children’s Home didn’t know what happened to their mothers and other family members who remained in Burma in the 2017 massacre. • They don’t have the scope of education whether in Burma or outside. In the most productive and energetic period of life, the teenagers and adolescents are struggling to be alive driven by natural instinct. Confinement in and release from Children’s Homes have some common characteristics in all the cases of the Rohingyas. After arrest from different places, members of Rohingya families or groups are taken to the nearest police stations. The children of six years and above and adolescents (as per their appearance) face two to three types of situations.

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• From Police Stations they are produced before the JJB and accordingly sent to different Children’s Homes. • But sometimes they are produced in courts along with their other family members. • Now the court sends them to the JJB and after that the same process is followed. • But the court does not always refer them to the JJB, rather it sends the children/adolescents to Correctional Homes and asks the Correctional Home authority to organize further arrangement of sending them to the nearest Home of the respective prison. In such situations, the prison authority gets the scope of manipulation and many a time, by manipulating the age of the children, they avoid the separation of families between prisons and Children’s Homes. Inmates of Children’s Homes cannot get bail as officially they are shown as minor, below 18. They can only be handed over to their guardians or family members after verification of relation with the detainees. It is both an advantage as well as a disadvantage of the captives of that place. A good number of Rohingya adolescents and teenagers returned to their families in that way as already discussed in the case of Sanlaap. Prajaak also informed the release of 18 young Rohingyas (Table 11.3) from different Homes. Amina, among the primary cases, went back to her mother in the same process. So earlier, release from Children’s Home was a regular happening. But the Supreme Court case has put all the detained Rohingyas in great trouble, including the captives of Children’s Homes. I have come in touch with Smt. Aditi Roy (name changed), an advocate associated directly with the Rohingya issue in December 2017. It is known from her that there is an initiative to transfer all the detainees (females) of different Children’s Homes to Liluah Home. She also informs that some boys are still living in Kishalaya. As per her knowledge, the number of female detainees in Children’s Homes is 30 and the number of male is maximum seven (December 2017). As Maher and Sura have been still languishing in Midnapur, I have asked her about these two girls. With the passage of time, they have already become adults. Moreover, their husband and father are now released by the virtue of refugee cards. Aditi informs that she has defended the cases of Maher and Sura’s husband and father and the refugee cards of these two girls have also come from UNHCR, but the cards cannot be handed over to them because of the ongoing case in the

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Supreme Court. I notify her that these girls are extremely depressed as I am informed by some third party connected with these two girls. Aditi replies that she is in connection with their family but she can do little. Now it is the matter of the Supreme Court. So no refugee card can be handed over to any Rohingya either in prison or in Home. In my visit to BCCH (Berhampore Central Correctional Home) in February 2018, I discovered that the mothers and aunt of the girls of Silayan are transferred from Malda to Berhampore prison. But the girls and one brother of Akhi and Jannat are kept in Silayan and Ananda Ashram, respectively, still.

Loss, Risk and Adolescent Rohingyas Women and children always remain the worst victims of any war-like situation. The Rohingyas are no exception. Brutality of mass rape against Rohingya women and girls by Myanmar military is already documented in several news flash and reports by different agencies, including Human Rights Watch. Almost all the girls I meet acknowledge of their scared living in Arakan, with uncertainty and danger at every step. Within their own community, they do not enjoy the same status as men. They are the subject of various restrictions since adolescence. In her narrative, Maher, the respondent from Vidyasagar Balika Bhawan, shares her life in Arakan. In Burma she used to play with her Muslim friends in the village before starting menstruation. Her father was a shopkeeper. They were 10 siblings. After leaving school in class IV she helped her mother in household chores. She learnt tailoring also. With their sewing machine Maher designed woollen sweater and other garments. She could also model dolls. After her father’s death Maher looked after their business. 2 of her brothers migrated to Saudi Arab and Bangladesh. She talked to them over mobile from Burma and they maintained a regular connection. Amidst the chaos of 2012 riot only at the age of 15 she got married with Md. Karim at the end of Ramzan month hiding the authority to avoid the payment for marriage. She acknowledged the custom of early marriage among Rohingya women.

Amina, respondent from Sanlaap, also narrated her limited activity and movement while living with her Nani in Arakan. For the Rohingyas, it is an everyday struggle to protect the girls and women from rape or other sexual exploitation in Myanmar, the land with which the community is connected for generations. Many a time, early marriage and other

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restrictions on girls along with sending them outside the country emerge as a byproduct of the endeavour to save them. There is always a difficulty to track and bring a group of undocumented population under care and support once they are on the move. Exploitation of young Rohingyas by involving them with illegal actions is taking place. They are getting engaged with immoral actions from their later childhood or even before that. Shocking news of carrying Yaba by a 12-year-old Rohingya boy from Teknaf to Dhaka is flashed in dhakatribune.com along with some newspapers of Bangladesh (Rabbi 2018). Many a time, both Rohingya girls and boys become the prey of traffickers as mentioned in the papers ‘Manab Pachar, Ganakabar, O Samudra Pather Abhibasi Sramik’ (Kabir 2015) and ‘Maritime Ping-Pong: The Rohingyas at Sea’ (Sengupta 2015a). In case of detention and parting of family members, there is always the risk of permanent loss. All the time imprisonment does not end with the opportunity to live a free life in Indian land as already mentioned in some cases. It is shared by some Govt. officials that at the time of push back all family members are not sent to the other side of the border in some cases. So this kind of push back is a great threat for both boys and girls. Sengupta (2015b), in her study on imprisoned Bangladeshi women, also mentions this kind of separate repatriation of mothers and kids from Prisons and Children’s Homes, respectively. But in my observation, I have noticed that there is clear instruction to deport all the family members (Rohingyas), collecting them from Prisons and Homes. So both the incidents are happening. But sending together does not decrease the danger for women, children and teenagers. Moreover, all youngsters do not have their parents in India. Kamaru, the respondent from Silayan, migrated with her aunt only. In Balurghat Correctional Home, I met Md. Alom, a young man of 24 years in 2016. Being terrified to watch fire in neighbour’s house, he escaped from Rakhine only with his sister who was a minor and was sent to Malda Home after arrest. These two siblings had no close relatives in India and they knew only some Rohingyas in Delhi and Jammu. Their mother and other siblings were left in Burma. Alom did not meet his sister since confinement and in prison he found only one of his villagers. It is not difficult to understand the vulnerability of these separated girls if they or their family members are deported leaving others in confined situation. In addition, with Bangladeshi women, trafficking of Rohingya girls is also a reality nowadays. Polygyny is a common practice among the Rohingya community. Long term confinement of wife may result in the

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remarriage of husband. Sanlaap has already observed such an incident. Maher’s (primary case from Vidyasagar Balika Bhawan) husband is now released and the probability of such distressing occurrence in Maher’s life can’t be completely ignored. The Rohingyas are trapped poorly within the vicious circle of exclusion and deprivation and women are in particular the victim of manifold discrimination. But the potentiality of these helpless girls can’t be looked down upon. Their short life span in Sanlaap, narratives of Maher and many other women I come in touch with in different situations, convey the fact that even after having every capability and strength, they are not allowed to have a scope to lead a standard and respectful life.

Conclusion Statelessness indicates the delusion of the statement that having a nationality is the right of all persons as declared by Article 15 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR), 1948. Moreover, the question of enjoying equal privileges by stateless ones like citizens as restated by UNHCR becomes an irony in this world of domination, deprivation and dislocation (Banerjee et al. 2019). In addition to being a legal crisis, statelessness is also a humanitarian crisis. From a very early young age, the Rohingyas are left without the care of parents. Hundreds of families are getting destroyed literally. A legal recognition of existence and thereby to bring Rohingyas under a nationality is important. But right now, regardless of the identity, it is urgent to provide them with humanitarian living conditions. Involvement of some NGOs to trace the separated families and a Government policy are needed immediately. The role of our civil society is not completely negative. The concerns of NGOs along with the Govt. officials’ effort to keep the youngsters with their families are really appreciable. What is needed is an integrated effort to tackle the crisis. Initiatives must be taken that no teenagers are left behind being permanently detached from his/her family. After 2017, the situation took a horrible turn. With the outbreak of Rohingya inflow in Bangladesh in 2017, the position of our Central Government regarding this community becomes clear. In my visit to WBCPCR in April 2018, I have come to know from some staff that the commission is eagerly waiting to reunite the separated children with their parents, as they feel parents can provide the best care for their children. It’s difficult to say where this process will end. Already two  years have

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passed since the case was filed in the Supreme Court. As per my latest knowledge in April 2018, a good number of Rohingya adults, children and adolescents are languishing in different settings under confined situation for this case. If no final decision can be taken right now, then at least a temporary verdict is urgent for the release of these helpless people and children. Escaping from the death in Burma, they are dying every day in this heartless confinement by law. Migration in search of a safe home and often the dreadful outcome of that voyage are not only limited to Rohingyas but also to other groups of people who are in an underprivileged position. “Recent news reveals how children from Mexico and other countries of Central America become trapped in the severe Immigration policy while coming to USA. Without parents and other relatives thousands of children and teenagers are left alone in a camp. Being detached from the children their parents and other family member are arrested by the custom department. It’s really shocking that the craving of these little brood for their “Mummy” and “Daddy” is unheard to the harshness of law”. (Majumder 2018b)

The concept of legality and illegality gets blurred while analysing the notions of statelessness, persecution, forced displacement and seeking asylum which throw out human beings from the periphery of legality. In this world of growing intolerance, it is really a difficult task to safeguard the basic rights of people. Just as citizenship bears within itself the notion of statelessness, similarly the gamut of legality always reminds of the existence of illegality. On the one hand, the Rohingyas are the victims of ‘Crime Against Humanity’ (Human Rights Watch 2013) and, on the other, they are punished for their illicit crossing of borders in an attempt to be in a secure place. It seems that the notion of legality makes their existence illegal all the while. It is really a challenge to defend the rights of the stateless people as well as of the asylum seekers and make their existence legal for the sake of humanity.

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Banerjee, P., A.  Basu Ray Chaudhury, and A.  Ghosh, eds. 2019. The Grid: The Stateless and the Citizen in the State of Being Stateless: An Account of South Asia, 1–19. Hyderabad: Orient Blackswan Private Limited. Basu Ray Chaudhury, S. 2005. Burma: Escape to Ordeal. In Internal Displacement in South Asia, ed. P. Banerjee, S. Basu Ray Chaudhury, and S.K. Das, 213–236. New Delhi: Sage. Basu Ray Chaudhury, S., and R.  Samaddar, eds. 2018. The Rohingyas in South Asia: People Without a State, 1–19. New  York: Routledge Taylor & Francis Group. Bhattashali, A. 2017. Rohingya Shishuder Ferat Pathabe Na Paschimbanga. BBC News Bangla, September 22. Retrieved from https://www.bbc.com/bengali/ news-­41361786 Bhaumik, S. 2013. The East Bengali Muslims in Assam and Rohingyas of Myanmar: Comparative Perspectives of Migration, Exclusion, Statelessness. Refugee Watch 41: 30–46. Campbell, D., and D. Fiskel. 1959. Convergent and Discriminant Validation by the Multitrait-Multimethod Matrix. Psychological Bulletin 56 (2): 81–105. Retrieved from https://marces.org/EDMS623/Campbell%20DT%20&%20 Fiske%20DW%20(1959)%20Convergent%20and%20discriminant%20validation%20by%20the%20multitrait-­multimethod%20matrix.pdf. Chakraborty, M. 2015. Stateless and Suspect: Rohingyas in Myanmar, Bangladesh and India. Policies and Practices 71: 40–51. Cheung, S. 2011. Migration Control and the Solutions Impasse in South and Southeast Asia: Implications from the Rohingya Experience. Journal of Refugee Studies 25 (1): 50–70. https://doi.org/10.1093/jrs/fer048. Denzin, N. 1970. Sociological Methods: A Sourcebook. New Brunswick: Transaction Publishers. Ghosh, D. 2018. Not Just Trump: India Has Separated Bangladeshi Children from Their Parents for Years. Retrieved from https://scroll.in/article/884572/ not-­j ust-­t he-­u s-­i ndia-­h as-­s eparated-­b angladeshi-­c hildren-­f rom-­t heir-­ parents-­for-­years Goodman, J. 2014. No Respite for Rohingya in Bangladesh. Aljazeera, January 16. Retrieved from https://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/features/2014/01/ no-­respite-­rohingya-­bangladesh-­201411675944519957.html Human Rights Watch. 2013. All You Can Do Is Pray, April 22. Retrieved from h t t p s : / / w w w. h r w. o rg / s i t e s / d e f a u l t / f i l e s / r e p o r t s / b u r m a 0 4 1 3 _ FullForWeb.pdf ———. 2017. Massacre by the River: Burmese Army Crimes Against Humanity in Tula Toli, December 19. Retrieved from https://www.hrw.org/ report/2017/12/19/massacre-­river/burmese-army-crimes-against-humanitytula-toli

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Kabir, A.A.F. 2015. Manab Pachar, Ganakabar, O Samudra Pather Abhibasi Sramik, June. Retrieved from http://www.askbd.org/ask/2015/06/25/ bulletin-­june-­2015/ Majumder, S. 2015. Rohingyas Languishing Behind the Bar. Policies and Practices 71: 1–24. ———. 2018a. The Jailed Rohingya in West Bengal. In The Rohingyas in South Asia: People without a State, ed. S.  Basu Ray Chaudhury and R.  Samaddar, 91–108. New York: Routledge Taylor & Francis Group. ———. 2018b. Unprotected and Uncared: What Is Next for Rohingya Children? Quest Multidisciplinary Journal of Humanities and Social Sciences 3 (3): 1–24. Retrieved from http://www.sncwgs.ac.in/wp-content/uploads/2018/12/ Unprotected-and-Uncared-What-is-next-for-Rohingya-Children.pdf. ———. 2019. Unfortunate and Unsafe: The Unending Hardship of Rohingya Muslims. Janak: A Journal of Humanities 5 (1): 39–50. Mitra, A. 2014. Rajje Rohingya Kayedir Bahar Dekhe Chintai Kendriyo Swarastra Mantrak. The Anandabazar Patrika, March 10. Retrieved from https://www.anandabazar.com/state/%E0%A6%B0-%E0%A6%9C%E0%A6%AF-%E0%A6%B0-%E0%A6%B9-%E0%A6%99%E0%A6%97-%E0%A6%95%E0%A7%9F-%E0%A6%A6-%E0%A6%B0%E0%A6%AC%E0%A6%B9%E0%A6%B0-%E0%A6%A6-%E0%A6%96%E0%A6%9A-%E0%A6%A8-%E0%A6%A4-%E0%A7%9F%E0%A6%95-%E0%A6%A8-%E0%A6%A6-%E0%A6%B0%E0%A7%9F-%E0%A6%B8-%E0%A6%AC%E0%A6%B0-%E0%A6%B7%E0%A6%9F-%E0%A6%B0-%E0%A6%AE%E0%A6%A8-%E0%A6%A4%E0%A6%B0%E0%A6%95-1.9264 PTI. 2017a. Rohingya Issue of Great Magnitude, State Has Big Role: Supreme Court. The Economic Times, October 13. Retrieved from https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/politics-and-nation/detailed-hearing-on-­ rohingya-issue-from-nov-21-supreme-court/articleshow/61068209.cms ———. 2017b. BSF Increases Vigil at Spots ‘Vulnerable’ to Rohingya Influx. The Indian Express, October 5. Retrieved from https://indianexpress.com/article/india/bsf-increases-vigil-at-spots-vulnerable-to-rohingya-influx4875488/ Rabbi, A.R. 2018. Rohingya Children Used as Yaba Mules. Dhaka Tribune, May 28. Retrieved from https://www.dhakatribune.com/bangladesh/ crime/2018/05/28/rohingya-children-used-as-yaba-mules Rahman, K.M.A. 2015. Ethno-Political Conflict: The Rohingya Vulnerability in Myanmar. International Journal of Humanities & Social Science Studies (IJHSSS) II (I): 288–295. Retrieved from https://www.researchgate.net/ publication/320417344_Ethno-­P olitical_Conflict_The_Rohingya_ Vulnerability_in_Myanmar.

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Roy, E. 2017. Inhuman to Deport Kids: Child Rights Body to Supreme Court. The Indian Express, October 13. Retrieved from https://indianexpress.com/ ar ticle/india/west-bengal-inhuman-to-depor t-kids-child-rightsbody-to-supreme-court-4888052/ Sengupta, S. 2015a. Maritime Ping-Pong: The Rohingyas at Sea. In Rohingyas: The Emergence of a Stateless Community, ed. S.  Basu Ray Chaudhury and R. Samaddar, 15–29. Kolkata: Mahanirban Calcutta Research Group. Retrieved from http://www.mcrg.ac.in/Rohingyas/Report_Final.pdf. ———. 2015b. On the Edge: Women-Life and Confinement. Policies and Practices 68: 17–36. Tackling Influx Major Challenge: MHA. 2012. The Assam Tribune, April 24. Retrieved from http://www.assamtribune.com/scripts/detailsnew.asp?id=apr2412/at05

CHAPTER 12

Negotiations and Navigation: Migrant Lives in a Borderland District Anindita Chakrabarty

Introduction There has been large-scale population exodus in the South-Asian region since around 1947. People have migrated across the borders of India, Pakistan (both East Pakistan as well as West Pakistan) and later Bangladesh. As Myron Weiner (1992) points out, maintaining borders in South Asia has been dominantly motivated by unwanted ethnic mix that migration brings into the communities anxiously seeking to assert their own identity, and not solely because of economic reasons or a necessity to maintain sovereignty. The research aims at exploring the specificity of undocumented migration in the specific context of the Indian subcontinent that has witnessed recurrent partition, and the region being historically bound by shared culture and commonness. In consideration of the scholarly engagement on cross-border migration, the issue of Bangladeshi migrants assumes a high degree of pertinence, especially due to its revolving motions of contingency and characterization of heterogeneous identities. Government’s initiative to deport illegal migrants at various epochs makes

A. Chakrabarty (*) Mahindra University, Hyderabad, India © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2022 N. Chowdhory, P. Banerjee (eds.), Gender, Identity and Migration in India, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-16-5598-2_12

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the situation extremely complex and has resulted in hidden, unofficial movements of population across borders in search of livelihood. The chapter presents a study of the present situation of the Indian state which has assumed place of residence for a considerable section of the undocumented population from erstwhile East Bengal as well as present Bangladesh and consciously engages with questions on citizenship and residency and understands the conscious interference of the state in this context. The chapter begins with an exploration of the pertinent aspects of the journey of a Bangladeshi migrant, empathetically understanding the negotiation at multiple levels, and how one navigates one’s way into the unfamiliar. It then understands the popular imagination of a migrant’s image, against which she or he negotiates, and adapts herself or himself to escape vigilance. Considering the uncertainty and unfamiliarity that they undergo, it attempts at understanding the impetus to migration that motivates one to lead a risk-prone life amidst the fear of being persecuted and deported. The answer lies in the imagined India as a land of opportunities. One is however in a transitional state, deciding whether to settle or return. This speaks about a deliberate choice on their part to remain as non-recorded subjects, which facilitates them in prioritizing one identity over another and shifting of habitats. The chapter is based on field work carried out in two localities within the Basirhat-I Community Development Block of the North 24-Parganas district of West Bengal.

Navigation and Negotiation and Everyday Experience The process of migration occurs through stages of negotiation and wrestle, entailing risk on the part of the participants. Surveillance continues after having migrated in the hope of a better life and the fear of being identified as a trespasser sustains. The sustenance of the migrants operates through layers of compromise, resilience to vulnerability, livelihood strategies, making themselves durable to the continuous threat in everyday life, fear of expulsion and peril of life. Ahmed (2000) cites some of the reasons behind on-going migration, occurring through decades and even after political boundaries and demarcation being thrust between the states. He explains that from 1947 to 1971, movement of population was characterized by movement of refugees or individuals with refugee-like attributes. However, the term refugee is of qualified application here because neither Bangladesh nor India ever

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formally acceded to the international regime of refugees. Accordingly, the status of a refugee came to be determined by parochial, political considerations. Ahmed (2000) demonstrates how middlemen assist in the process and act in collusion with law enforcement agencies on both sides of the border. Presence of kin-networks also acts as a pulling-factor and facilitator for a continued process of migration for predominantly social reasons. Family reunion has always assumed a major reason/part of such emigration since 1947. More recent pattern of emigration results from economic reasons, which is predominantly a post 1971 phenomenon. There being no recognized avenues and no dialogue between the two countries, migration during this phase is distinctly clandestine and undocumented. Lack of participation of Bangladesh and India in an international legal regime for undocumented migrant workers results in parochialism over objective considerations for treatment of undocumented migrant workers. One clings to the historical experience of refugees, and economic migration has come to be dealt in accordance with a flawed notion of asylum. The impetus to economic migration is being undermined, as mobility is continued to be perceived as having resulted owing to political reasons, and hence justifies similar protection as is catered to a political refugee falling under the purview of an asylum. The entire discourse on the undocumented migration from Bangladesh to India operates through the existence of a well-knit migration industry that entails a synergy of activities at various levels, with the bureaucratic officials of the Border Security Force (BSF), intermediaries, middle-men, identified as drurs (regional name) ensuring transition of individuals in exchange for bribes, wherein economic capital acts as a means to secure one’s hassle-free transfer. However, one is also exposed to the uncertainty of it as one may fall victim to the monthly target of arrests despite paying the dalal (intermediary). Many of them take recourse to clandestine means, as a visa or a passport comprises difficult and incomprehensible paper regime for them, and entails the apparent expense that one has to bear for securing those. The clandestine means of migration assumes the nature of a public secret. The maintenance of one’s existence is threatened by recurrent legislations. These include the amendment of the citizenship acts. While the Citizenship Act of 1955 granted citizenship by birth, the Citizenship Amendment Act of 1986 granted citizenship to individuals whose either of the parents was a citizen of India, thereby restricted jus soli citizenship as adopted by the constitution of India. The 2003 amendment further

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restricted the jus soli principle by prescribing that an individual becomes eligible for citizenship when both parents are citizens of India, or when one is an Indian citizen and the other is not an illegal immigrant. These legal initiatives foster threat to existence to those who are perceived through the lens of doubtful belonging and illegality. However, the consciousness of a human instinct would force one to devise means to overcome potential threat. Therefore, one innovates mechanisms to evade the law, or make one invisible to the vigilant state, which cannot be achieved without convincing the state about one’s potential to contribute and the potential profit that it can derive by the existence of the undocumented population. As one contributes to the economy per se, one develops a claim over it. Excavating the genealogy of Bangladeshi migrants in India since partition reveals the recurrence of transactions between the state and its newly arrived populace. Malini Sur (2016) has interestingly brought out other ways of being a citizen, adopted by the post-partition refugees in West Bengal. Being a citizen happens through the rhetoric of being productive, doing something for the nation. During the 1950 riots, Hindus migrated from Bangladesh to India, and Muslims from India to Bangladesh, in massive numbers. The agriculture got affected during this phase since huge numbers of Muslim farmers migrated to the other side of the border. India suffered from an acute food crisis. India lost its cultivable area after partition as most of it ends up lying in Bangladesh. So, Nehru decided to let these Hindu migrants cultivate in Muslim-owned lands temporarily. Malini Sur has beautifully brought out this temporary feature, wherein, on pen and paper, these migrants got the cultivable lands temporarily, but eventually became permanent as they developed a claim over these lands. Sur has talked about it in the context of rice cultivation, and it becomes difficult to replace them. They had their own politics, which may be compared to the agency on the part of the refugees, who accommodated themselves within the nation state, settled in jabardakhal (forcefully acquired) colonies. The politics of the eviction measures lies on the fact that only the incognizant few are evicted, while the old residents continue to reside. It works on a perceived relation between duration of one’s residence and the stability it contributes, the former patronizing the later. Therefore, the relative implication of the concept of agency in relation to the migrants needs to be discerned. This necessitates going beyond any dichotomy of identities and their negations, and understand subjectivity due to the lack of uniformity in the phenomenon.

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The undocumented migrants settle in clusters (as observed during the field work), and choose not to move away from the group, as being secluded may result in deportation (as shared in interviews). The group cohesion is being perceived as a resistance mechanism against the exclusionary initiatives of the state. Once one establishes oneself in the new neighbourhood, one develops newer forms of social capital, renouncing which is not preferred by them. These include the social ties that they develop with neighbours of their social stature around class, caste and religion. Added to it is the cultural capital in the form of expertise or skills, especially in terms of professional and educational attainments of an individual that not only aid in the smooth process of migration, but also in their easy sustenance. The ownership of both the cultural and the social capital together stems into elitism, enjoyed by those who own these, and thereby escape vigilance. It induces envy on those who have to take the long way owing to their lack of ownership of either. It is reflected in how a participant explains, …This is what politics is all about. If you take into account the members of Left party or even the present Trinomul government, many of the members, who are now ministers, have their roots in Bangladesh. Some are third generation migrants, some second, and some are first generation migrants. But they are the power-holders.

The participant further shares her discontent, …You will come across people from Bangladesh in the upper level of the hierarchy (in India) and in notable positions within the bureaucracy. People will accept them, since they are the power-holders now, and but they would not accept us. Even nowadays, many would address to me saying, ‘Boudi, haven’t you come from Bangladesh? I will inform police about it, and make them arrest you.’ But such threat would not be directed towards those, who came earlier and hold important positions today. The latter’s case is taken for granted, but not ours, and is always viewed with a frown. This is the problem with the people here. They would not adjust with the new circumstances and people who start living here…

They strategically plan their place of habitation, and the trend has been noticed since the refugee exodus post-Partition, who settled in jabardakhal colonies, in the outskirts of Kolkata, constructing which, the Bhadralok’s (gentlefolk/elite people) agency is noteworthy. The educated

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people have foreseen partition and therefore migrated earlier, with their kin network aiding their sustenance. The lower caste population, on the other hand, awaited rehabilitation. Amidst the continuous fear of expulsion, and instability, the migrants would devise ways to ensure sustenance beyond their homeland. Discussions about the art of resistance, in which they engage through means that, if dissected, would uncover innovative and interesting realities. A migrant who took recourse to clandestine means to migrate being compelled due to religious persecution calls himself a conscious human being as he chose the viable option to sustain, as not having migrated would have implied potential harm. Many of them would travel to and fro, across the border, with their documents being generated even before they have permanently migrated to India. The persistence of uncertainty haunts individuals due to the fear of being identified as the illegal immigrant and eviction; they constantly strive to make them invisible to the law.

From Chittagong to Barasat The aspirant decides to migrate as he has an establishment through the social capital of relatives and friends that aids not only in the habitation in the preliminary days after migration but also in further arrangements that facilitate their stay for the rest of the duration. For many, the probability to migrate and settle in India makes them make prior arrangements by securing documents when they have not migrated for a long term stay, or permanently. The process of migration happens in stages, with one or some of the members migrating at once, and making arrangements for migration and settlement for the rest of the family. Their initial sustenance is patronized by the already existing kin network in India. The data reveals that prior to facilitating the consequent migration of his family, he makes arrangement for ‘documentary citizenship’ (Sadiq 2008), and after having secured that, decides for the migration of his family. The process undergoes a relay, established through kin network, facilitating in the process. There also takes place back and forth migration, often for the purpose of attending weddings of relatives across borders, sitting for examinations for the attainment of degree in Bangladesh while working in India, visiting one’s family at regular intervals. All of these resist the objective nature of a political boundary. The political workers ensure legal inclusion of the migrants, fulfilling in the process their own interest of securing vote bank. This hastens the documentation of the newcomer. The realities varied for

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some, whose lack of social capital discouraged their sustenance in the country, eventually leading to reverse migration; for others, well-­ established stability at the destination disincentivized their desire and/or need to return to the homeland. Many of the economic migrants migrate with the perception of India as solely the land of opportunities, as opposed to a place where one plans to settle. The bidesh (abroad) and desh (homeland) exist as contradictory conceptions. They arrive, attain documentary citizenship, secure means to livelihood and send remittances to their family in Bangladesh who continue to live there. After sufficient income for years, one decides to return to one’s homeland where one’s family resides. There exist economic migrants, who may be termed as daily cross-border migrants. They mostly consist of agricultural labourers, brick-kiln workers who travel cross-border in the morning, work the entire day and return in the evening. They are perceived as the mundane, daily phenomenon devoid of sensuality, and operating through the reciprocity between surveillance and non-adherence. Many use their social capital to travel from Jessore to Sealdah station (through the Basirhat border), from where they reach Howrah station, from where they would board trains with an unreserved ticket to Delhi, Mumbai, Bangalore, Chennai or any other city that provides the promise of better livelihood opportunities. Thus, Bangladesh to the terminal station is a journey of three hours, and within two days, the aspirant travels from Jessore to the business hub of any of the cities, where they may work as construction workers, domestic labourers, zari workers, small factories, prostitutes, bar dancers, many of whom are trafficked by dalals and sold. While, some stay in the border districts of West Bengal for some days and get attached to the economy, earning better than they used to in Bangladesh, some would travel directly from Bangladesh to the other cities. Mustafa crossed the border in 1992 after which he worked in Kolkata at various jobs, the prospects and profitability of which declined over the years, that eventually made him migrate to the Ernakulum district of Kerala and work in a steel-utensils factory. When he is posed with questions concerning his native place, he would answer as West Bengal as far from West Bengal, everybody would be identified as a Bengali if one speaks in Bengali despite one’s origin. Those who migrate from Bangladesh may be categorized as those who do so through clandestine means, and others who arrive with visa, and in course of time, attempt for documentary citizenship, certifying them as Indian nationals. The legalization process of both is mediated through

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chains of complex processes that often include duplicity, fraudulent means, including buying details of a deceased person by paying his family, with the details favouring in the generation of documents, making Indian birth certificates by mentioning one’s date of birth in a local hospital in exchange for money. Despite having stayed in India for a long duration, which is deemed enough to facilitate smooth existence for the rest of one’s stay, the fear of being caught persists. At each phase of one’s interaction, encounter with the state, one is posed with the potential danger. A Bangladeshi, who migrated about ten years ago, at the age of 12, took his board examinations, completed his MBBS degree, and then secured employment in one of the hospitals, during the verification process is unable to satisfy the authorities who are unconvinced by his documentary armour. They excavate open ended links to his past with the target of profiting some financial gain from the suspect, to whom, offering a bribe would ensure an escape. This showcases the reciprocity of necessity and demands between the suspect and the surveilling body, respectively. Rita, who migrated the day before her marriage to a groom, also a migrant who arrived five years before her, never had to encounter any crisis, as the party members knew her and her family, and shared a cordial relation with everybody in the neighbourhood. This speaks about the mechanisms one consciously or unconsciously takes recourse to, so as to carve one’s own niche.

Bengali or Bangladeshi: Negotiating with Social Constructions The existence of rules and legislations, instructions to detect undocumented migrants from Bangladesh has prevailed. These include the Illegal Migrants (Determination by Tribunal) Act, (IMDT Act) 1983. The IMDT Act of 1983 led to suspicion of Bengali-speaking Muslims in Assam and the rest of the country, and such a tendency reflects the vicious cycle of violence, continual relocation, dispossession, and disenfranchisement experienced by migrants at large at both national as well as international platforms. Legal innovations on the part of the state make the suspects adopt innovative sustenance mechanisms as well. Interesting to note at this juncture, is the aspect of surreptitiousness that is often undertaken by individuals to establish their belongingness to certain groups, communities, and nation. For instance, the shaping of one’s body, making one appear to match the established image of a Hindu, might have been

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undertaken by individuals. Equally important would be the language for communication. Castles (2002) added the legal-positivist approach taken by bureaucrats in defining immigrants which essentially gets translated into ideas of sovereignty and citizenship ignoring the needs, agency and strategy by individuals opting for migration. However, definition of a Bangladeshi migrant necessitates reliance upon constructions through signs, as we would talk in the following section, thereby moving beyond the legal-positivist paradigm, and focusing on particularities. The absence of objective points of reference and ambiguity around refugee-like attributes has led to the emergence of a category of economic refugee. Refugee-like attributes, coupled with the lack of objective standards, has resulted in parochialism over objective considerations. As Ahmed (2000) explains, it is the product of an indiscriminate fusion of the attributes of a migrant and a refugee as suits the political objective of the day. Of pertinent importance is the dialogue between the two countries, Bangladesh and India, the former being the sending while the latter assuming the receiving state, towards establishing a migration regime in India. There exists reciprocity in the veil of a divisive attitude of Bangladesh and India towards undocumented migration. The Indian scenario doesn’t permit a definite identification of an undocumented migrant worker of Bangladeshi origin; a proposal to determine the criteria that facilitate such categorization being procrastinated. There is complete lack of any legal mechanism to identify an undocumented migrant worker of Bangladeshi origin and this proves the unpreparedness or rather political interest of India and Bangladesh to bring migration across their international boundaries within the purview of an international regime as envisaged in the 1990 UN Convention. This reluctance consequently leaves the uncounted mass as the stateless lot. The lack of a  objective framework deters construction of a legal frame against which legality and illegality can be determined, thereby making room for the percolation of everyday and common sense understanding of legitimacy and its contradiction. Maintaining undocumentedness is deliberate as counting implies accountability on the part of state, and their eligibility for welfare measures.

Surveillance Through My Own Definition Lack of concrete framework to discern the identity of a migrant influences subjective construction of identity. Borrowing from symbolic interactionism, individuals’ own definition is significant (Ritzer 2011) that facilitates

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understanding the situational definitions. And this complicates constitutional definitions as these are encountered by subjective understanding. The intersection of language, religion, appearance and region shapes the everyday construction of identities and constructs an illegal migrant identity. The everyday construction of illegality of identities shapes suspicion on the part of common people, bureaucrats, when an individual’s Bangladeshi identity is discerned, and the consequent conviction is meted out against the suspects. This is done through ways like ‘looking at’ (as a participant explains), listening to the language that they speak, or the attire that they wear. These signs not only lead to suspicion but also arrests, wherein the region becomes a crucial determinant. Borderland areas are significant as people exhibiting these markers are subjectively construed with doubt and are often put into the frame of illegally migrated Bangladeshis. There are dynamic agencies on the part of people who negotiate with these semiotic intersections and adopt ‘Bengali ways of speaking’ (as opposed to Bangal, a local dialect of Bangladesh) This is because language is an easy and commonly relied upon identifier of origin, and nationality, and influences the assumption that Bengali in a twisted dialect would entail suspicion about one being of Bangladeshi origin. The symbolic relationship between appearance and language is of relevance at this juncture. Religion, added to it, problematises it further. And therefore a Muslim-­ looking person, speaking in bangal would by default be at the receiving end of community vigilantism. These approaches are largely shaped by the theocratic nature of history that split communities along communal and linguistic demarcations. These prevent percolation of alternative elements, undermining heterogeneity within the category. The result has been a Hindu nationalist and xenophobic gaze on the part of the state towards its inhabitants, constructing a migrant as a citizen-outsider. There is acute dearth of legality discourse, as mentioned earlier, to address the identity contestations. These result in reliance on subjective framework and results in discriminatory measures. These frames determine persecution of perceived illegal Bangladeshi migrants in India, and are endorsed by state and civil society. Recurrent victimizations have been encountered by Bengali speaking Muslims in many of the metropolitan cities in India, including Delhi, and Mumbai (Roy 2010; Ahmed 2000). It is the territorial stigma that operates (Wacquant 2008) when certain locales come to be branded as the den of the migrants. And hence the perceived migrants would be spatially restricted to the locales. Some of the

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popularly known sites are the Raey Road in Mumbai, Amar colony slum in Delhi. The location where this study was carried out in North 24 Parganas district of West Bengal also comprises one such site, being subjected to suspicious statist and civil society’s gaze. The othering process of the Bangladeshi sect in India operates through multiple layers. These include taunting and teasing for having a different dialect, having migrated later than those upper caste people who have mostly migrated around the time of partition, or means of migration. This creates demarcation between the new and old migrants (Basu Raychaudhury 2012), and also on the basis of religious and caste structures. These result from the relative social capital owned by people at relative locations of privilege, and lack of it often motivate people to return to Bangladesh. The threat of being deported keeps a panoptic vigil on them disciplining them in ways as is deemed appropriate by the state and its native citizenry. The notion of privacy comes to occupy a significant context to think upon as the very existence of the migrants exposes them to the vigilant eye of not only the state but also the public. The native populace’s vigilance as well as teasing manifest in dynamic ways. Their stay as tenants earns them disrepute and establishes their illegitimate identity to the natives. And this motivates them to search for livelihood options in other locales, outside the village, or in other districts. Also, staying as tenants and not as permanent owners of land or house comprises another marker of doubtful belonging. Some scholars argue about migrants being conceived as threats to social cohesion when they maintain their own languages, religions and cultures, or inhabit in clusters (Alba and Nee 1997). The migrant continues to be the perpetual citizen-outsider (Roy and Singh 2009), and is socially produced through policies in the political, social and economic spheres that have perpetually demarcated the migrants from the mainstream, with their inclusion and exclusion taking place differently. They are subjected to being criminalized, relocated, rejected and thus to a precarious existence. In fact, their presence is perceived as a threat to society at large, from which emanates the entire discourse on the crisis in citizenship (Roy 2010). The migrant is characterized, according to assimilationist perspective, as someone whose pre-migration culture is not only futile but also harmful for the destination. And therefore, this calls for a re-socialisation process that would imply shedding off the erstwhile ways of life and learning those of the destination locale, increasingly adopting the habits, cultures and norms of the latter. The immigrant, in this sense, has to be

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‘assimilated  – or at least integrated  – to restore this harmony’ (Castles 2003, 23). The fear of being evicted and deported to Bangladesh makes them take recourse to surreptitiousness. Surreptitiousness involves camouflaging one’s identity with the accepted one, and is contingent upon the popular conception of a Bangladeshi migrant, framed through the intersection of semiotics, as discussed above. For one to sustain, who is associated with these signs, would necessitate moving beyond the semiotic structure, and this is made possible through clandestine existence. Knowing to speak in a dialect which is devoid of Bangal helps one in not being targeted, as language assumes an easy marker of nationality, and citizenship. And therefore, it is necessary to learn the local dialect in its ‘pure form’ (as a participant puts), as they hope their language would help them in assimilating with the destination culture and its stakeholders in the natives. Therefore, learning the language is preferred by conversing with people at the destination, through popular culture in songs and movies, and this helps them in smoother sustenance and acceptance by the local populations. One connects between proficiency, acceptance, and thereby the ease with which one makes room for a secured existence. The exclusion for speaking Bangal is manifested not only in the legal arena, through detention and arrests, one is also subjected to subtler social exclusion, with the bangal speakers being encountered with hostility because of their different dialect, who tease her and him for their rural dialect, and inability to appropriate the polished dialect of the urban. Such an approach finds reality within informal social groups such as the peer group, neighbourhood, wherein one is subjected to potential alienation on account of the differential dialect. This aggravates the tendency on the part of the migrants to learn the ‘urban polished language’. One is demeaned if one fails to appropriate it despite having stayed in the destination for many years. Language, appearance interact with each other as apparent Muslims are targeted through suspicion and come to be labelled as Bangladeshis. Participants would share how burkhas, caps, and beards, typically associated with Muslim appearances invite suspicion. Consequently people exhibiting these signs would be questioned, and their identity would be assessed by asking to produce their identity proofs and documentary evidence. However, these labels hinder their social and economic sustenance. And therefore, it is necessary to contest these labels, often done through hiding one’s identity or posing an accepted identity; majorly Hindu identities are endorsed and preferred. The phenomenon is felt in everyday

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lives, as have been observed by me as a researcher and also shared by a researcher during the field work, Sustenance mechanisms range from changing Muslim sounding names to Hindu ones, adopting Hindu attires such as wearing sindoor and bangles, which are otherwise signs of a married woman, are adopted by those who are more susceptible to be labelled as illegal Bangladeshis. Many non-migrants would adopt these strategies, foreseeing the danger of a potential labelling. However there are instances of mistaken arrests and convictions, arrived at solely through suspicion. It misleads those entrusted with the task of identifying trespassers. These deductions were often arrived at through the appearance of women who veil their heads, uncovering their ears. However, surreptitiousness of this kind is contingent on the region, characterized by the religious affiliation of the populace. If the majority people in a region are Hindus, a Muslim identity comes to be despised, and hiding identity is necessary in those regions. On the other hand, neighbourhoods which were largely Muslim inhabited, a Hindu need not assimilate. This is owing to the popular patronage for Hindu identities in a Hindu nationalist regime. The process of othering based on religion implies a de facto right on the part of the Hindus to migrate from Bangladesh. The Hindu culture also gets reflected in legislations, when non-Muslim identities through the Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA), 2019 are being made eligible for citizenship. Such an approach champions on images of Muslims as ‘aggressive’, ‘persecutors’, and responsible for ‘religious persecution of Hindus from Bangladesh’ and ‘torture and sexual assault of Hindu women by Muslim men’ (as participants explain). And this brings us to the perceptions around a Hindu culture and its propagation in India that has facilitated persistence of migrant identities as ethnic-religious entities. As Pandey (1993) notes, for Muslims to sustain in India, they are expected to be like an Indian in terms of appearance, dietary habits, even appropriating names and language, attire—the factors assuming unsaid requirements or grounds for achieving social acceptance and inclusion in a Hindu environment in India. Thus, it is a necessity for Shah Rukh Khan to be a good Muslim, who worships Lord Ganesha, Muhammad Yusuf Khan transforming to Dilip Kumar, implying that  a good Muslim is a hinduized Muslim. Surreptitiousness through hiding one’s name is carried out owing to the notion of untouchability existing against Muslims. The untouchability has been a persistent phenomenon against the Namashudras in Bangladesh. The participants of the study would deny of any communal divide, though it was observed that they

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consciously avoided co-habitation. Many of them migrated for various reasons that include religious persecution, political persecution, economic persecution, and/or an amalgamation of these factors. Their Bangladeshi identity through one’s name poses potential danger to one’s existence even after migrating to India due to the well-established connections across the borders. As illustrated earlier about the indifferent attitude on the part of the natives, the migrants would share how it is important not to protest and speak up for themselves. They would prefer to be subservient to the natives as according to them ‘making chaos will invite unnecessary problems. It is better to keep quite. We have to adjust, have to accommodate as it is not my janmabhumi (birth land)’. The very existence of the structure invites mechanisms to evade being included within it, and necessitates for alternative frameworks in the hope of un-­ identification. The existence of detention measures dictates clandestine means. As a participant unfolds, “… Many of our political leaders after partition never wanted a closed border. This could have facilitated for free movement of people between two Bengals. If it could remain so, there would not be any category of undocumented, or the category of illegal”. The narrative establishes that a lot of the evolution of the migration industry and undocumented migration is a result of evolution of political boundaries, which implies immense cartographic anxieties. This signifies that the brunt that has been borne by the partition displaced, has persisted in the recurrent migrations of populations. This has only aggravated in far-right regimes under populist governances, which make borders stricter and demographic governance more severe. The law entails both an exclusionary as well as inclusionary feature, determined by the boundary that encloses a frame, with those falling within the frame being awarded legitimacy, and those beyond it relegated to the illegitimate. The consciousness of a human being motivates her and him to include herself and himself within it by identifying ways in which they can fit within it. And at this juncture, in India, one could not produce the documents, which were often acquired in Bangladesh. In the process, one might have to compromise benefits, derived from one’s social and cultural capital, which one could have enjoyed being in Bangladesh. As one of them reveals, …I have carried out my education in Bangladesh. I studied till graduation. But after I arrived in Bengal, those degrees (awarded in Bangladesh) became useless. So, I began from scratch. I had relatives here who put me to a school, and then I completed my secondary examinations, and shall be

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s­ itting for higher secondary examinations. It was frustrating, but I liked to study, and therefore do not repent…

Idea of India and Contestation Around It Migration to India is perceived as a solution to the large-scale crisis emanating from lack of resources, gendered violence, political conflicts, or ecological crises in the form of floods. Though these factors motivate migration, many a times it does not result in much improvement in their conditions even after migrating. Despite the hardships in the receiving country, the migrants would be happy for their decision, as their residence in India ‘guarantees two meals per day’ (says a participant) for the entire family unlike that in Bangladesh. More than socio-legal inclusion, it is the call for basic subsistence that drives them to risk their lives in penetrating through the border. Therefore, for many, there would not be any stark difference between being a documentary citizen, and a mere resident insofar as one secures the means to livelihood to satisfy hunger. The perceived or apparent existence of social capital does not guarantee a migrants’ easy survival, for many of whom it is one’s ‘own struggle’ as they call it. And risking oneself by renouncing one’s establishment in Bangladesh does not comprise an easy decision either on the part of the Bangladeshis. One is caught in the dilemma between the uncertainty of the potential opportunity and the certainty of contentment and repose. The hope for a better future attracts individuals towards a conceptualized utopia of a better life, which does not find actualization. This motivates return migration and evolving means for alternative modes of earning that may involve more risk and precariousness.

Revisiting ‘Inclusion’ as a Paradigm It was observed that participants would understand documentedness as a potential threat to their mobility. Documentation, in this sense entails enumeration in statist vocabulary, and would mean identification. And therefore, this would hamper the ambiguity and the related fluid identity of individuals. The participants, the residents of Itindia Panitore gram panchayat of Basirhat (one of the field locations), shared about how they evaded documentation initiatives as they were ‘unsure’ (as they term) of their stay in Bengal or elsewhere in future. Some of them, who were migrants from Bangladesh, were exposed to the opportunity to enrol their

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names in the electoral list. However, the uncertainty of the permanence in India discouraged enumeration, and they continue to exist as the undocumented. The apparent functional characteristic of enrolment may thus prove to be dysfunctional, implying exclusion in the veil of inclusion. The impermanence exposes them to a wide range of opportunities, versatile scopes, and the benefit of uncertainty. The participants would be silent in-between conversations, as well as when posed with certain questions. And this brings us to a significant domain of understanding and decoding the notion of silence. An ethnographic understanding of silence leads us to the complex layers of negotiations that persist through the process of migration from source to destination, as well as their everyday survival in the destination. Silence may imply unwillingness to share, or fear on the part of individuals, and definitely talks volumes about their agency when they are evading the state as well as a vigilant body, many a times in the entity of a stranger (in the researcher). Silence persists both on the part of the perceived illegal and undocumented migrants from Bangladesh, as well as the state, the latter being also entrusted with the task of surveillance. Panchayat pradhans would share about the impossibility of ‘tracking migratory flows of Bangladeshis’ as they come and go surreptitiously, often at odd hours. This brings to the post-truth dimension of such narratives. It is interesting to note in this context James Scott’s (2009) conceptualization on how Zomias, inhabiting on Asia’s highlands, sustain on account of the state’s limited reach, thereby refuting and overcoming the authoritarian impact of the state. The spatial location of Zomias assumes an expression of the art of resistance and necessitates an ‘anarchist reading of politics embedded in mobility, flight, and escape’ (Sur 2016, 807). For many participants, who would be unwilling to share about how their marriage brought them to West Bengal from Bangladesh, would cite these domains as ‘personal’. These efforts symbolise their encounter with the statist vigilance, and how they strategise sustenance. The navigation of a migrant from Bangladesh to India, therefore, takes place through stages of negotiation and efforts towards accommodation on the part of the migrants. For the entire process to take place, it necessitates preparedness prior to its beginning, continuing during the act of migrating, through to the phase after migration. At each stage, one is encountered with challenges of existence, against which one has to strive in order to survive.

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Conclusion All being said and done, it is important to recognize the demarcating threshold between documentary citizenship and social citizenship, the latter being extensively talked about by T.H. Marshall, who referred to the concept as guaranteeing the right to participate in an appropriate standard of living (Marshall 1950). As Marshall puts, By the social element I mean the whole range from the right to a modicum of economic welfare and security to the right to share to the full in the social heritage and to live the life of a civilised being according to the standards prevailing in the society. (Marshall 1950, 11)

It is particularly significant as Marshall differentiates between civil, political and social citizenship, all of which if taken together, blur the differences, and attainment of any one kind does not guarantee the fulfilment of the other. Civil rights, according to Marshall, are formalised in legal institutions, such as courts, and imply freedom of individuals. Political rights signify political power, exercised through voting, for example. The argument that emerges is that legal belonging in the form of attainment of, as Marshall brings out, civil and political rights, does not guarantee one’s social belonging, the latter being contingent upon acceptance. The notion of dignity becomes an important domain to be intervened to assess substantive belonging of individuals. The dignity is determined by the subjective dimension of identity construction, which in turn is contingent upon the property of the situation (Oommen 1997). The Bangladeshi migrant’s identity gets constructed through constructed frames of an illegal migrant, and this largely brings us to the question of decent life and dignity of their everyday survival.

References Ahmed, Syed Refaat. 2000. Bangladesh and Receiving States: Toward Establishing a Migration Regime with India, Chapter 6. In Forlorn Migrants: An International Legal Regime for Undocumented Migrant Workers, 157–193. Dhaka: University Press Limited. Alba, Richard, and Victor Nee. 1997. Rethinking Assimilation Theory for a New Era of Immigration. The International Migration Review 31 (4): 826–874. https://doi.org/10.1177/019791839703100403.

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Basu Raychaudhury, Anasua. 2012. Politics of Rehabilitation: Struggle of the Lower Caste Refugees in West Bengal. Contemporary Voice of Dalit 3 (1): 61–82. Castles, Stephen. 2003. The International Politics of Forced Migration. Socialist Register 46 (3): 172–192. https://socialistregister.com/index.php/srv/article/view/5798/2694. Marshall, T.H. 1950. Citizenship and Social Class, and Other Essays. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Oommen, Tharrileth K. 1997. Citizenship, Nationality and Ethnicity: Reconciling Competing Identities. Cambridge: Wiley. Pandey, Gyanendra. 1993. The Civilized and the Barbarian: The ‘New’ Politics of Late Twentieth Century India and the World. In Hindus and Others: The Question of Identity in India Today, ed. Gyanendra Pandey, 1–23. New Delhi: Viking. Ritzer, George. 2011. Sociological Theory. 8th ed. New York: McGraw-Hill. Roy, Anupama. 2010. Mapping Citizenship in India. New Delhi: Oxford University Press. Roy, Anupama, and Ujjwal Kumar Singh. 2009. The Ambivalence of Citizenship: The IMDT Act (1983) and the Politics of Forclusion in Assam. Critical Asian Studies 41 (1): 37–60. https://doi.org/10.1080/14672710802631137. Sadiq, Kamal. 2008. Paper Citizens: How Illegal Immigrants Acquire Citizenship in Developing Countries. New York: Oxford University Press. Sur, Malini. 2016. Battles for the Golden Grain: Paddy Soldiers and the Making of the Northeast India–East Pakistan Border, 1930–1970. Comparative Studies in Society and History 58 (3): 804–832. https://doi.org/10.1017/ S0010417516000360. Wacquant, Loïc. 2008. Urban Outcasts: A Comparative Sociology of Advanced Marginality. Cambridge: Polity Press. Weiner, Myron. 1992. Security, Stability, and International Migration. International Security 17 (3): 91–126. https://doi.org/10.2307/2539131.

CHAPTER 13

The Legacy of Partition and Structural Victimisation of the People of Borderland: A Case of Punjab Jagroop Singh Sekhon and Sunayana Sharma

Introduction The rich natural and demographical history of the state of Punjab can be anachronised to agriculturally and culturally advanced Indus valley civilisation. The region took its name from its geographical location of being situated amongst the five rivers. From sophisticated granaries, scientific and natural drainage, flood control system, water supply for the household, to systematic dockyards the cities of Harappa and Mohenjo-Daro sprawled within the area of 25 miles on the bank of Indus river which later came to be known as the modern-day Punjab (including Pakistani Punjab). This region saw the civilisation thriving and perishing; nevertheless, due to abundant natural resources and favourable terrestrial conditions, the area managed to continue from prehistoric times to the twenty-first century. It

J. S. Sekhon (*) Department of Political Science, Guru Nanak Dev University, Amritsar, India S. Sharma Department of Political Science, Lovely Professional University, Phagwara, India © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2022 N. Chowdhory, P. Banerjee (eds.), Gender, Identity and Migration in India, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-16-5598-2_13

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also saw the emergence of a new religion called Sikhism, and its followers are known for their immense hard work in the fields and bravery and valour in the armed forces. Being an agricultural society, wheat, barley and pulses have been their traditional crops, and after the Green Revolution in the late 1960s, Indian Punjab became the breadbasket of the country. However, the history of Punjab is not all bright and happy as the prosperity attracted invaders and looters from Greek Alexander to Mughal Babur, who used it as a gateway to enter the Indian subcontinent (Government of India 2016, p. 2). Punjab has also witnessed the greatest involuntary migration in the human history when the country got divided into India and the newly formed Islamic Republic of Pakistan. Punjab in itself became the victim of division as it was divided into Indian Punjab and Pakistani Punjab. Following partition, the Indo-Pakistan wars and constant tension at the border not only forced the people living in the border belt to continuously move to safer areas but also kept them economically and socially backward. The successive governments were only concerned with the security of the border. The development of the area was their last priority. The border belt remained neglected on all counts as indicated by the low level of human development index shown in various studies and reports (Rajan and Nanda 2015, pp. 4–5) (also see Singh and Rangnekar 2010, pp.  1–2). The government institutions, i.e. schools, health care institutions, panchayats, etc. responsible for development, either remained non-­ existent or dysfunctional because of continuous hostile environment on the border since partition of the country in 1947. The literacy level in the border villages is low as compared to the other villages of the state (Mangat 2016). There is hardly any employment opportunity. The road connectivity is in bad shape and still there is a large number of villages which lack even the bare minimum amenities. The lacklustre attitude of the successive governments and the disadvantageous location of these villages are major obstacles in the way of any growth in the border belt. The residents of these border villages became the structural victims of the partition of the country. Today’s Punjab, particularly the border areas, is at the crossroads and face serious challenge of development because of scarce industrial growth, difficult farming conditions especially beyond fencing, declining agricultural income, increasing indebtedness, farmer suicides, unemployed youth being entrapped in epidemic of drugs, smuggling and alcohol addiction, illegal migration, low literacy level, flagging health resources, skewed ratio of females to males, least infrastructural facilities which in turn lead to mass outward emigration.

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Objective of the Study This chapter is a modest attempt to study and analyse the problems and issues of the people residing in the border villages of Punjab. The term ‘border village’ is used for those villages which are located on the zero line, i.e. Radcliffe Line, which divides India and Pakistan border. The chapter is divided into three parts, Part I gives a brief background of the border belt of the state of Punjab. Part II deals with the victimisation of the people of the border areas particularly in context of socio-­ economic conditions of the farmers and peasants, women and youth. Finally, Part III concludes the argument of the chapter.

Research Methodology The universe of the study is the people living in the villages on the zero line (Indo-Pakistan border) of four districts of Punjab, i.e. Gurdaspur, Amritsar, Tarn Taran and Ferozepur. A total of 25 villages out of 279 were selected as part of the study (Sekhon 2011, pp. 1–96).Two open-ended questionnaires were prepared, one for collecting information about the living conditions of the people in these villages and the other for examining the structural problems of the peasantry who have land across the fencing on the border. The villages as units of study were selected to give due representation to the area and population living on the border. The study is based on the research project sanctioned by the ICSSR (2009).

Part I Background of the Border-Belt Territory is a bounded space, and boundaries are its defining limits. Boundaries are seen as political, physical and legal limits of a state (Canefe 2019, pp. 19–36). Borders and borderlands are among the most inclusive terms when we keep in mind the various meaning and definitions. Boundaries are seen as ‘a generic term for the linear spatial discontinuity’ (Fall 2005). ‘Borders constitute both a restriction and an expansion of the semantic field of boundaries…. Borders have indeed been endowed with a stronger political use than boundaries, having been ‘invented’ in modern times to express a specific balance of territorialised powers. They also invite a more-than-linear approach, enabling the possibility of borderlands’ ( Szary 2015, pp. 13–25). In this chapter we have made a modest attempt to look into the issues and concerns of the people living on the Indian side

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of the India-Pakistan border which came into existence after the partition of subcontinent on communal basis in 1947. Generally, there are two types of borders, i.e. international and national. International borders constitute space or territory which act as the control line between two independent entities within a jurisdiction and are conceived functionally as limits. These are inelastic and are believed to have the fixity of shape (Mangat 2010, p. 1). There are two types of boundaries, i.e. natural and artificial. Natural boundaries are formed by water, mountains, deserts, forests etc., whereas artificial boundaries are marked by, stones, bars, walls, trenches etc. A border also refers to the area that extends inward from the boundary or line of actual control (Bakshi 2008, p. 143). Boundaries across the world have been sources of conflicts and confrontations. Some boundaries are more disputed, more violent and more arbitrary than the others. The South Asian region is more prone to such conflicts (Uddin 2019, pp. 4–6). The nature of borders in this region is unique. It is diverse in terms of language, religion, culture and belief. The fundamental conflict in the region is a confrontation between geographical unity and cultural harmony on the one hand, and the political creation of distinctive identities on the other hand. Physically, South Asian borders are not uniform. These are based on land, sea, river, mountains areas etc., incidentally, certain parts of the borders are not delineated and demarcated yet. In terms of movement of goods and people these are rigid, porous, simple and open. In most of the cases these are illogical, arbitrary and ill-defined. They do not divide only countries but villages, streets and in some cases houses also (Chandran and Rajmohan 2007, pp. 119–20). The example of the Radcliffe Line can be cited here. It divided the population of Assam, Bengal, Sindh, Punjab and Kashmir without bothering about the sensitivity of cultural linkages between their people. Although the boundary between India and Sri Lanka is natural but Palk Straits divide Jaffna Tamils from their cultural cousins in peninsular India (Lal 2006, p. 261). The boundaries in the region were mostly drawn by the colonial masters and the many conflicts in the region are the consequences of the same. The Partition of India resulted in continuous bitter relations between the two countries. Communal riots and transfer of population on an unprecedented scale led to strained relations between the two (Chandra et  al. 2000, p. 161). Disputes over boundary and canal waters of Indus River also created much bitterness in the initial stages. Though the dispute over

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canal waters was resolved, but the Kashmir issue remained the same as it was. The boundary issue in Jammu and Kashmir is far from being over. The Radcliffe Line was drawn between India and Pakistan during the transfer of powers in 1947. The total length of Indo-Pak borders on the western side in Gujarat, Punjab and Rajasthan is about 3310 km (Bakshi 2008, p. 143). The length of Indo-Pak border in Punjab is 553 kilometres. The Indian Punjab got 40% of the total area and 45% of the total population of pre-partition Punjab. It included the whole Jalandhar and Ambala divisions, parts of Lahore division including Amritsar district, and three tehsils including Batala, Gurdaspur and Pathankot of Gurdaspur district (Randhawa 1954). It also got control over three out of five rivers of united Punjab, i.e. Beas, Sutlej and upper waters of Ravi. The emergence of the border belt in Punjab as a result of partition was marred by bloodshed and violence, resulting in half a million deaths and 13 million migrations (Datta 2002, p. 13). Radcliff Line, that constitutes the boundary between India and Pakistan is physically marked by stones, bars, trenches and is crisscrossed by two rivers Ravi and Sutlej. This border is paradoxically one of the highly guarded borders in India. It was earlier guarded by the Punjab Armed Police (PAP) before it was replaced by the Border Security Force on December 1, 1965 (Bakshi 2008, p. 144). The Indo-Pakistan border in Punjab begins from village Bamial in the north in Gurdaspur district and ends at the Mohar Jasmer village in Ferozepur district (Sekhon and Sharma 2019). Punjab is among the seventeen border states of India and shares international border with Pakistan along four (now six) districts, i.e. Gurdaspur, Amritsar, Tarn Taran and Ferozepur. The boundary between Indian Punjab and Pakistan Punjab commences in the north at the point where the west branch of the Ujh River (a tributary of Ravi River) enters into Punjab from Jammu and Kashmir side and ends at the boundary of Mohar Jasmer village in Ferozepur district. The border belt in Punjab consists of an area which falls within a radius of sixteen kilometres from the zero line. The radius of the border belt was extended from nine kilometres to sixteen kilometres by the Central and Punjab governments in 1998. In this way, a total of 1838 villages, 10 towns and two district headquarters (Gurdaspur and Ferozepur) with a population of more than 2. 5 million (2 million in rural areas and a half million urban population) became part of border belt (Mangat 2010, p. 2). These villages and towns fall in eighteen development blocks of four border districts. Now, the total area under the border belt is about eight

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thousand eight hundred kilometres, which is about one sixth of the total area of Punjab. There are two layers of the border belt in Punjab. The first layer includes the villages and towns located on the zero line, while the second includes villages, towns and district headquarters falling in a radius of sixteen kilometres from the zero line. There are 279 villages in the first layer. A large number of villages in this layer exist only on paper. The number of these villages is fifty-eight. The residents of these villages have migrated permanently to other areas. These are known as Be-chirag (deserted or ghost) villages as part of field study conducted in 2018. It is to mention here that the villages in the present border districts had grand political, strategic, religious and economic importance before the partition of the country because of their proximity with big cities. Amritsar was a big centre for trade, culture, religion, academics, politics etc. Ferozepur was a centre of education, had divisional headquarters of northern railways and trade route to Afghanistan and Central Asian countries and Gurdaspur was trade link with Kashmir and other northern areas. On the other side Lahore was political capital and centre of education with many colleges and Punjab University along with other major cities, i.e. Sialkot, Lyallpur Momtogomary etc. The partition of the country changed the fortunes not only of these important cities but also of the residents in villages and towns which became a part of border belt. These villages became the frontline areas during wars with Pakistan, and on account of the resultant tension on the border, the people have been suffering maximum loss of life, dignity, property etc (Butalia 2017). Table 13.1 details the number of villages in each border district, border belt and on the zero line. Gurdaspur district has the maximum number of villages in the border belt followed by Ferozepur district. On the other hand, Tarn Taran district has the maximum number of villages on zero line followed by Gurdaspur district. Both Gurdaspur and Ferozepur cities fall in the border belt. The relations between India and Pakistan remained far from normal since the partition of the country in 1947. The communal riots, transfer of population on an unprecedented scale, disputes over boundary and canal water of Indus River created much bitterness to the strained relations between the two countries (Chandra et al. 2000, pp. 161–163). The border issue remained unsettled in Jammu and Kashmir and is a major reason of dispute between the two neighbours.

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Table 13.1  District wise description of the border-belt Sr. no.

District

1. 2. 3. 4.

Gurdaspur Amritsar Tarn Taran* Ferozepur

Total

Total villages

Villages in border belt

Village on zero line

1659 737 579 1072

733 286 191 628

64 38 116 61

4047

1838

279

Source: Information collected from Revenue Department in the Border Districts *Tarn Taran tehsil was upgraded as a district in 2006 by the then Congress government in Punjab. Earlier, it was part of Amritsar district

After independence, India and Pakistan had fought three full-fledged wars in 1948, 1965 and 1971, Kargil conflict of 1999 and military standoff on border for more than one and half years in 2001. This standoff on the border took place after attack on the Indian Parliament by Pakistani trained terrorists. The continuous terror attacks in different parts in India by various terrorists’ groups operating in Pakistan, particularly the recent ones in Punjab (attack on a police station in Dinanagar (2015), military base in Pathankot (2016) etc.,) and Uri (2018) and Pulwama (2019) in Jammu and Kashmir has resulted in unending bitterness between the two countries. The terrorists’ attack in Mumbai in November 2008 was also a setback to the normal relations between the two countries. The unending proxy wars, continuous shelling from across the borders, large-scale supply of heroin and narcotics, smugglings, raids by the security forces and secret agencies have made the lives of the border residents miserable who have to flee from their homes leaving behind their crops, domestic animals and household at regular intervals.

Part II Victimisation of the Border Area Residents The grass-roots reality of the border belt is that it has remained neglected on all counts, as studies and reports show a very low level of human development index (Mangat 2016, pp. 55–78). Government institutions like schools, dispensaries and other institutions essential for the development are either non-existent or dysfunctional for various reasons. It is one of the foremost reasons of continuous outflow of involuntary migration of the people in the border belt since partition of the country.

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The following tables give a brief account of population growth rates in Punjab, and also in the border districts as well as the studied villages on the zero line according to census reports. The base year, i.e. 1971, was taken because the state was reorganised in 1966 and many villages of Gurdaspur and Ferozepur districts went to Himachal Pradesh and Haryana respectively. Table 13.2 shows the population of Punjab, district Gurdaspur, and also the studied villages in Gurdaspur from 1971 to 2011. Our data shows that the growth rate of Gurdaspur district (1971–2001) was less than the overall growth rate of population in Punjab. Two villages, i.e. Hasanpur and Wazirpur, were not inhabited in 1971. Originally, both these villages were located across the Ravi and their residents had moved from there to various villages in and around Gurdaspur city after the partition of the country. Only a few families belonging to these villages got settled in these villages (known by the name of their old villages) as the government of India provided them land to construct houses. However, the last decade showed substantial growth in the population. A large number of poor families got settled here because of its proximity to Gurdaspur city. The population growth of the remaining three villages, i.e. Bamial, Kamalpur and Ghania Ke-Bet, is much lower than the overall population growth in Table 13.2  Rate of population growth in Gurdaspur District (1971–2011) Name

1971

1981

1991

2001

2011

Growth 1971–2011

Punjab 13,551,060 16,788,915 20,281,969 24,358,999 27,743,338 +14,192,278 State 104.73% Gurdaspur 1,229,249 1,513,435 1,756,732 2,104,011 2,298,323 +1,069,074 District 86.96% Bamial 2528 2860 3313 3609 4055 +1527 60.40% Hasanpur Not 95 109 202 757 +662 inhabited 696.84% Wazirpur Not 65 76 508 591 +526 inhabited 809.23% Kamalpur 243 286 216 205 223 −20 −8.23% Ghanike-­ 485 647 545 585 582 +97 Bet 20% Source: Census of India

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the Gurdaspur district. So much so that even after five decades the population growth in the village Kamalpur is only 8.23%. Each family in the village has its own narratives of deprivation and marginalisation. Table 13.3 shows the population growth in Punjab, Amritsar district and also the studied villages from 1971 to 2011. The population growth of Amritsar district during this period is only about 36% much than the overall growth of population in Punjab. One of the major reasons was also the impact of terrorist violence in these regions. It is to mention here that there were large-scale migrations from the villages of Amritsar state to other cities in Punjab and outside the state (Puri et al. 1999, pp. 138–163; Sekhon 1999, pp.  89–102). Our data shows that population growth of only three villages, i.e. Odhar, Daoke and Mohawa, could manage to come close to the overall growth rate of population in the state of Punjab. These villages are very close to Wagha Border which has become a major trade centre and source of employment to thousands of people.

Table 13.3  Rate of population growth in Amritsar District (1971–2011) Name

1971

Punjab State Amritsar District Bhindi Aulakh Kalan Kakkar

13,551,060 16,788,915 20,281,969 24,358,999 27,743,338 +14,192,278 104.73% 1,835,500 2,188,490 2,504,560 3,096,071 2,490,656 +655,156 35.69% 748 866 826 1038 1326 +578 77.27% 2339

648

2802

3267

3479

Odhar

632

766

988

1226

1227

Rorawala 1145

1400

1661

1751

2031

Dhanoa Kalan Daoke

1270

859

1563

1642

1750

826

555

1231

1356

1765

2241

2668

2993

3333

Mohawa 1654 Source: Census of India

1981

1991

2001

2011

Growth 1971–2011

+1140 48.73% +595 94.14% +886 77.37% +480 37.79% +939 113.68% +1679 101.51%

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Table 13.4 explains the population growth in the studied border villages in Tarn Taran district. It was much lower than overall growth rate of population in Amritsar district. The growth rate of population till 2001 in Wan (7.96%) and Dal (7.96%) villages shows the intensity of migrations in the border villages of this district. However, the 2011 census showed a higher growth patterns for all the studied villages in the district. Table 13.5 explains the growth rate of population in Punjab, Ferozepur district and studied villages in the border belt of Ferozepur district. Our data shows that there was negative growth of population in Ferozepur district during from 1971 to 2001; however, the decade of 2011 changed the scenario. The population of Ferozepur district showed growth for the decade of 2001–2011, from −8.38% to 6.46% respectively. It is important to mention here that two villages, i.e. Dona Tellu Mal and Mohar Jasmer, Table 13.4  Rate of population growth in Tarn Taran District* District (1971–2011) Name

1971

1981

1991

2001

2011

Growth 1971–2011

Punjab State Tarn Taran District Wan

13,551,060 16,788,915 20,281,969 24,358,999 27,743,338 +14,192,278 104.73% – – – – 1,119,627 –

3087

3253

3183

3333

3950

Khalra

3835

4539

4585

5556

5831

Narli

3338

3681

4162

4381

4560

Dal

3249

3553

3377

3507

4039

Rajoki

4270

4866

5148

5158

6612

China 1972 Bidhi Chand Naushera 2523 Dhala

2246

2221

2412

2572

3003

3545

3748

4123

+863 27.95% +1996 52.04% +1222 36.60% +790 24.31% +2342 54.84% +600 30.42% +1600 63.41%

Source: Census of India Tarn Taran* – a subdivisional headquarter of Amritsar district, was upgraded to a district in 2006 by the then Congress government in Punjab

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Table 13.5  Rate of population growth in Ferozepur District (1971–2011) Name

1971

1981

1991

2001

2011

Punjab State Ferozepur District Hazara Singh Wala Dona Telu Mal Mohar Jamsher Hasta Kalan Raja Rai

13,551,060 16,788,915 20,281,969 24,358,999 27,743,338 +14,192,278 104.73% 1,905,833 1,307,804 1,607,807 1,746,107 2,029,074 +123,241 6.46% 1180 1660 2245 2627 3190 +2010 170.33%

Behak Khas

56

5

131

259

282

283

711

884

629

869

2473

3153

4725

5820

7101

148

190

195

269

415

2228

2703

3209

3828

3941

Growth 1971–2011

+226 403.57% +586 207.06% +4628 187.14% +267 180.40% +1713 76.88%

Source: Census of India

were not inhabited till 1961. The former, i.e. Dona Tellu Mal, remained on paper because of its location near Satluj River and the latter went to Pakistan in 1947 and was handed over to India in 1962. The reason of the abnormal growth in population (1971–2001) in some of the studied villages is on account of the allotment of government land to the landless families particularly belonging to the schedule castes of Ferozepur district. It must be mentioned here that there are many thousand acres of land belonging to the central and state governments in the border belt of Punjab. The available data and ground-level reality present a gloomy picture of the people living in these villages. The continuously forced migrations of the people because of hostile environment in the border belt resulted in the exodus of well-to-do families in the villages. On the other hand, the criminal neglect of the governments both at the state and the centre to develop minimum infrastructure in the border villages added to the woes of the people. The governments remained busy with the security of the territory of the country and the people living in the area never came on their agenda (Sekhon 2014, pp. 237–252).

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The most painful thing for the migrant families is that it altered their social relations as these families move to different places/villages outside their villages. In most of the cases the destinations of migrant families were their relatives living at some distance from the border. Their continuous stay with their relatives outside the danger zone made them unwanted guests for many weeks and months. The situation became so critical that now nobody wants to get their sons and daughter married off in these villages. They have become totally helpless and alien in their own land. Such circumstances forced the migrant families to find alternative ways to stay outside their villages and many of these residents have constructed small houses either in nearby towns or in the villages away from the border. This represents a category of migrants who chose/decided to settle close to their places of agricultural vocation, and also had the resources to build such houses. Such migrants now look after their agricultural farms from such places. On the other hand, the small and middle farmers with limited resources are bound to migrate again and again, and this harassment is accelerated by the dusk-to-dawn curfews by the Indian army during war-­ like situations on the borders, which sometimes result in destruction and plundering of the village infrastructure and houses due to extensive shelling and cross-border firing in the area. Due to this reason many villages are left out completely. Majority of such left-out and affected villages fall in Tarn Taran district followed by Gurdaspur district. As mentioned earlier the number of Be-chirag (non-inhabited or ghost villages) has gone up to 58. These innumerable melancholies not only had affected the settlement of the people but also were a major reason of their mental and physically harassment for leaving their homes and occupations, living under fear of death, frustration of rebuilding their residence and household again and again which gets aggravated with the presence of army and restrictions of movement in their villages and farms. This has been a major reason for victimisation of the border area people, as despite of the hardship faced by them, no government—central or state—has given them due importance in order to pull them out from such inhumane and intolerable situations.

Profile of the Border Area Residents in Punjab Punjab, predominately a rural society with two-thirds of its total population living in villages, is known as the food bowl of the country. Agriculture not only is the biggest source of occupation but also acts as a foundation and pillar for the economy of the state. In spite of the shift in economy to

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secondary and tertiary sectors, the major occupation of the rural population is still agriculture. After the success of Green Revolution in the 1960s and 1970s, agriculture has progressed leaps and bounds, increasing the income and standard of living of the farmers in Punjab. However, nothing substantial has changed for the agriculturalists who have their land on the borders adjoining Pakistan. The Green Revolution brought about an economic transformation in the rural Punjab, leading to the creation of infrastructure, e.g. roads, schools, markets, electricity supply, research and extension services. However, the border belt remained neglected even from the rewards of the Green Revolution, which further widened disparities in the developmental processes between the two areas in rural Punjab. The fact of the matter is that the people in the border belt remained excluded from the developmental process in the post-Green Revolution era. Even today, after 73 years of independence of the country, they are still facing many problems of their survival in their day-to-day life. It is to mention here that the agriculture is the only source of livelihood in the studied villages. As per our field research it was found that more than 95% of the total peasants in these villages are either small or marginal farmers. As a part of study, a total of 250 peasants were selected randomly, i.e. 10 from each studied village, to understand their problems and day-to-­ day living experiences as residents of the border. The sampled farmers are those who have land across the fencing on the border. They are the worst sufferers vis-à-vis the other peasants who do not have land across the fencing. The decline in the agriculture income and crisis in agrarian structure in Punjab began in the mid-1990s which adversely affected the lives of the farming community of the state in general and the border area particular. On the other hand, the absence of any alternative source of livelihood made the life of residents of these villages very difficult. It is not merely a crisis of deceleration of growth of agricultural production and productivity, but also increasing distress on farming which has not been able to meet their basic consumption needs from their dependence on agricultural income. Two-thirds of India’s population derives their subsistence from agriculture, which is dominated by marginal and small farmers. The last couple of decades have witnessed rapid changes in the agriculture sector on account of globalisation and liberalisation. These changes are pushing the sector into a competitive mode without preparing it to face the concomitant and inevitable vulnerability. The farmers as an occupational group, face high risk and uncertainty in their income flow. In

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the market, the farmer has to pay prices fixed by supplier, whereas in product market, the purchasers determine the prices with the farmer as a mute receiver. Farmers as a group are always exposed to higher economic stress, compounded by social stress. They are confronting with severe distressful circumstances and found themselves unable to cope with changes in economic environment. The outbreak of farmers’ suicides during the last two decades indicated this upheaval within agriculture. The condition of the farmers in the border belt is much worse than their counterparts in non-­ border belt of Punjab (Picture 13.1). Table 13.6 presents an account of the occupation of the farmers in the border belt. Only agriculture is the mainstay of the farmers. Our data shows that the 90.8% of the total farmers are dependent on agriculture. It is to mention here that more than 85% farmers in the border belt are marginal and small farmers. The percentage of farmers’ dependence on this occupation was higher in the Ferozepur district. A small number of

Picture 13.1  View of a peasant family in Ferozepur District. (Source: Field Study)

267

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Table 13.6  Occupation of the farmers on the border-belt of Punjab Sr. no.

Occupation

1. 2.

Agriculture Agriculture/Dairy Farming Agriculture/ Commission Agent Agriculture/Trader Agriculture/Job Agriculture/ Ex-Serviceman Agriculture/Truck Driver Agriculture Labour Nothing

3. 4. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. Total

Gurdaspur Amritsar 42(84) – – – 1(2) 1(2) 2(4)

Tarn Taran

64(91.4) 61(87.1) 2(2.9) – – – 2(2.9) 1(1.4) –

Ferozepur Total Percentage 60(100) –

227 2

90.8 0.8

2(2.9)

–

2

0.8

1(1.4) 1(1.4) 2(2.9)

– – –

1 4 4

0.4 1.6 1.6

–

2

0.8

– –

2 6

0.8 2.4

–

1(2) 3(6)

1(1.4)

– 3(4.3)

50(100)

70(100)

70(100)

60(100)

250

100

Source: Field Work

farmers of Tarn Taran and Amritsar districts were found to be in gainful employment or doing business along with their agriculture. They are commission agents and both belong to Naushara village in Tarn Taran district. The rise of terrorist movement in the state (1978–93), in the name of creating separate state called ‘Khalistan’ for the Sikh community, brought havoc to the social structure of Punjab in general and the residents of the border area in particular. There was a huge loss of men and material during this period. The violence took the toll of more than 35,000 (police record 25,000) persons in the state. The people became victims of both state terrorism and non-state (actor) terrorism. The violence made vibrant Punjab a crisis-ridden Punjab (Puri et al. 1999, pp. 9–11). This violence came to end abruptly leaving a mark of social and economic destruction. It has left an indelible mark on Punjab and has had drastic social, political and economic consequences. Though terrorism was eliminated in the mid-1990s, it brought unprecedented problems for the residents of the studied border villages. Terrorism gave a god-sent opportunity to Pakistan to settle scores with India and take revenge of the 1971 defeat in East Pakistan. Since the border was open, Pakistan involved directly in the ongoing terrorist movement by supplying weapons and training to the terrorists and providing safe

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heavens to the leaders of the movement. The violence in the state reached an alarming stage in 1986–7 because of open support of Pakistani agencies to the different organisations of the terrorists resulting in large-scale killing in the state (Puri et al. 1999). In order to check the infiltration of the terrorists and supply of weapons from the Pakistani side, the Government of India decided to fence the border in early 1986. A high-powered committee under the chairmanship of Punjab Chief Secretary was constituted to look into the matter. The committee recommended to fence the border at a distance between fifty to hundred yards from the zero line but it was met with strong resistance from Pakistani authorities. The Pakistan government raised various objections to the decision of the Indian government and also created hurdles in the execution of fencing on the border. There were reports of firing from Pakistan side. The workers and contractors who were assigned the task of fencing the border fled from the site. The work was stopped. The law-and-order situation in the state further deteriorated with a sudden increase in the number of terrorist activities and killing of the people. The Akali government led by Surjit Singh Barnala was dismissed in May 1987. The President rule was imposed in the state. The central government ordered the concerned authorities in the state to complete the fencing on the border to check cross-border terrorism in the state. The process of fencing the border began in June 1987 and was completed in most of the area in 1991.This government decision was a bolt from the blue for the residents of border village. The concern and issues related to the local population was totally ignored. Punjab was under Disturbed Area Rule, hence no resistance of the affected people to this arbitrary decision was allowed. It is to be mentioned here that there was complete ban on any protest and political activity in the state. The border was fenced at a distance of five hundred yards to two and half kilometres from the zero line. Only the convenience and safety of the workers involved in the fencing of the border were taken into consideration. The future of the affected farmers was totally ignored and their requests to listen their viewpoint were snubbed on the name of security of the nation. This unilateral decision of the central government created life-long problems for more than twenty thousand families of 279 villages located on zero line. More than 21,000 acres of cultivated land went across the fence (Randhawa 2009). Many farmers in these villages have their entire land holdings on the other side of the fence. Dependent on agriculture for subsistence, and the lack of alternative source of income, access to their fields remains a key element of social justice or equity.

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The fencing on the border to check the infiltration of the terrorists and smugglers from the Pakistan divided the land of farmers into two parts, one across the fencing and other outside the fencing. This development deprived the farmers of free access to their own fields and that too at their own convenience and it has become a painful irritant that has offset their life pattern (Picture 13.2). Table 13.7 shows that most of the farmers (85.2%) have to cover extra distance—between half a kilometre to six kilometres—to reach to their fields. This is on account of the fencing on the border. This problem not only puts an extra burden in the shape of cost of diesel of the farm machinery but also further impinges on their limited working hours. The fencing has made them insecure and helpless in their own country because agricultural operations across the fencing were regulated by the orders of the security forces. The border is manned by Border Security Forces (BSF) in peace times and the Indian Army during wars and war-like situation on the

Picture 13.2  Fencing on the border in Tarn Taran District. (Source: Field Study)

Name of the village

Gurdaspur 1. Bamiyal 2. Hasanpur 3. Kamalpur 4. Wazirpur 5. Ghanie-ke-­ Bet Amritsar 6. Kakkar 7. Bhindi Aulakh 8. Odhar 9. Dhanoa Kalan 10. Roranwala Kalan 11. Daoke 12. Mohawa Tarn Taran 13. Khalra 14. Rajoke 15. Narli 16. Naushera

Sr. no.

4 – – – 2

1 2 4 5 2 4 6 4 3 3 –

1 –

– 4

1

1 2

1 3 2 4

½

1 – 1 – –

0

3 4 5 3

– 2

2

6 1

– 5

5 – 1 – 6

1

2 – – –

3 –

2

– –

– –

– 2 4 – 2

1½

– – – 2

– –

1

– –

6 1

– 1 4 4 –

2

– – – –

– –

–

– –

1 2

– 5 – 2 –

2½

Number of farmers having distance from entry gate in km

– – – 1

1 –

–

– –

1 –

– 1 – 3 –

3

– – – –

1 –

–

– –

– –

– 1 – 1 –

3½

Table 13.7  Distance of fields from the Entry Gates on the Fence (in kilometres)

– – – –

– –

–

– –

– –

– – – – –

4

– – – –

– –

–

– –

– –

– – – – –

4½

– – – –

– –

2

– –

– –

– – – – –

5

– – – –

– –

–

– –

– –

– – – – –

5½

– – – –

– –

–

– –

– –

– – – – –

6

10 10 10 10

10 10

10

10 10

10 10

10 10 10 10 10

Total

270  J. S. SEKHON AND S. SHARMA

Source: Field Study

–

–

–

1 – –

1

–

– –

–

6

10

10 10 10

10

10

10 10

10

Total

2 3 2 250 (0.8%) (1.2%) (0.8%) 100

2 1 –

– – –

5½

–

4

–

3½

–

3

–

2½

– –

2

– –

1½ –

1 –

½

17. Chhina 2 6 2 – – – – – – – Bidhi Chand 18. Dall 3 7 – – – – – – – – 19. VaanTara 4 1 3 – 1 – – – 1 – Singh Ferozepur 20. Hasta 2 2 3 – 3 – – – – – Kalan 21. Dona Telu – – 3 – 3 3 – – – – Mall 22. Behak Khas – 2 2 – 3 – – – – – 23. Raja Rai – 1 5 – 2 1 – – – – 24. Hazara – 3 3 3 1 – – – – – Singh Wala 25. Mohar 5 2 1 2 – – – – – – Jamsher Total 37 64 65 20 32 14 7 3 1 – (14.8%) (25.6%) (26%) (8.0%) (12.8%) (5.6%) (2.8%) (1.2%) (0.4%)

0

Number of farmers having distance from entry gate in km 5

Name of the village 4½

Sr. no.

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J. S. SEKHON AND S. SHARMA

border. The offshoot of the pronounced hostility and developments on the border resulted in dismal state of affairs in and around the border villages. These farmers bear the consequences of the mounting vigil of our own security forces and are also targets of enemy soldiers. The affected farmers attend to their fields with prayers on their lips and hearts in their mouths. There is a fall in food grains produced, both in quality and quantity. Fencing is protected by security gates and in order to enter the fields beyond fencing, farmers have to cover a long distance of more than two kilometres on an average to reach their fields through an entry gate, since many of them do not have their land holdings immediately in front of the gate. There are 294 entry gates for the farmers but only 273 are operational throughout the 553 kilometres of the fenced border. These gates are opened on alternate days and that too only during harvesting season; otherwise the gates remain closed for days together during winter, and especially in rainy and foggy conditions. The average distance between the two gates is about two kilometres; often it is more. Sometimes farmers have to travel to the other gate, instead of the one that is close to their land and this is not only inconvenient, but also time consuming. The working hours across the fields are limited and fixed, and that too at the convenience of the security forces guarding these borders. Due to the structural problems, officially the farmers can work daily in their fields from 9 am to 4 pm, but the ground reality has been far from that. They are only allowed to work from 10 am to 3 pm in the afternoon as per our interviews with the affected farmers  (Singh 2010). The timings of the access of the farmers across the fencing are subject to many other factors. The farmers who have land across the fencing have to go through rigorous security checks at the gates. They must carry their identity cards. Then their body search is conducted. Their lunch boxes, fertiliser and seed bags and farm implements are thoroughly scrutinised. Tool kits are not allowed with any farm machinery. No farmer is allowed to take along labourers who do not have valid identity cards. Both the coming and going to the fields are recorded strictly, as per the security norms. The farmers, who sometimes have to engage more work-force in their fields, for want of time or due to other reasons like harvesting or transplanting, or sometimes even personal reasons, feel handicapped. The labour force is not only costly but also unavailable as no one wants to work in the farms beyond the fence. Sometimes in bad weather, be it rain, fog or floods, the farmers are not allowed to attend their crops. At other times, an encounter between infiltrators or smugglers with the BSF puts additional brakes on the

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movement of the farmers to their fields. Yet another predicament of the affected farmers is that the cultivation of land across the fence is allowed only by farm machinery. As mentioned earlier that the majority of the affected farmers have small and marginal land holdings; thus they do not own tractors. For executing their agriculture operations, they are dependent upon bigger farmers who have tractors and farm machinery. It is imperative that such machinery should be already registered with the BSF, and also that such owners must have land across the fence. The ripe crops also have the risk of getting in accidental fire or damage by stray animals and hostile elements from the other side. Thus, these farmers are caught in a vicious circle, and are doubly cursed–in having their holdings fenced off and also being fleeced (Sekhon 2013, pp. 57–70). Not only the working is controlled but also another incapacitating stipulation of land beyond fence is that the affected farmers are not allowed to grow crops that attain a height of more than three feet. The Table 13.8 gives description of the crops that are grown in the border range. Punjab agriculture has witnessed many changes in land use and crop productivity. The state has exhibited an exemplary growth in the agricultural sector since mid-1960s. The introduction of high yielding varieties of wheat and rice and other commodities transformed the agricultural production scenario on irrigated lands. Consequently, the production of food grains in Punjab state has increased tremendously because of minimum two crops in a year. But the farmers in the border belt were restricted to grow only specified crops with minimum height of three feet because of security Table 13.8  Crop pattern across the fencing Sr. no.

Crop

1. 2.

Wheat Wheat and paddy Wheat and cotton Vegetables/ Pulses No Crop

3. 4. 5. Total

Source: Field Work

Gurdaspur

Amritsar

Tarn Taran

Ferozepur Total Percentage

27(54) 10(20)

10(14.3) 54(77.1)

7(10) 63(90)

20(33.3) 26(43.4)

64 153

25.6 61.2

–

–

–

7(11.7)

7

2.8

–

–

–

5(8.3)

5

2.0

–

2(3.3)

21

8.4

60(100)

250

13(26) 50(100)

6(8.6) 70(100)

70(100)

100

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J. S. SEKHON AND S. SHARMA

reasons. The taller crops are perceived to provide an easy natural cover to the infiltrators and smugglers waiting in the wings to sneak into India and negating the very purpose of fencing on the border. Such overbearing may be perfectly in the national interest, and there is ample justification for the same, but one cannot deny that it deprives the farmers of the opportunity to optimise the production of the crops and this further affects the fertility of their holdings. The farmers are allowed to harvest only paddy and wheat but that needs more care throughout the season. In this way they are not able to keep pace with the current times on the one hand and also cannot diversify their crop pattern. It is a universal truth that diversification of crops maintains the fertility of the land. The poor farmers have been forced into a situation—not of their own making—where they end up getting less and less yield with every passing year. There are undeclared restrictions on sinking deep tube-wells in the land across the fence. Such tube-wells are imperative today on account of the depleting water table in Punjab. There has been provided no new electricity connection to this land since the fencing on the border. The farmers are irrigating their land by running diesel pumps. The farmers are not allowed to water their crops with canal water, again because of security reasons. The electric supply is erratic and the farmers often complain about the non-friendly attitude of the electricity department. Misery piled upon further misery led to an uncongenial agrarian environment in the border belt of Punjab, especially for farmers whose holdings are fenced off. They have lost the love of their labour. Their land, at times, remains unattended and untilled. In such a scenario, these farmers prefer to rent out their holdings or sell the land outright. Here too, their choice suffers from an embargo. The poor fellow can rent out or sell the land only to his neighbour. And it is the neighbour (relatively well off) who dictates and offers, and obviously to his advantage at dirt cheap prices. The other significant issue is the market price and rent of land across the fence which is one-third of the present price of the land this side of the fence. There are very few, or no, buyers of such disadvantaged and complex land across. The formal financial institutions, like co-operative societies and banks, do not sanction loans on land beyond fencing. Thus, the unencumbered farmers are forced to get loan from local commission agents, adhtiyas, or from other informal agencies, at very high rates of interest. Most of the farmers in this area are self-cultivators. The percentage of self-cultivators are higher in Ferozepur district followed by those in

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Tarn Taran and finally in Amritsar. The rents and prices of the land beyond the fencing is less than half the price of the land on this side of the fencing. Landmines are another irksome problem for the people in the border villages since independence. The mines are laid down in the fields, passages and around the villages whenever there is standoff between the armies of both countries to check any eventuality from the Pakistani army. Though the army claims that the mines are cleared after any eventuality, yet the leftovers are still there to cause much fear and apprehension among the cultivators. In many cases, the farmers have found pieces of mines lying in their fields. During interactions with the local residents particularly the farmers said that there were many tragic deaths of innocent agriculturalists due to mine blasts. In one such incident, a total of eighteen persons, including a few army men, were killed in village Mohawa in Amritsar district while unloading mines from a military truck in 2001. Majority of the villages on the border in the Gurdaspur and Ferozepur districts are across rivers Ravi and Satluj, respectively. The floods during monsoons in these rivers are a common feature. Including these rivers, there are many small rivulets which come from these mainstreams, and the only access to beyond the river land and village is by pontoon bridges which are guarded by the BSF in normal times and army during war. The floods in the rivers and rivulets not only take away the crops, fertile layer of the soil, but also has cause certain causalities as well. Only after the construction of the Thein or Ranjit Sagar Dam in 2001 the situation has come under some control. However, still during the rainy season many villages get cut off from the mainland. Due to numerous difficulties and problems faced by the border area farmers, farming as a profession is not only becoming unprofitable but also losing its charm amongst the new generation (Sekhon 2015, pp. 151–161). Overall, the border villages present a dismal picture of living conditions of the residents. Sometimes, one wonders if these villages are actually a part of Punjab. The road connectivity is in bad shape and there are a large number of villages which are not connected with link roads, particularly those villages that fall across the Satluj and Ravi rivers in Ferozepur and Gurdaspur districts respectively. The literacy level in the border villages has been found to be dismally low. The overall rate of literacy in Punjab was 75.84%, as per 2011 census. In Ferozepur district the literacy rate hovered around 68.92%, while in Tarn Taran district, it was recorded to be as low as 67.81% in the 2011 census. These two districts fall among the ten least literate districts in Punjab (Census of Punjab, 2011). The situation in

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2001 was much worse, as in Ferozepur district, it was between 49% and 57% in the border blocks, while in Bhikiwind and Valtoha blocks of Tarn Taran district, it was 54.19% and 41.96% respectively. It was just 54.86% in Ajnala block of Amritsar district (Mangat 2010, pp. 6–7). The major reason for low level of literacy amongst the border area residents is the lack of basic educational facilities. The border areas have been neglected not only on the major infrastructural developments but the basic necessities of the people in form of primary and secondary schools are also not fulfilled. There is not only lack of schools but even the existing schools do not have required number of teachers and minimum infrastructure in the form of building and other requirements. The absence of the teachers from the schools for longer periods is quite common in the remote villages. Hence, due to absence of teachers in the government schools and expensive and unaffordable private school education, the literacy level has been completely shattered in the region. ‘Glaring educational disparities can be seen among scheduled castes and non-scheduled castes. The extent of dropouts seems more in the sub-castes like Majhabhi Sikhs, Christian, Majhhabis, Sansis, Rai Sikhs, Meghwals, Batwals, Bagri Suthars, Bagri Luhars and Boria Sikhs. Actually, there is general lack of skill formation and technical education and also there is lack of higher education among border area population’ (Singh and Rangnekar 2010, p. 4). Same is the case with the health facilities. The lack of doctors, dispensaries and community health centres has ruined the well-being of the people in the border area. They have to travel several kilometres to the big cities and towns in order to get themselves treated for even small diseases and problems. Women, especially the pregnant women, are helpless to give birth with the help of unskilled and untrained mid-wives because of the absence of trained and proficient doctors in the area. This has led to increase in the death rate of mothers and the newly born children. ‘The infant mortality and child mortality rates are comparatively high as compared to non-border districts due to deficiency of health care facilities in that region’ stated a pharmacist in village Mohawa of Amritsar district. The poor people are forced to go to private hospitals or private clinics for their treatment. Especially in some pockets in the border villages of Amritsar, Tarn Taran and Ferozepur districts, water is not drinkable, and it is true that many households do not have access to safe drinking water. Though some villages have been supplied water through pipes but the quality of the water is very low and supply is also very erratic. Most of the

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recently launched water supply projects have become dysfunctional of remained unutilised’ (Field Study 2018). On the other hand, the residents of the studied villages in general and villages in Tarn Taran district in particular are profoundly affected by diseases like Hepatitis B and C, AIDS, and other STVs. Due to unemployment and easy availability of drugs, a large chunk of youth in the border area have become victims to drug smuggling and drug abuse, and the number of drug addicts is accelerating day by day. No government schemes either of centre or state reaches the border areas, and hence, they remain untouched by the development; rather they are forced to fall deeper in the garb of under-development. Unemployment, drug smuggling and drug abuse are interlinked in the border areas. Since, agriculture has increasingly become unprofitable and difficult, people are moving away from this occupation. But due to lack of employment opportunities particularly in secondary and the tertiary sector, most of the youth remain unemployed. Due to various reasons the border areas are abandoned from industrial and service sector growth. Neither government nor big business houses are ready to invest money in the region. Hence, the youth of the region fall in the vicious circle of earning money by illegal means of smuggling arms, drugs and humans. Though the problem of drugs has engulfed the Punjabi youth, the situation in the border areas is much worse. Due to proximity to Pakistan the availability of drugs is much easier here. And the illiterate, unemployed and misguided youth easily fall into their hands. In the recent years the BSF has killed many smugglers on both Indian as well as on the side of Pakistan. In year 2018 the BSF seized around 16 weapons while it had recovered 23 arms last year. Besides this the forces also killed 3 Pakistani and 3 Indian smugglers in 2018. Whereas, in 2012 the number was as high as 11 with 7 Pakistani and 4 Indians (Jaiswar 2018). Just after few days of the BSF eliminating the 3 Pakistani smugglers and seizing 24  kg of heroin at Mullankot village, Amritsar district, the State Special Operations Cell (SSOC) also recovered contraband worth Rs. 120 crores in the international market and arrested 4 people involved in the same (Paul 2018). Recently a haul of 500 kgs heroin was caught at Attari check post having international price worth more than 2500 crores (The Tribune, 02 July, 2019). These are amongst the few incidents of the last two years, and there has been an increase of such activity in the recent times. The involvement of the local residents particularly the farmers having land beyond the fencing cannot be ruled out. Even the leaders of the Border Area Sangarsh

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Committee (Farmers organisation to raise the voice of farmers in the border belt) also accepted that, ‘There are bad elements in every section of the society, and the BSF or the farmers in the border belt are no exceptions. There are a few farmers who are involved in anti-national and anti-­ social activities. We have given our full support to the BSF to nail these elements, subject to the condition that innocent farmers are not harassed’, said Comrade Rattan Singh Randhawa, the architect and visionary of the Border Area Sangarsh Committee. Another important social trend that has emerged amongst the people living in the border areas is that of intra-marriages. The youth living in the border areas are facing a crisis-like situation for getting married. The major reason is that the mainland people are not ready to get their children married off to border areas not only because of security reasons but also because of the under-development in the region. Hence, the villagers of the border areas are forced to get their children married in the same village, which was seen as a social taboo in the past history. This has changed the societal norms and cultural regulations of the villages in the border areas.

Conclusion Summing up the problems of these people one may say that it seems they are caught between the devil and the deep sea and lead a cursed existence. The biggest issue for them is the lack of development of their region which is gradually converting into under-development. From farmers to youth to women, all categories of people are faced with unending and unsolved miseries brought upon them just because they happened to be part of the border villages that got divided in the partition of 1947. The chapter although limited in scope and objectives attempts to form simplistic generalisations regarding the problems of the farmers, youth and the women in the border villages. The study targets at providing a first-hand picture of the consequences that the farmers have been facing, since the border was fenced. It is a picture that emerges when one views at the realities from below. Denying farmers free access to their land along with inadequate time to cultivate their farms, higher cost of production for the farmers having land beyond fencing, fixed gate timings, that too solely decided on the convenience of the BSF personnel deployed at the gates, the unrelenting garb of checking and frisking while entering or coming out of fields across fencing there have been many complaints of

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harassment at the hands of the BSF officials. It is an unending tale of suffering and embarrassment for the farmers. The conditions at the base level display a dismal picture of the living conditions of the peasantry in the border belt. The decline of land holdings and structural problems faced in the cultivation of their land has forced a large number of farmers out of their livelihood that is entirely depended on cultivation. Many more are helplessly awaiting their turn. The denial of minimum basic needs by the successive state and central governments, the absence of educational, health, employment opportunities, the hostile conditions and aggressive behaviour of the security forces have jointly made the lives of the border-belt people miserable. The border is infamous for smuggling of opium, gold, weapons, and also for infiltration of anti-national elements from across the border despite the fencing on the border. The absence of any alternative source of livelihood sometimes pushes them into illegal and anti-national activities on the border. They become easy prey to harmful elements. The residents in the border belt have been uprooted many times since the partition of the country, but the successive governments have never genuinely bothered about their plight. There have been no concrete or realisable rehabilitation policies of the governments for the victims on the border belt. The health of most of the residents of these villages is in the hands of unqualified medical practitioners who are held in high esteem in the border villages. The government dispensaries, if any, exist only on paper. In case one comes across a dilapidated structure or two, ostensibly substituting for a dispensary, these are without regular or qualified staff, and to make matters worse, they also often do not get any supply of medicines, sometimes, for as long as a couple of months. In other cultural practices too, they are driven against the wall. The occupants of the border villages have no other choice than to marry off their children in their own village or nearby border villages that have similar conditions and compulsions. The lament many respondents in Gurdaspur and Ferozepur districts express is that, ‘the residents of other villages refuse to marry their children off in our villages fearing danger and trouble during conflicts on the border and on account of floods in the river’. Finally, the situation of these poor people is like that of a pendulum dangling between two situations, they can neither own nor dispose of their own lands, and hence, they are forced to bear the trauma of evacuation every now and then. Added to their sad state of affairs is their

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illiteracy, lack of opportunities and inadequate infrastructural facilities. They have no voice to express their grievances. Perhaps there is also a communication gap between people and all those who could come to their rescue.

References Bakshi, Sumita. 2008. Policing the Borders. Journal of Political Science 4 (1). Butalia, Urvashi. 2017. On the Other Side of Silence: Voices from the Partition of India. Penguin. Canefe, Nargis. 2019. Borders, Citizens and Subaltern in South Asia. In Deterritorialised Identity and Transborder Movement in South Asia, ed. Nasir Uddin and Nasreen Chaudhary. Singapore: Springer. Chandra, Bipin, Mridula Mukerjee, and Aditiya Mukerjee. 2000. India After Independence. New Delhi: Viking. Chandran, D. Suba, and P.G. Rajmohan. 2007. Soft, Porous or Rigid? Towards Stable Borders in South Asia. South Asian Survey 14 (1): 117–128. Datta, V.N. 2002. Lord Mountbatten and the Punjab Boundary Commission Award. In Pangs of Partition, ed. S. Settar and I.B. Gupta. New Delhi: Manohar Publishers. Fall, Juliet. 2005. Drawing the Line. Boundaries, Identity and Hybridity in Transboundary Spaces. Aldershot: Ashgate. Government of India. (2015–2016). ‘State Industrial Profile of Punjab‘, Ludhiana: Ministry of MSME. ICSSR Project. 2009. Problems of Border Area Farmers in Punjab: An Empirical Study. Department of Political Science, Guru Nanak Dev University, Amritsar. Jaiswar, P.K. 2018. ‘Cross-Border Drug Trafficker Change Policy to Dodge BSF Men’. The Tribune News Service, October 28. Lal, Brij V. 2006. The Encyclopaedia of the Indian Diaspora. Singapore: Didler Miller. Mangat, Harpreet Kaur. 2010. Baptism by Fire, Survival by Grit: Life in the Border-Belt of Punjab. Guru Nanak Journal of Sociology 31 (1/2): 19–36. ———. 2016. Maximum Security and Minimum Development-the Irony and Paradox of Living at Indo-Pak Border. In Life on the Indo-Pak Border: A Paradox of Security and Development, ed. Sukhdev Singh Sohal and Anjali Mehra, 41–56. New Delhi: Serial Publications. Paul, G.S. 2018. ‘4 Held with Heroin Worth Rs. 120 Crore’. The Tribune News Service, October 28. Puri, H.K., P.S. Judge, and J.S. Sekhon. 1999. Terrorism in Punjab: Understanding Grassroots Reality. New Delhi: Har-Anand Publishers.

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Rajan, Irudaya S., and Aswini Kumar Nanda. 2015. Transnational World and Indian Punjab: Contemporary Issues. In Migration, Mobility and Multiple Affiliations, ed. S.  Irudaya Rajan, V.J.  Varghese, and Aswini Kumar Nanda. Delhi: Cambridge University Press. Randhawa, M.S. 1954. Out of Ashes: An Account of Rehabilitation of Refugees from West Pakistan in the Rural Areas of East Punjab. Delhi: OUP. Randhawa. 2009. Interview with Rattan Singh Randhawa, Leader of Farmers in the Border Belt of Punjab, November 14. Sekhon, Jagrup Singh. 1999. Migration Due to Terrorist Violence in Punjab: A Study. Punjab Journal of Politics XXIII (2). ———. 2011. Unpublished ICSSR Project Report Problems of Border Area Farmers in Punjab: An Empirical Study. Department of Political Science, Guru Nanak Dev University, Amritsar. ———. 2013. Life at the Cutting Edge: Experiences of Living in Border Areas. Man & Development XXXV (3): 57–70. ———. 2014. Farmers at the Borderbelt of Punjab: Fencing and Forced Deprivation. In Mapping Social Exclusion in India: Caste, Religion and Borderlands, ed. Paramjit S. Judge, 237–252. Delhi: Cambridge University Press. ———. 2015. Social Transformation of Peasantry in the Border Belt of Punjab: A Study. In Crises in Social Transformation in India, ed. S.R. Ahlawat and Neerja Ahlawat, 151–161. Jaipur: Rawat. Sekhon, Jagrup Singh, and Sunayana Sharma. 2019. Involuntary Migration in the Border Belt of Indian Punjab. In Deterritorialised Identity and Transborder Movement in South Asia, ed. Nasir Uddin and Nasreen Chaowdhory. Singapore: Springer. Singh, Arsal. March 8, 2010. Interview with Arsal Singh a Prominent Leader of the Farmers in the Border Area Fighting for Justice to the Residents of Zero-­ Line Villages. Singh, Kesar, and U.S. Rangnekar. 2010. A Profile Report on Pre-Project Survey of Border Area Development Programmes in Punjab. Chandigarh: Department of Planning, Government of Punjab. Szary, Anne-Laure Amilhat. 2015. Boundaries and Borders: Handbook of Political Geography, 13–25. Wiley-Blackwell. 978-1-118-72588-7. Uddin, Nasir. 2019. The State, Transborder Movements, and Deterritorialised Identity in South Asia. In Deterritorialised Identity and Transborder Movement in South Asia, ed. Nasir Uddin and Nasreen Chaudhary. Singapore: Springer.

PART IV

Gender, Conflict and Migration

CHAPTER 14

Women in India’s CPI (Maoist) Ranks P. V. Ramana

Introduction: Tracing History1 The association of women with armed Communist movement dates back to the Telangana Armed Struggle of 1946–51 when women, especially from the middle class, were involved in non-combatant roles, such as maintaining dumps, managing safe houses to facilitate secret meetings and in transporting weapons. Thereafter, the role of women transformed and they were involved in combatant role by fielding weapons and engaging the security forces in gun-battles in Naxalbari as well as in the Srikakulam Armed Struggle (1969–1970). The most prominent among them was Panchadi Nirmala who was allegedly captured and killed along with some of her colleagues in 1969. Her husband Panchadi Krishna Murthy was one of the leading lights of the Srikakulam Armed Struggle.

1   This section is largely based on  an  Interview with  a  very top-ranking leader of the Dandakaranya Special Zone Committee, who surrendered to the authorities in 2014, Hyderabad, July 25, 2014.

P. V. Ramana (*) Independent Analyst, Rajahmundry, Andhra Pradesh, India © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2022 N. Chowdhory, P. Banerjee (eds.), Gender, Identity and Migration in India, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-16-5598-2_14

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More than a decade later, women were involved in the Jagityal Rytanga Poratam (Jagityal Peasants’ Struggle). As the People’s War (PW), popularly known as People’s War Group (PWG), the earlier avatar of the Communist Party of India (Maoist), CPI (Maoist), or Maoists in short, emerged on the scene, initially in Karimnagar district of the present Telangana State, and with women enrolling in students’ and youth organizations such as Radical Students Union (RSU) and Radical Youth League (RYL), a debate ensued within the PWG if there was the necessity to start a separate women’s organization. During the 1970s and for the larger part of the 1980s, in respect of Andhra Pradesh (AP), the understanding within the organization’s thought process was that, as women were, in any case, being enrolled in the already existing organizations such as RSU, RYL, and Rytu Coolie Sangham (RCS), an association of agriculture labour, there was no need to have a separate women’s organization. On the other hand, after taking root in Dandakaranya (Bastar), a conscious effort was made from the very beginning to start women’s organizations. Given the then (1980s to later part of 1980s) existing feudal culture in Telangana it was next to impossible that rural women would venture out in the night to meet organizers and participate in meetings. As a result, contact with women was minimal, unlike in Dandakaranya where restrictions on interaction/movements on tribal women were either limited or did not exist. As a result, it was possible to build the women’s movement in Dandakaranya from the initial days itself. Gradually, in the late 1980s  – early 1990s, following internal discussions and the aspirations of the women themselves in Telangana, a conscious decision was taken not to limit the role of women to non-combatant roles such as maintaining dens/managing safe-houses in urban areas, and they were given the choice of going into the forests to organize the movement/join the armed squads as fighters. This chapter makes a modest attempt to understand why women join in India’s Maoist movement, their role within the outfit, their equation with the leadership and fellow cadres, why they quit, and their lives after they surrender to the authorities. At the same time, it might be mentioned here that this chapter is based on a couple of Maoist internal documents and interviews with people familiar with the women’s movement in undivided Andhra Pradesh, as well as interviews with surrendered women cadres/leaders who are natives of North Telangana, some of whom have also operated in Gadchiroli and Bastar (Dandakaranya Special Zone [DKSZ]) and on the borders of Chhattisgarh and Odisha.

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By their own admission, the Maoists have not been able to build a strong all-India women’s movement. Neither have they been able to groom women to assume leadership positions. It is, therefore, not surprising that there is not a single woman member in the apex and all-powerful Central Committee (CC) of the CPI (Maoist). At best, they have risen to become members of the State/Special Zone Committee. To quote from an internal document of the CPI (Maoist):2 Our work in the women’s front is still far from satisfactory. Recruitment in many States is poor, selection-gradation-promotion of the women cadres is still not according to a systematic plan and our efforts are inadequate given the immense potential and the necessity of building the women’s movement and recruiting cadres and promoting leadership from the women. The trend of patriarchy is acting as a strong deterrent to our efforts in this regard.

Making Women Partners: Immediate Tasks3 In their earlier avatar as the PWG, the Maoists have identified the various initiatives they would undertake along the way of building the women’s movement and making them partners in their New Democratic Revolution (NDR). These include: • Equal rights to women from agriculture labour and poor peasantry background in the distribution of land • Equal rights to women in property • Equal wages for equal work • Eradicate physical exploitation of women and completely eradicate prostitution • Eradicate atrocities on women and severely punish offenders • Put an end to the dowry system. Put an end to ostentatious weddings and demand the encouragement of simple, inter-caste weddings • Fifty per cent reservation for women in government jobs • Struggle for free, compulsory education for girls and co-education institutions. Fight against discrimination/distortions against girls in the education system 2  An internal document of the CPI (Maoist) read during a field visit to Telangana State, July 2014. 3  Building Revolutionary Women’s Movement: Our Party’s Approach, n.p, July 1995. A document of the CPI-ML (PW) in Telugu.

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• Fight against gender determination tests and female foeticide. Fight against discrimination between young boys and girls • Fight against religious practices that are humiliating to women. Fight against ‘personal law’ • Fight against derogatory representation of women in all forms, including in the media.

Post-NDR Tasks Similarly, the Maoists have also identified the various long-term tasks the women’s movement would undertake after they herald the NDR. These include: • Full partnership for women in social production, that is, transformation of relationship between men and women in production • Collective role in household activities • Men and women to jointly involve in house-hold activities • Women to participate in politics and jointly exercise political authority • Personal wealth/property to be converted into collective wealth/ property and struggle for an end to patriarchy • Abolish private, family business/industry and establish community production and ownership • Establish fraternal relationship with, and support, women’s movements across the world

Why Do Women Join? One of the oft cited reasons for women joining the underground is that, being at an impressionable age, they have been carried away by the exhortations of visiting squads through their speeches and revolutionary songs rendered by cultural troupes. “I was motivated by the fiery, inspiring songs a visiting Maoist squad sung in my village,” Saritha, a bubbling, extrovert teenager and a stickler to propriety, told this researcher in the spring of 2002.4 She is one illustration of ‘impressionable minds being carried away’ by the Maoist propaganda machine. Also, some of the women were influenced to join the movement by a family member—husband, brother, or uncle. Unlike Saritha, Anasuya, 4

 Interview with Saritha, Warangal, February 2002.

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wife of Komarayya, a member of the North Telangana Special Zone Committee (NTSZC), which the rebels once showcased as their flagship guerrilla zone, simply followed in her husband’s footsteps, leaving behind her toddler son in the care of her in-laws. However, Nelakonda Rajitha’s is a different story. An under-graduate firebrand student leader in Karimnagar district, she rose to become the lone woman member till date of the NTSZC.  While underground, she came into contact with and married Sande Rajamouli, who later rose to be a member of the apex and all-powerful CC and Central Military Commission (CMC). Rajitha was killed in an encounter in July 2002 and Rajamouli in June 2007. The numbers of women cadre among the rebels swelled from the late 1990s and into the current decade. While an overwhelming majority of the approximately 40 per cent women among Maoist ranks belong to rural and tribal India, and are ‘fighters’, some are highly educated urban ideologues and leaders. Anuradha Ghandy, a university Sociology lecturer, best illustrates this category. At the time of her death due to cerebral malaria, she was leading the all-India women’s movement and was the lone member of the Central Committee. She was also the wife of Kobad Ghandy, chief of the Central Propaganda Bureau (CPB) and member of CC, who was arrested in Delhi in September 2009. There is no one particular reason for women joining the Maoist ranks. Some have joined the underground due to desperation. Exploitation at the hands of the high and the powerful in the village is one reason. This researcher met with a young tribal girl, in Karimnagar district, in 2004 January, who strayed into the Maoist fold after she received a scolding from her parents. She was spotted in the fields, weeping, by a passing Maoist squad who consoled her and asked her to walk along with them. In another instance, in Pata Rudraram village in the same district, another young girl, 14  years old, Narsingojula Padma, ran away from home, in May 2004, and into the Maoist fold in an attempt to escape getting married against her wishes. Both young girls actually qualify being termed as child soldiers and the rebels should not have taken the girls with them at all, in the first instance. Immense pressure and protests by parents and villagers forced the Maoists to eventually let go of both the girls. In yet another instance that came to light in Bihar, the Naxalites targeted girls, as well as boys, in 2002; at that time, parents in the vicinity of Tanda and Bagh Rivers sent away their children to help escape forcible recruitment. In 2004, in Bihar, the police reportedly rescued a group of

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girls from the Naxalites and admitted them to a local vocational training institute run by missionaries. There have also been instances of all sisters from a single family joining the Maoist ranks, or an entire family taking the revolutionary path.5 Very peculiar as it may sound, as one surrendered woman cadre told this researcher, “I was born in the party.”6 Her parents met in the underground and got married. Some years later, she was born. She was educated in schools run by the Welfare Department of the government and would visit her parents during vacations. Eventually, she, too, joined the underground. The conscious efforts of the Maoist organization in Dandakaranya to put an end to various forms of patriarchy had also helped in women joining the underground or join the mass organizations.7 The Maoists had largely succeeded in putting an end to ‘forced marriages’ and marriage between cousins.

Life in the Underground Much as their male colleagues, women too join at the squad level as a member. The higher leadership seeks their preference, assesses their capabilities, and accordingly assigns them work—which could be as a member of the armed squad or organizational work. Nevertheless, except for a few, women have not been able to rise higher than squad commander or district committee member level. As one senior Maoist leader explained to this researcher, the reason behind women not being able to rise higher in the hierarchy is: Women are physically less robust than their male colleagues; they are a little low in confidence levels; they are not sure if they would be able to discharge their roles efficiently and effectively; the higher leaders themselves have a tendency to doubt their capabilities and, in a manner of speaking, look down upon them. Further, orders of women commanders are not as diligently followed as those of male commanders.8 5  This researcher had the opportunity to talk to one of the sisters, who had surrendered in 2014. Interview, Hyderabad, July 18, 2014. 6  Interview with Anitha, Telangana State, July 23, 2014. 7  Interview with a very top-ranking leader of the Dandakaranya Special Zone Committee, who surrendered to the authorities in 2014, Hyderabad, July 25, 2014. 8  Ibid.

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Just like their male colleagues, women cadre too participate in training camps, which include political classes and military training. Some of them also undergo training to function as ‘doctors’. A typical training schedule would be as follows9: 4.30 AM Alert call 5.30 to 8.30 AM. PT & Drill 8.30 to 9.30 AM. Breakfast 9.30 to 12.30 PM. Classes 12.30 to 2.00 PM. Lunch Break 2.30 to 4.00 PM. Classes 4.30 to 6.30 PM. Drill with weapons 7.00 to 8.30 PM Classes 9.00 PM Dinner and rest Women do join as fighters and participate in raids and attacks on police. Some are fearless and make good fighters. The military training they receive is as rigorous and strenuous as that imparted to their male counterparts. There are, in fact, a few women squad commanders and platoon section commanders in various parts of the country, especially in the North Telengana and Dandakaranya guerrilla zones. For instance, Padma, who was a District Committee Member-rank cadre in the DKSZC and in Chhattisgarh-Odisha Border Special Zone (COBSZ), participated in 20 instances of Exchange of Fire (EOF) and had escaped alive in all of them.10 She has participated in 13 raids/attacks/ ambushes. These include: • Sondipeta Srisailam temple security attack (2001) • Yerrogondapalem Police Station raid (2001) • Alliapalem claymore mine attack (2003) • Tamadapalli ambush (2005) • Tamadapalli ambush (2006) • Banda village ambush (2008) • The well-known Nayagarh Armoury Raid (February 2008) • Kanker ambush (2009) 9

 Interview with a senior IPS Officer, Hyderbad, July 25, 2014.  Interview with Padma, Hyderabad, July 18, 2014.

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• Govindapalli outpost blast (2009) • Damanjodi attack (2009) • Muvapadar outpost blast while returning from Damanjodi attack (2009) • Paluru (Koraput) ambush (2010) • Pujariguda (Koraput) ambush (2012) Especially in Dandakaranya, women fight equally alongside their male colleagues and share every responsibility within the squad equally with men, including kitchen work. “The equal rights enjoyed by them, and that they are no less a fighter than their male colleagues,” gave women “a sense of self-respect and has made them feel proud.”11 Given the rigours of life in the underground—in armed squads—and considering their special needs, the Maoist leadership thought it fit to give women additional and special diet. Nevertheless, according to a senior police officer, “In many cases women are the first to succumb in direct clashes during EOF fire with the security forces.”12 Those tasked with organizational activities visit villages and organize women folk in women’s organizations such as the Dandakaranya Adivasi Mahila Sangh (DAMS). They meet with women in the villages, discuss their problems, and try to address them. In fact, March 8—International Women’s Day—is one of the important commemorative days marked and celebrated by the Maoists every year. On this day, they hold public rallies and functions by involving women in large numbers. These rallies are addressed by leaders who deliver speeches on women’s rights, their role in society, and exhort them to fight for their rights. At the apex-level, these organizations are guided by the Mahila Sub-­ Committee of the CC. There are mirror images of Mahila Sub Committee at each level of hierarchy in the Maoist organization. However, the Maoists have averred in their internal documents that owing to dual/multiple responsibilities, the CC members have not been able to devote full-time attention to building the women’s organizations, which has, thus, hampered the flourishing of the women’s movement.13 11   Interview with a very top-ranking leader of the Dandakaranya Special Zone Committee, n. 7. 12  Interview with a senior IPS Officer, Hyderabad, July 18, 2014. 13  An internal document of the CPI (Maoist) read during a field-visit to Hyderabad, July 2014.

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Marriages It is not uncommon to find couples among Maoist ranks. In the early years of the Maoist movement, the organization took the initiative and organized marriages within the fold. One retired Superintendent of Police told this author, “Good looking women cadres are married-off to senior Maoist leaders.”14 He went on to add “One can witness rise within the Maoist hierarchy of such women cadre who marry leaders.”15 Of course, cupid can strike any couple, irrespective of their standing (rank) within the underground. Nevertheless, in a large number of cases, it could be noticed that the husband holds a higher rank than the wife. “Marriages within the organization have their own challenges, and cause friction among couples, which may sometimes lead to separation, though there are several successful cases  – some of them exemplary.”16 These include: • Low levels of ideological grounding of the husband often leads to patriarchal trends even as they continue within the organization, and the husband continues to dominate over the wife • The husband also feels a sense of superiority as he holds a higher rank than the wife • Extra-marital relations and • Suspicion, mutual. Nevertheless, the cadres get married because of the emotional security it offers and the bonding that evolves keeps the couple and their marriage going even though their meetings are not frequent; sometimes they may not get to meet one another for stretches including three-to-four-toseven months.

 Interview with a senior retired IPS Officer, Hyderabad, July 20, 2014.  Ibid. 16   Interview with a very top-ranking leader of the Dandakaranya Special Zone Committee, n. 7. 14 15

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Life After Surrender Women come over-ground and surrender for a variety of reasons. Often, and in most cases, ill-health is a common reason for their surrender.17 Harsh underground life takes a toll on their health and they feel persuaded to surrender. In some cases, serious injuries suffered in encounters with the security forces result in physical impairment which then leads to their surrender.18 As one senior police officer told this researcher, “Irrespective of the circumstances that prompted the surrender, life is not as easy for a surrendered woman Naxalite or couple. Poor health and financial constraints are significant factors in this wake.”19 In some cases, female cadres have surrendered following the death of their husband. For instance, Susheela surrendered to the authorities after her husband, a member of the North Telangana Special Zone Committee member was killed in a police encounter. Similarly, Bharathi surrendered a few months after her husband, a District Committee Secretary was killed in a police encounter. Uma’s is a different case altogether. She held the rank of a District Committee member and was part of a five-member ‘doctors’ team’ in West Bastar. She was married to the Divisional Committee Secretary in Bastar, himself a very fierce commander, whose two other brothers, too, joined the underground and one of whom was killed in an encounter in Bastar. She and her colleagues were allegedly fed food laced with some chemical substance that led to her getting blinded for three months and had her nervous system affected. After she recovered her sight and gained some coherence in thinking, she slipped away from her colleagues and surrendered to the authorities with help from her family, even as her husband continues to be an important commander in Bastar. All of the surrendering cadres are rehabilitated to some extent or other. Immediately upon surrender, they are given a sum of Rs. 5000 for their upkeep. Thereupon, after following due procedures, the reward money mentioned against their name is given to them and deposited in their bank account. Some of them have also been given loans to start their own 17  Interviews with a number of surrendered women cadre, Karimnagar and Warangal, July 23 and 24, 2014. 18  Interview with Shanthakka, who was a District Committee Member, Karimnagar, July 23, 2014. 19  Interview with Dr. R S Praveen Kumar, Inspector General of Police, Hyderabad, August 3, 2014.

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business. For instance, Uma was given a loan of Rs. 50,000 to start a grocery in her village. However, she was not enterprising enough and had to shut the store as losses accumulated. On the other hand, many of the surrendering women have taken to tailoring as an avocation. There have also been instances of surrendered women cadre being employed as Home Guards in the police department. They are paid the prescribed government wages for Home Guards and draw a sum of Rs. 9000 per month, up from the earlier Rs. 6000. Some of them have also been given government accommodation in the district police lines and have a relatively comfortable life. Some of the surrendered women cadres return as agricultural labour. The dilemma is two-fold, as Swaroopa, an Area Committee Member in Sironacha, Gadhiroli, told this researcher. After being in the underground wielding a weapon and fighting against the landlords they have to become labourers in their very own fields. On the other hand, the landowners initially have apprehensions in employing these women, wondering if they would be willing to work in their fields after having been in the underground.

It takes time for the dilemmas/apprehensions to melt away and eventually the women begin to lead a normal life. They earn daily wages of approximately Rs. 110 to Rs. 120. Some of them, indeed, own a small of patch of land themselves (barely half an acre to two acres) and till it, too. One common refrain among many of the surrendered cadres is that they have not been given land (five acres) which was a part of the rehabilitation package. However, they would not admit that the price of the parcel of land identified by them is too steep, sometimes running into a few crores of rupees and, therefore, it would be difficult for the government to acquire and give it to them. Family Besides, as one police officer told this researcher, “Women play a catalyzing role in the couple surrendering to the authorities and joining the mainstream.”20 This researcher, in fact, met with a few such couples. For instance, Byrani Ramchander, a deputy commander of a Naxalite squad  Ibid.

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surrendered along with his wife in 2001, in Jagityal, Warangal district, Telangana State, after senior leaders declined to get his wife treated for a medical ailment. He deserted the underground and left with a few tens of thousands of rupees to get his wife treated. Some months later, he and his wife surrendered throwing to the winds the warning issued by his former comrades. Some months/years into the marriage, women Naxalites would like to settle down and raise a family, which persuades them to prevail upon their husbands to surrender. There are numerous such cases. Naturally, after surrendering, the women return to their families. Those who are single return to their parents’ home, while those who are married settle down with their husbands. For those who marry within the underground, acceptance by the family (their own and or their husband’s) becomes a major issue. In a caste-ridden rural society, both families refuse to accept the couple and they are, therefore, left with no alternative than to set out on their own by moving to a nearby town. On the other hand, some of them are lucky. For instance, Gudsa Usendi, who was spokesperson of the DKSZC, married a Gond lady within the underground. After surrendering, he and his wife stay with his parents and brother in Hyderabad. Surrendering women cadres, who get married within the movement, are an important factor in persuading the husband to come over-ground and surrender. “Women tend to be more sentimental, wish to have a family life and children and, therefore persuade their male colleague (husband) to surrender.”21 Also, multiple marriages are not unheard of among the women cadres.

Conclusion For a variety of reasons, women join the Maoist ranks. They do not admit/ really feel that they have erred in joining the underground. Impressionable age, the then existing social milieu and circumstances, personal reasons, influence of kin/family, and the inspiration of ideology prompt women to join the rebels. The urge to change society becomes so strong at that point that they cannot be dissuaded from joining the Maoists. Nevertheless, “In the male dominated remote and interior rural areas a surrendering woman Naxalite is, comparatively, a stronger woman.”22  Ibid.  Ibid.

21 22

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But, life after surrender is not easy and has its tribulations. Some of them have even contemplated returning to the underground, but are pulled back by family constraints, as they are married and have a family and children to attend to. The rehabilitation package promised by the government is rather slow in being delivered. The civil bureaucracy is lax and this causes frustration among the surrendering cadres. The enterprising among them lead a relatively comfortable life.23 Also, the determined have reared their children well.24 At the same time, all of them expect greater support from the government to have a better standard of living. To conclude, the government should encourage surrenders and effectively implement the rehabilitation package to provide succour to those who choose to join the mainstream.

23  Interview with Shobha, Karimnagar, July 23, 2014. She and her husband (a former Naxal commander) run a Dairy and have invested in the restaurant business. 24  Interview with Jyothy, Karimnagar, July 23, 2014. She married a second time after her husband died and has a daughter who is now a student of engineering.

CHAPTER 15

Gender, Gun and Guerrillas: Narratives from Maoist People’s War of Nepal Amrita Pritam Gogoi

Introduction The decade’s long (1996–2006) Maoist People’s War (MPW) in Nepal fought under the leadership of the Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist) [CPN (M)] touched upon many socio-political practices and was instrumental in affecting significant changes in socio-cultural and political spheres of the land (see Yadav 2016, Parvati 2006). One factor that marks MPW’s difference from other revolutionary movements in South Asia, falling both within and outside the left ideological roadmap, was that it made conscious efforts at addressing the women question during the war itself. Notably, the party [CPN(M)] included women guerrillas in its armed wing, the People’s Liberation Army (PLA), from the very first day of the war. The attacks conducted on 13 February 1996 at the police outposts at Holeri (Rolpa), Athbiskot-Rari (Rukum) and Sindulhigarhi (Sindhuli), which marked the initiation of the MPW, witnessed

A. P. Gogoi (*) Dibrugarh University, Dibrugarh, India e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2022 N. Chowdhory, P. Banerjee (eds.), Gender, Identity and Migration in India, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-16-5598-2_15

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participation of women as armed guerrillas. Kamala Roka1 in the introduction to her collection of essays Ekaishyo Satabdiko Kranti Ra Mahila Muktiko Prashna writes that it makes her extremely proud to call Narayani Sharma, Lal Kumari Roka and herself the first female guerrillas of the People’s War precisely because this participation entrusted upon them the responsibility of freeing the lives of Nepali women, whose lives so far were rendered helpless by thousands of years of slavery (Roka 2068 v.s.). From Roka’s words, who was denied the right to education by her own family, it is revealed that her pride in getting enrolled as an armed guerrilla warrior rests in being considered and recognized as someone capable of undertaking public-political responsibility. When women were always seen as the protected, this role as armed guerrillas provided Nepali women with the opportunity to prove their capabilities as protectors and facilitators rather than the protected ones. Roles, responsibilities and other requirements that militarization of their duties and identities called for affected significant changes in their experience and understanding of the self, society and its processes—as this chapter will unfold. Pointing out at the tremendous transforming effect this had on women PLA cadres, Parvati2 observed, ‘it facilitated the process of transforming women from an unknown, submissive person to a confident fighter making them smart, political and philosophical at the same time’ (Parvati and Lee 2006: 22). In war narratives it is always men who are portrayed as ‘just warriors’ who rage war to protect the ‘beautiful soul’, that is, women (Elshtain 1982; Sjoberg 2014). This narrative of woman as a ‘‘beautiful soul’—anti-war and anti-violence’ (Elshtain 1982: 342) was challenged by huge participation of women in combat responsibilities. According to Parvati (2006: 5) women PLA composed of 30–50 percent of the total force. However, in a country that holds rigid patriarchal norms, where women are deemed as the second sex rather than the protagonist (Sthapit and Doneys 2017: 33), for women combatants shedding embodied gendered 1  Kamala Roka is the first female guerrilla of the People’s War. She was the sports minister in the 2011 cabinet and a member of the 2008 Constituent Assembly. Kamala Roka won a directly elected seat in the 2017 election. 2  Comrade Parvati alias Hisila Yami is one of the foremost women revolutionary leaders of Nepal. She is one of the two women leaders to reach the Polit-Bureau of Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist). On April 1 she joined the interim government of Nepal as Minister of Physical Planning and Works. In the 2008 elections to the Constituent Assembly of Nepal, she was elected a member and joined the government as Minister for Tourism and Aviation. At present she is also a Central Committee Member of Naya Shakti Nepal and a former president of All Nepal Women’s Association (Revolutionary).

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norms, ideas and values in order to undertake new responsibilities as warriors wasn’t easy. Female ex-combatants, I interacted with, mentioned being engulfed in an intense process of inner-struggle (atma sangharsha) to overcome fears of incapacity, uncertainty and feelings of guilt. Most excombatants recalled these inner-struggles as the most difficult to overcome of all personal political engagements and therefore, they recollected memories of their ability to undo various facets of the embodied gendered self with an utmost sense of pride and satisfaction. The process of becoming an armed guerrilla thus necessitated undoing the effect of gendered norms particularly in trusting the self in pursuing the fulfillment of one’s desires. Central to their experience of becoming a Maoist female PLA also involved their lived bodily experiences that participated in, witnessed and reembodied significant transformation as they lived outside the ‘safe’ and ‘holy’ domain of the home. The body that was otherwise the site of caste, class and gendered forms of vulnerability became an active location for working on the transformation of identities, status and labor. The transgressions that the female PLA body thus made destabilized, questioned and helped uproot practices that rendered the female body incapable of being and becoming a warrior. It is for these reasons that the gun and combat dress, through which many transformations in their identities were made possible, are remembered with varying degree of emotional and ideological attachment by them in their oral and written accounts of the war. During my fieldwork, ex-combatants highlighted emotions, desires and experiences with the gun, in ways more than one, pushing me into this zone of enquiry. In this chapter I explore the challenges that women combatants faced in taking on their new role and identity as armed guerrillas, the transformations they lived and the forms of remembering through which they seek to retain their identities as warriors in the postwar milieu.

Guns, Memories and Subjectivities It was not a matter of mere chance that efforts made by the female ex-­ PLAs of the MPW at preserving the dignity and status they experienced through the militarization of their bodies and identities by making constant reference to the weapon they used and the rank and position it signified drew my attention. Memory functions as a guarantor of identity, and its denial to marginalized groups has often been a medium to distort facts, figures and identities about them. This makes mobilization of memory

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and processes of memorialization an important medium for groups to accrue more value to their past as well as their present. Many a time, will to memory is performed as a moral duty or as a historical responsibility. This is particularly so when power benefited from forgetting and encouraged it (Eyal 2004). Performing memory hence is also a performance of power. In post-war Nepal, re-marginalization and devaluation of female ex-combatants’ wartime contribution (Luna 2019) and the expectation that they will return to the pre-war order on issues particularly relating to (re)marriage, sexual division of labor and motherhood have come to affect memory choices and performances of the female ex-combatants. Khadka (2012: 55), for instance, writes of an ex-combatant who was angered by the fact that after their (she and her husband’s) return to her husband’s home at the end of war while she had to work at home and farm day and night her husband kept talking about his war experiences with other people. Unable to accept the deal she divorced, and at the time of her interview with Khadka she was in search of a means of livelihood. This incident brings to light the manner and mechanisms through which patriarchal culture suppresses women’s memory performances and benefits from it. It, at the same time, speaks of the need for sharing memories and events of the past for one’s present personal and political realizations. Sjoberg and Gentry (2007) argues that patriarchal narratives play an important role in denying political subjectivity to women warriors for their wartime labor and decisions. Can, then the creation and circulation of a definite image of the self be understood as an act of agency? With this in mind, in this section, I identity female ex-PLA cadres’ efforts at informing, substantiating and thereby retaining dignity for their wartime identities by making frequent reference to the weapon they used during the war—representing a labor and an identity both denied to women. Samjhana, a Biswa Karma Dalit and a battalion vice-commander at the MPW who was also a member of the interim government formed at the end of the war, is one of the first ex-combatants I interacted with during my fieldwork at Dang. I approached her after having read her autobiography Yuddabhitraka Sansmaran (Biswa Karma: 2068 v.s.). She not only agreed to meet me, but insisted on coming to me rather than me going to her place as she thought that it will be difficult for me to locate her home. After our first meeting, she invited me to her place as she wanted her daughter to know that I have come to learn more about her life as a PLA after having read her autobiography. That afternoon, at her home, she showed me many wartime materials she had—photographs, notebooks,

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diary, poems, letters, combat dress and the like. Some of them were already at display—photographs and certificates of appreciation framed, hanged and pasted on the walls or placed inside and on top of a shelf glassed in the front. That afternoon as she showed me wartime photographs she paused at one—Samjhana in it with a group of women under her command all set for their next destination. I pointed at one in the photograph and asked, ‘Isn’t that you?’ She replied instantly: No! I am the Commander. Commanders carry smaller weapons. That cadre is carrying a rifle where as I am carrying an SMG (Sub Machine Gun). Her’s is a huge machine. The smaller the guns the more technologically advanced they are. Moreover, I have a revolver in my waist. Not everyone gets to carry a revolver, only ranked officers. (Personal interaction with Samjhana, 22 July 2016)

These facts that Samjhana pointed out, as a response to my inability to identify her in the photograph, evinced her active participation in the MPW, displayed her awareness of these machines that women are otherwise considered incapable of knowing and handling, and substantiated her rank and position as a battalion vice-commander in the war. More significantly, Samjhana’s deliberate effort in explaining the point to assure and reassure her that I have in definite terms come to know her the way she wants herself to be known is indicative of the forms and means of resistances created against forms of misrecognition and distortion of facts, figures and identities in the post-war. In many cultures, weapons have historically been used as an accessory to display one’s personal status, power and affiliation. Such accessorization is also meant to index power relations and relative status among individuals in a particular social setup (Macaraeg 2015). Such a use of weapons to make statements about an individual’s position and power helping index power relations among members holding different ranks and responsibilities within the PLA and perhaps with members involved in other wings of the movement (the Party and the Mass Front) is also reflected from Samjhana’s detailing. In war discourse, the actions and decisions of women perpetrators are portrayed as emotionally taken void of any political and ideological consideration, and their wartime contribution is often judged through gendered lenses. In short, they are not seen as warriors, but ‘women warriors’ (Sjoberg and Gentry 2007: 9). In post-war Nepal too, female ex-combatants are taunted as having escaped for the war because of their inability to

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do household chores, rather than their belief in the cause of the class-war.3 Samjhana’s detailing needs to be understood in the backdrop of this trivialization of their wartime life and labor, and its rejection and marginalization in the post-war. Perhaps, for her, my inability to identify her represented one of the various ways through which their wartime identity gets marginalized. Samjhana, thus, by seizing the means of knowing and seeing her ensures the production and circulation of her identity in a definite way guaranteeing recognition of her warrior identity. Her’s was indeed an act of resistance against oppressions, distortion and reduction of one’s identity, caused by misrecognition and non-recognition. From the very act of showing all wartime photographs she had, to her explanation in this particular one, their usage to retain control and command over forms of representation is strikingly evident. Samjhana’s willingness to make herself seen as a warrior of the PLA, in fact as a commander, became clearer from another photograph— Samjhana with an INSAS (INdian Small Arms System) in it, pasted on a wall at her home at Sarra.4 The gun was not slung upon her shoulder, although that was the manner in which it was often described. Samjhana was holding it with both her hands in front, her body slightly turned toward right. The photograph was taken from the right, an angle from where the entire machine remained clearly visible. The person in the photograph should not draw more attention than the machine in it was one clear sign the photograph made. I tried to identify with the ambience of her home, its people and the photograph in order to grab an understanding of what Barthes (1975) called the signifier and signified. Who is Samjhana’s audience and what is the photograph intended to produce and convey? Through the photograph Samjhana emits a meaning about her to the world—her family members, son and daughter, visitors, relatives, her husband (a fellow PLA and a commander), in-laws, neighbors (some of them are her wartime peers) and researchers like me. In fact, she creates a medium, within the sphere of the home, for her identity to meet an expected audience with a definite meaning. Gendered role within the home, it is argued, deprives women of support for their own identities and  Personal interaction with Kirti, 23 July 2016.  Sarra is the name of a place about 10 km from Ghorahi Town. The village has a considerable number of combatant families. After the dismantling of the cantonments in 2012 a lot of cadres bought a plot of land in Sarra with the money that they got as a part of the rehabilitation process famous as the ‘golden handshake’ package. 3 4

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projects (Young 2005: 115). Among other things, the homey role of women as care-giver and nurturer is used to produce her as fragile, removed from reality, and therefore, in need of protection. Within this space women mostly display group photographs with children and other family members exhibiting togetherness and maternal relationality (Rose 2005). This makes Samjhana’s photograph through which she works at projecting and protecting her warrior identity substantially subversive. Her use of the photograph also demonstrates how the otherwise passive, exploitative space of the domestic is creatively transformed into an active place for dialogue of ideas and identities. Particularly after the end of the war, when women are pushed back into the domestic once again, this photograph pasted on the wall could be read as a candid but strong way of keeping the world and the self reminded that the all-pervasive domestic should not contaminate her warrior identity. However, although photograph serves as an evidence, it is always about a certain past. Hence, if the gun and combat dress signified wartime empowering experiences, the place in which the photograph remain pasted, that is her home, constantly emitted the information that whatever they stood for—status, position and power, they are now a matter of the past. The place from which the photograph is projected to the world is a reminder that they are back to the same sphere, norms and practices within which constrain women’s growth and participation in public-political affairs. Benjamin (1935) argues, although reproducibility about photographs make them reachable to a wide public, the fact that it stands away from its original time and context makes its authenticity questionable. The fear that Samjhana experienced with my misidentification, in the previous photograph discussed, perhaps emanates from this very characteristic photographs have come to accumulate with technological advancements. It is here that Samjhana’s detailed explanation, her decision to get her autobiography published and other information that she handed out during the course of our interactions become important. This informs that each of these methods are made use of to support and substantiate the other. For instance, the use of written accounts in establishing her militarized shelves is very well reflected from its prime treatment in Samjhana’s autobiography, where in 15 out of a total 23 chapters she discusses various aspects of the battleground—strategies, policies, tactics, waiting or planning for a battle, arms and ammunitions conscripted from enemy, comrades martyred and the like.

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That afternoon as Samjhana cooked, she talked of the difficulties she is having to learn household chores and in performing them every day. She said, ‘even though it’s been years that the war has come to an end, I do not know how to cook properly. I find it difficult and uncomfortable to do household chores’. Samjhana added, ‘I can’t recall cooking even once during the war. Men comrades were engaged in such tasks’. I thought of the connection between this sort of an information about her present she was handing out on her own, the photograph and the truth she sought to establish through them all. In post-war times, confining their corporeal and social existence to the domestic is mostly done through social rejection and humiliation of their wartime duties and way of life. They are rejected and questioned for their wartime violence, tagged as uneducated and aggressive, and are considered incapable of doing managerial work and unsuitable for public offices.5 Under such circumstances, the photographs, the way they are placed and preserved, her explanation, informing me that she has not been able to learn household chores yet are telling of her marked individual effort at communicating her past, present and senses of joy, loss, pain and accomplishments. Said differently, they are a reflection of her ‘quest for self-expression’ and ‘quest for self-­realisation’— two features that characterize the realm of the heroic, as Featherstone (1992: 160) observes. In this quest, strategically enough, her audience (within the sphere of the domestic), including me, becomes a means through which an alternate understanding about women ex-combatants is disseminated, countering the prevalent discriminatory and derogatory ones. As my field work progressed I realized such identification through the weapon used during the war was in practice among other PLA ex-­ combatants too. I noticed, as they talked of a fellow ex-PLA they added, ‘She carried INSAS/LMG/SMG’. At times this was also done during introductions. Providing such information of their comrades, almost ten years after the end of the war, signified according the dignity, status and power of their rank and position as warriors. It also implied reliving the formal, hierarchical, professional relations that bind and connect them into a collective. In short, it is an act of reliving the past, an act also of memory. Simultaneously it is an act at recognition of past identities and achievements. Such acts are reflective also of the subtle ways in which female ex-combatants stand by one another helping navigate complexities 5

 Personal interaction with Ashmita, 16 August 2016.

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of the post-war. It is also a way of communicating that the past can still be availed, remembered, talked about and mentioned. What feelings overwhelmed women ex-combatants’ memories of their days in combat dress and a gun, for which they choose to talk about it with such fondness and sense of accomplishment, are depicted from the way Silpi, an upper caste (Shrestha) Platoon Commander of the PLA, talked about it. She often said, ‘adorned in combat dress and the gun hung upon the shoulder, in magnificence (shaana) and worth (maana), it felt as though I am the most powerful person in the universe’.6 During the course of my stay in Dang, for about a month, I heard these lines from her time and again. At times, this was followed by an account of a battle she participated in—Khara (2005), Beni (2004). As Silpi narrated her experience of the war, she would act, produce the sound of guns and helicopters, talked of injured friends, martyred comrades, failed strategies and victories. She would then try to sing a revolutionary song, persuade Kirti (a Platoon Commander in the PLA belonging to the lower-caste Perriyar community) and Bidya (an apt organizer and recruiter who worked with the Party during the war and belongs to a Brahmin family) to help her recollect the lyrics. Such forms of recollections of the past made me realize that in the gun and combat dress lay enwrapped memories of much of their joy and empowering experiences. It carried memories of becoming capable of new things of which they were considered incapable of. Silpi’s frequent announcement, at times in the middle of a walk, sometimes in between conversations, unmindful if anyone in the group were listening to her, had in it a surreal quality similar to Roy’s (2012: 74) observation on the Naxalite women in India. In Silpi’s case it was as though she felt or tried to feel being ‘the most powerful person in the world’ by repeating the line—the feelings of magnificence and worth that the duties, power and status associated with the gun and combat dress endowed her with. However, to me, it still remains unclear if while repeating this line she had her past, present or future in mind or had them all at the same time. At the time of our meeting, originally from Rukum, Silpi was living in Dang, trying to figure out a means of livelihood. She said, ‘then, under those circumstances we were the biggest; now under these circumstances we are the smallest’. She lamented the situation where although knowledgeable and responsible, from her experiences of the war, without formal education and a certificate she cannot apply for a job. While her husband 6

 Personal interactions with Silpi from 20 July 2016 to 13 August 2016.

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continued to work for the party, she took care of the home and her child. In my subsequent trip to Dang, three years later, Silpi no longer lived there. Bidya informed, after mothering one more child and with her husband elected as a ward member in the local elections held in 2017, Silpi returned to Rukum.

Gunned: Becoming Mahila Chapammar The ease and spontaneity with which Silpi stated her feelings, or the manner in which Samjhana displayed and described the photographs, one might get the impression that becoming a female PLA and performing the body and identity that militarization of their roles required was an unconstrained, uncomplicated affair. Although women combatants desired for a transformation in their roles, identities and bodies, which they believed becoming an armed guerrilla would facilitate, becoming one necessitated engaging in rigorous personal, political, philosophical and ideological inner-struggle, inner-party struggle and class struggle against norms and practices both within and outside the organization. While wartime conditions and the party’s policy to recruit women in all the three instruments of the revolution provided women with opportunities to join the battleground, the party through political workshops furnished them with an ideological lens (Maleima and Prachanda Path) to evaluate and process their experiences. This ideological framework was made use of by women combatants to navigate intense struggles with the self and the society. However, women combatants also had to battle against patriarchal tendencies within the party too, in order to prove themselves capable of combat responsibilities and a military way of life. In identifying these struggles against multiple patriarchies, this section of the chapter unfolds this personal-political journey female combatants traversed in building this intense personal and ideological relationship with an instrument otherwise denied to women.7 Sharing their experiences, during my field work, many female ex-­ combatants expressed how the desire to wear a combat dress and use a gun motivated them to join the battleground. In fact, Maya, the first female 7  Traditionally women are not allowed even to kill a chicken (Lecomte-Tilouine 2009: 224–225), and in some communities women were not allowed to touch a bow for the belief that weapons lose their power when touched by women (Gayer 2013: 338). Although women were allowed into state security forces in 2003, they performed non-combat roles.

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ex-combatant I interacted with at Kathmandu in 2014, informed how along with the principles (siddhaanta) of the MPW it was the appeal of the combat dress that attracted her to the movement. Sita BK ‘Samjhana’ too, in her autobiography, writes of a similar experience when upon seeing Nishana didi in combat dress at a particular meeting organized by the party she felt an urgent avidity (tibro issa) to be a combatant herself. Nishana didi, she described, ‘was the only female cadre in the team of guerrillas who had come to attend the meeting’ (Biswa Karma 2068 v.s. 35). Samjhana’s words reveal that the female combatant body represented a body with greater mobility and freedom. Thus, before getting to experience the magnificence (shaana) and worth (maana), the initial expectations among many were that a combatant way of life would facilitate their aspiration for a life with greater physical mobility and dignified living. This expectation that joining the war would enable them to do things they were earlier made incapable of, brought in much joy and excitement when they finally found themselves leading a warrior life. Samjhana’s description of her first day as a PLA evidences this: We had only rifles as big weapons. The commander was carrying that. The vice commander was carrying a 12 bore. As he had to attend some other work he asked me to carry it. I was the FGL of our squad. That, I was carrying a 12 bore instead of an ordinary rifle made me proud. I looked at my bullet purse. It contained 10 bullets. That feeling of carrying a gun and bullets made me so happy and proud that it reminded me of the warriors of China I read about. I was so happy to carry the weapons that I became completely unmindful of the ups and downs of the hilly track. (Biswa Karma 2068 v.s.: 40–41)

Samjhana’s excitement and her decision to include the account in her autobiography inform of its centrality within her wartime experiences. In the context of a society where women have, until then, been kept away from such military role, responsibility and activities by socio-political norms and regulations, Samjhana’s excitement is in her hope to become anew, and to become capable of new things. Warriors, as per Featherstone (1992: 165), were the first heroes. As specialist in violence they have the intense experience of excitement in combat, controlling emotional forces and learning the cunning instrumentalities of reason in order to ensure survival (Featherstone 1992: 165). As warriors, women combatants in the MPW have had the opportunity to experience these attributes of a heroic

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life. Apart from their excitement in a transformed body and role, and the intensities of emotional experiences like martyrdom of a life partner, a dear comrade or a favorite commander, rejection and discrimination faced from family and others too finds expression in their written (Kattel 2068 v.s., Magar 2064 v.s., Gurung 2064 v.s. Biswa Karma 2068 v.s.) and oral accounts. In their ability to perform these heroic tasks in extraordinary situations, amidst uncertainties of life and ties, women combatants saw the possibilities of transcending the sphere of the ordinary, and labels like ‘abala (weakling) and asahai (helpless)’ (Biswa Karma 2068 v.s.: 42) historically accorded to women in patriarchal societies. However, undoing traits embodied through generations of gendered socialization made it difficult for women to adapt to a new body and a new way of life associated with power, men and masculinity. Onsari Gharti8 in her interaction with Kiyoko Ogura (2009) mentioned the difficulties in recruiting female combatants as they seemed unprepared to leave their traditional attire (lungi and tohri) and shift to a combat one. This shows, in their decision to live, avail and acquire desired transformations women combatants had to overcome elements of what Young (1980) called ‘inhibited-intentionality’ leading to ‘discontinuous unity’ in their efforts at transcendence. Hence, at various stages of becoming a mahila chapamar (female guerrilla) contradictory emotions of desire and disability absorbed them simultaneously. When asked about their first day in a combat dress and gun many female ex-combatants expressed of the unease and discomfort they felt. This conflict of emotions and expectations is vividly expressed in Samjhana’s recollections of the day she first adorned a combat dress. In her words: When we wore the combat dress for the first time and carried the weapons we were unconfident. But gradually we became more and more confident. In the beginning when we joined as militia we wore the green coloured dress. After that when we were shifted to squads we were given the combat dress of the Maoist. We were given weapons. We were asked to go and change. After changing dress, we were ashamed to look at ourselves in a completely different attire. I felt uneasy thinking someone might tease me for wearing it, but at the same time I felt happy and excited thinking that I will now be able to join the war and fight from its frontline. (Personal interaction with Samjhana, 20 July 2016) 8  Onsari Gharti Magar is a leader of CPN-Maoist leader and former deputy speaker. She is the first woman speaker of Nepal Parliament.

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This conflict between expectations and inhibitions which women combatants, during interactions, often referred to as atma sgangharsha (inner struggle) was the result of gendered socialization where women are taught to fear their desires. According to Parvati, because of their gender, women had to wage a more complex inner-struggle overcoming fatalistic tendency, inferiority complex, guilt syndrome and victim syndrome. Because of their socialization and upbringing within feudal patriarchal structure, women’s inner-struggle, Parvati noted, involved struggle against themselves as individuals and a simultaneous struggle against age-old beliefs and practices. Women cadres thus had to engage themselves in struggles against the effect of patriarchal values on them (Parvati and Lee 2006: 6). To help women combatants transcend gendered inhibitions and to inform them of the exploitative nature of such practices, the party organized political training and workshops. In these workshops, classes were conducted to make women aware of feudal patriarchal component of norms relating to dress and jewelry and, therefore, the political necessity to do away with fetishism for beauty and jewelry. These classes helped women combatants undo thoughts, ideas and practices that discriminated female bodies as women, as mothers, as sutkeri9 and as bodies that menstruate. Here, women were also taught of the impact of caste, class and gender on them. Most importantly, they were made aware of their significance in achieving the goal of the revolution, particularly in ‘institutionalizing continuous revolution and preventing counterrevolution’ (Parvati and Lee 2006). Many women ex-combatants recalled these political workshops as times in which they cultivated reason, learned reading and writing, and harnessed the principles of Prachnada Path and Maleima (Marxism-­ Leninism-­Maoism). Scholars argue that such ideological indoctrination and party’s control over every aspect of their life led to a process of social engineering where cadres experienced empowerment without any agency (Gayer 2013: 360–61). While the prevalence of such a phenomenon cannot be denied, the struggles that women combatants raised against patriarchies within the organization too needs to be acknowledged. These are the wars that women raged individually and collectively against patriarchal tendencies within the organization. Although membership to all the three units of the revolution was made open for women, yet female guerrillas remained vulnerable to patriarchal norms and values within the organization too. For example, it ended up 9

 New mothers called sutkeri are considered impure bodies.

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creating its own ideas about a female body capable of performing combat roles. Norms within this new setup considered women with a particular form of body alone as capable of combat duties that were understood as physically and emotionally far too challenging than roles in other units of the revolution. The account given by Kirti of how she ended up becoming a platoon commander with the opportunity to handle an INSAS from a worker in mass front informs of the prevalence of such patriarchal practices. Kirti was a worker at the mass front with the aspiration to work in the PLA. However, she was believed to be a little too weighty to carry out combat responsibilities, that is, because of her bodily shape and size she was considered unsuitable for military exercises. But her desire to be in the PLA, wear a combat dress, and learn the skills of warfare was invincible. She kept looking for opportunities to prove the leadership wrong in considering her unsuitable for military role. It was around that time, when she was in the hunt for an opportunity, a consignment of materials required for making bullets and bombs had to be delivered around the borders of Pyuthan and Rolpa from Kirti’s area of work. She knew, the opportunity needed to be seized. She approached the party senior, Deepak, who was in charge of the task and requested him to include her in the group that was supposed to deliver the consignment. Initially she was rejected but after repeated request she was counted in. Forty-four men and Kirti were now assigned the task. She recollected, whoever learned opposed her inclusion saying she will not be able to accomplish the task as they had to carry bags weighing 13 kilograms each through a jungle trail for around 7–8 days. Her male comrades extended support, suggesting her bag be made lighter. But Kirti refused to accept such help. The deal between her and the one in-charge was that if Kirti managed to accomplish the task she would be allowed to join the PLA. She did it and immediately after her return she was allowed to join the PLA. She lamented, these were problems that women guerrillas alone had to suffer. According to her, if a man had shown such interest his capability would never had been questioned. Kirti’s experience brings forth layers of struggle women combatants encountered by dint of their gender and their need to break patriarchal thought processes at diverse stages of the revolution. However, her experience is telling not only of their vulnerabilities but depicts the creative crafting of agency, seizing available opportunities to achieve desires.

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Despite these challenges, from within and outside the self, because of their belief that a position in the PLA would enable them to transcend gendered inhibitions and destabilize gendered norms, women combatants made every possible effort, individually as well as collectively, to establish themselves as capable warriors. When I asked Kranti, a commander in the PLA belonging to Magar community, what women combatants generally did during leisure hours, she emphasized that such hours were invested mostly in figuring out issues and areas women needed to improve on to establish themselves as efficient fighters. Similarly, Asmita (a brigade vicecommander in the PLA who in 2014 co-founded Former PLA Women Foundation) too in her recollections stressed on their collective efforts and the manner in which women combatants stood by one another many a times placing demands before the leadership for each other’s promotion. These reflections indicate that women combatants, as individuals and as a collective, remained highly motivated to break patriarchal cultures, and this formed one of the major motivational drives in joining the movement and in overcoming all hardships of a warrior life. It is therefore important to note here that women were strongly motivated to rise in the ranks of the PLA and establish themselves as capable guerrillas. In undertaking this journey, women combatants, as evident from the first section, entered into a specific relationship with the gun—an instrument that made their transformation more visible and more indisputably knowable. The next section of the chapter highlights the personal, political and ideological association with the weapons they used during the war.

Shaana and Maana: That Affair with the Gun Discussion in the previous section, on the struggles women combatants had to overcome in becoming and establishing their identities as warriors, makes Silpi’s feelings of magnificence and worth (shaana and maana) associated with the gun comprehensible. These feelings are undoubtedly about their ability to break age-old beliefs and establish new ideas about female body—its abilities and disabilities. In fact, their very ability to have these joyful experiences challenge patriarchal norms. Millett (1968) noted, in a patriarchal society every avenue of power—military, industry, technology, universities, science, political office, finance and coercive force of the police—is entirely controlled by men. As we see in the previous sections, Nepal was no different. While the motivation and ability to destabilize patriarchal structures made women combatants’ participation politically

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significant, the objective toward which the war was fought, that is, to establish a democratic, egalitarian society in Nepal smashing feudalism, patriarchy, monarchy, imperialism and expansionism, further strengthened their sense of magnificence (shaana) and worth (maana). In his book Just War Unjust War (1977) Michael Walzer writes that a guerrilla war battled for the ‘hearts and minds of the people’ is a political, even an ideological conflict (Walzer 1977: 187). This particular factor about the MPW—that it has been fought for the creation of a ‘New Nepal’ free from religious, caste, class, gender and other forms of exploitation—added different value and meaning to all physical, emotional, personal and political hardships. This made their experiences with the gun and combat dress intensely emotional, political and ideological, all at the same time. This section explores this personal yet political affair that female combatants shared with the gun. When I asked Samjhana what it felt like to handle a gun, she shared: The guns were given not only to fight the state and capture it, but to bring about larger social and political changes. In the context of the class war, it always felt good to use weapons. If it would had been for a meagre cause then the feeling would not had been the same. But we fought for a great cause, to change the entire society, to free it from the clutches of caste, class and other forms of hierarchy. For that it was very essential to use weapons and to learn to use it. We win; we lose, it is essential to learn using it. Without the knowledge of this, achieving our goal seemed impossible. We ought to learn it. And after learning to use it, everything becomes possible. (Personal interaction with Samjhana, 20 July 2016)

Samjhana by drawing ideological relationship between her transformed labor and the use of violence that it necessitated highlighted not only the greatness of her transformed role but simultaneously offered justification for their use of violence. When violence is used as a means to an end, Arendt notes, it needs guidance and justification through the end it pursues (1970: 150). In Samjhana’s narration this use of the end to justify the means is noticeably visible. For women guerrillas such justification through the end becomes even more essential as they are questioned not just for adopting violence but also for defying gendered norms in doing so. Women in political violence are also questioned for defying the biological role of reproduction—of a life-giver, by engaging in life-taking task. Doesn’t then Samjhana’s reply, drawing on ideological greatness of the cause for which

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she took up arms, counters narrative that demean and reject their wartime contribution? Given the post-war rejection and marginalization, perhaps, Samjhana is well aware that a justification complementing their guerrilla identity alone ensures their accessibility to the feelings of shaana (magnificence) and maana (worth) associated with the gun. The shaana and maana that women guerrillas felt in the gun and a combat dress was also because it marked out their identities as fighters distinct from rest—civilians and other guerrillas within the movement, with specific privileges, duties and body. The rigor, the repetitive and constant training in militaries, is such that traits embodied become the second nature and its traces can be found in a person’s body much after one’s service in military ends (Peoples 2014). This reminds me of a statement Kirti made during my discussion with her, Bidya and Silpi. Bidya would usually speak in greater detail about the issues I was interested in. Once, after Bidya was done explaining something, Kirti stated, ‘The ones who fight, talk less. We speak out only when needed’. Essentially it was this distinctiveness that also marks their unique experiences in inner-struggles, inner-party struggles and their role and contribution in the class-war. This makes not only their wartime experiences different from the rest, but also the post-war. Women ex-PLAs are questioned for their role in violence and are considered as aggressive people without the ability to work in spaces and offices outside the military. Within the party too women PLA members are seen as incapable of performing political and policy-level work.10 Nonetheless, in this very intense journey, as they came to identify personal, ideological and political accomplishments through the gun, they also entered into a range of emotional ties with it. To Silpi, the gun was her closest partner, and therefore, she loved it a lot. She recollected the times when she would let her clothes and body get dirty but kept her weapon clean always, under all circumstances. She would recall, ‘It was the only thing that protected in all situations. It protected us from enemies’. The fact that the gun stood for their security and protection was mentioned by many. It was therefore like a life partner, added Pratiksha,11 that would not leave in times of adversity. Therefore, during monsoon, while marching ahead through the hills and rivers they would keep their partner warm and dry. They would hide it under their arms to protect it from rain 10  This was mentioned by many ex-PLA cadres during interactions. Also see: K.C. Luna. (2109: 465). 11  Personal interaction on 31st July, 2016.

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and lifted it high while crossing a river. This bond of protection therefore was mutual. Kirti who carried ammunitions weighing 13 kilos for 7–8 days at a stretch to establish this relationship recollected, ‘I could manage without brushing my teeth for two to three days but cleaned my gun at least twice a day. At times I cleaned it thrice. Sometimes I feel that gun was closer and dearer than my son’. If war is to be understood as an experience and beyond the violence that it generates, then these expressions speak of the intimate moments of fear, anxiety, love and loss integral to lived everyday experiences of wars. The gun was not just a means but it was also a witness to a transformed everyday. In patriarchal society where women are taught to fear their desires and to feel ashamed of their bodies, entitling the gun the place and position of a son or a husband could be significantly transgressive in the sense that women’s responsibility has always been seen as facilitating the desires of the men in their life. The image of the husband as protector, and the son who should be taken care of primarily, is subverted by such a depiction of their intimacy with the gun. At the end of the war, with the signing of the Comprehensive Peace Agreement (CPA) in November 2006, Maoist guerrillas were gathered in 7 main and 21 satellite cantonments in Kailali, Surkhet, Rolpa, Nawalparasi, Chitwan, Sindhuli and Ilam. Here, both arms and cadres were verified in the presence of United Nation’s Mission in Nepal (UNMIN), and mechanisms were developed to put all arms and ammunitions, except those required for the security of the cantonments, to be securely stored under 24-hour supervision of UNMIN. In September 2011 keys to the weapon containers were handed over to the government as a symbolic gesture of their transformation from a rebel group to a democratic party. When I asked some of the female ex-combatants about the moment of handing over their weapons, they said that they cried a lot. Apart from the pain of loss of an object they lived intimate moments of empowerment, fear and loss with, and something that represented in objective, material, visible form the changes they lived in their bodies, life and labor, many also saw it as a gesture of defeat and surrender. During their stay in the cantonments combatants also had to undergo a verification process in which 3846 women out of a total of 19,602 combatants were ‘verified’ as Maoist combatants. The DDR (Disarmament, Demobilization, Reintegration) process that followed did offer an option to reintegrate in the Nepal Army (NA) and continue with military role and responsibilities. Under this provision 1422 ex-combatants joined the NA out of which 104 were women. However, the army deemed young and breastfeeding mothers ineligible

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for military training (Bagoti 2015), which made the option unavailable for many women ex-combatants. Prolonged stay in cantonments led to marriages and motherhood, and it was estimated that there were about 800–1000 mothers in the cantonments (Ogura 2009). Kirti and Silpi were both breastfeeding mothers at the time of reintegration. Recollecting the time, partly regretting, partly justifying their decision they informed how, even for their husbands who could have joined the NA, it was a conflicting option as the NA represented the state they fought against. Silpi mentioned all the martyrs close to her—commanders, family members both from her husband’s and her own, fellow PLA in explaining that joining the NA would mean, in many ways, betraying their martyrdom and the cause for which they sacrificed their ‘valuable’ lives. Most importantly the realization that they ‘could not reach the end’—a phrase used by many excombatants during interactions including Samjhana, Bidya, Kranti, Ranjita—although they did bring about certain changes in the society, fosters a feeling of utter helplessness. As warriors of a ‘people’s war’ they remain answerable to the people, and as seen in the previous section, they resort to the ideology, the end—building a ‘new Nepal’, to justify their use of violence and to resist people’s accusations and questions. Whenever they cannot do it they said, they feel ‘ashamed’, ‘smallest’, ‘defeated and paralyzed’. However, denying any sense of loss or pain, when I asked Bhavana12 of her thoughts on the surrender of weapons and the end of the war, in a calm and composed manner she stated, ‘It all belonged to them. When our fathers and uncles started the war, we had only Khukris (traditional knife) and lathis (stick). We captured them all from the enemy class. Those were theirs, we returned’. The detachment that reflected from Bhavana’s response came as a surprise after having heard soulful accounts of loss and victory, of fallen comrades who before martyrdom handed over his/her weapon asking to fulfill unfulfilled dreams and the like. It took me minutes to comprehend the feelings of triumph and victory she was pointing out to. I wondered, if it was also a different way of expressing her pain, or engaging with it? If so, what does this stylization of her pain expression or of her memory of the moment suggests? Was such a stylization of the past 12  Bhavana is from Rukum and has settled at Sarra after the end of the war; she joined the PW after a discussion with her father. They believed that there was nothing much for her to do in the village and joining the war would open her up to the world. She still continues to have discussions on political affairs with her father over phone calls or whenever they meet.

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meant only to help her as an individual or directed also toward her fellow cadres, some of whom are her neighbors and who spoke/remember the time with an utter sense of loss and pain. These are questions that continue to linger. However, one also needs to recognize the subtle performance of shaana and maana in Bhavana’s calm response. In conclusion I wish to say that the interest of the party in recruitment of female combatants and its empowering impact on them cannot be ignored. At the same time, the willingness of the female combatants to participate in the movement in pursuit of their personal political goals cannot be deemed absent. While becoming a guerrilla necessitated learning the use of weapons, becoming efficient in its use marked ones unique power, position and status within the revolution. Becoming an efficient fighter, rising up in the ranks of the PLA and the ability to use more and more technologically advanced weapons, on the other hand, were seen by many as an important parameter for breaking patriarchal ideas about women and work, women and the body, and women and the nation. It also needs to be acknowledged that in challenging patriarchal ideas and in their remembrances of the past they, in many ways, reinforce conventional norms about gender, power, women and war, and war and hyper-­ masculinity. However, female ex-combatants strongly believed that their role as armed guerrillas was crucial in bringing about transformations particularly in the role and status of women in Nepali society. During my filed trip conducted in 2016, I was often told, ‘It is because of us that today the Chief Justice, the Vice President of the country and the Speaker of the Parliament are all women’. This depicts that there is an awareness of their contribution to different aspects of the polity and society, and at the same time, such narrative strategy brings forth their will and determination to preserve dignity of their wartime labor.

References Arendt, Hannah. 1970. On Violence, A Harvest Book. San Diego/New York/ London: Harcourt Brace and Company. Barthes, R. 1975. The Photographic Message. In A Barthes Reader. New York: Hill and Wang. Benjamin, Walter. 1935. The Work of Art in the Age of Material Reproduction. Transcribed by Andy Blunden 1998. Translated by Harry John. Schocken/ Random House. UCLA School of Theatre, Film and Television.

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Biswa Karma, Sita ‘Com Samjhana’. 2068 v.s.. Yudhbhitraka Sansmaran (Reflections from Within the War). Kathmandu: BN Pushtak Sansar Pvt. Lmt. Bogati, Subindra. 2015. Assessing Inclusivity on the Post-War Army Integration Process in Nepal. Inclusive Political Settlements Paper 11, July. Berlin: Berghof Foundation. Eyal, Gil. 2004. Identity and Trauma: Two Forms of the Will to Memory. History and Memory 16 (1): 5–36. Elshtain, J. B. 1982. On Beautiful Souls, Just Warriors and Feminist Consciousness. Women’s Studies International Forum 5 (3/4): 341–348. Featherstone, Mike. 1992. The Heroic Life and Everyday Life. Theory, Culture, Society 9: 159–182. Gayer, Laurent. 2013. Love-Marriage-Sex in the People’s Liberation Army: The Libidinal Economy of a Greedy Institution. In Revolution in Nepal: An Anthropological and Historical Approach to the People’s War, ed. Marie Lecomte-­ Tilouine, 333–366. New Delhi: Oxford University Press. Gurung, Sahid Chunu. 2064 v.s.. Kasto Huncha, Mutu Tukriyeko Bela Sambedanako Tyo Ghari (What its is, The Emotive Moment When Your Heart Breaks in Pieces), in Pidabhitraka Akarosh: Sansmaran Sangrah (Avenge from within Pain: Collection of Memoirs), Pragatisheel Adhyayan Kendra, March, pp. 36–42. Kattel. Sobha ‘Pratibha’. 2068 v.s.. Samarko Smritiharu (Memories of People’s War). Kathmandu: Baghbazar. Khadka, Sharada. 2012. Female Combatants and Ex-combatants in Maoist Revolution and Their Struggle for Reintegration in Post-war, Nepal. Master’s thesis in Peace and Conflict Transformation, University of Tromsø. Lecomte-Tilouine, Marie. 2009. Hindu Kingship, Ethnic Revival, and Maoist Rebellion in Nepal. New Delhi: Oxford UniversityPress, 2013. Luna, K. C. 2019. Everyday realities of reintegration: experience of Maoist ‘verified’ women ex-combatants in the aftermath of war in Nepal. Conflict, Security & Development 19 (5): 453–474. https://doi.org/10.1080/ 14678802.2019.1658969 Millett, Kate. 1968. Sexual Politics. New York: Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data, 2000. Magar, Jayapuri Gharti. 2064 v.s.. ‘Jivansathi Com. Viveklai Antim Patra (Last letter to Life Partner Com. Vivek),’ in Pidabhitraka Akarosh: Sansmaran Sangrah (Avenge from within Pain: Collection of Memoirs), Pragatisheel Adhyayan Kendra, March, pp. 1–4. Macaraeg, R. A. 2015. Dressed to Kill: Towards a Theory of Fashion in Arms and Armor. Fashion Theory. The journal of Dress, Body and Culture 11 (1): 41–64. Ogura, Kiyoko. 2009. A Chapamaar’s Peace. Himal South Asian, July. Parvati. 2006. People’s War and Women’s Liberation in Nepal. Raipur: Purvaiya Prakashan.

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Parvati, and Bruce Lee. 2006. People’s War...Women’s War: Two Texts by Comrade Parvati of the Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist) with Commentary by Bruce Lee. Kersplebedeb. People’s S. 2014. Embodying the Military Uniforms. Critical Studies in Men’s Fashion 1 (1): 7–21. Roka, Kamala. 2068 v.s. Ekaishsso Satabdiko Kranti Ra Mahila Muktiko Prashna (Revolutions of the 21st Century and the Question of Women Liberation). Kathmandu. Rose, Gillian. 2005. ‘You Just Have to Make a Conscious Effort to Keep Snapping Away I Think’’: A Case Study of Family Photos, Mothering, and Familial Space. In Motherhood and Space: Configurations of the Maternal Through Politics, Home and the Body, ed. S. Hardy and C. Weidmer, 221–240. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. Roy, Srila. 2012. Remembering Revolution: Gender, Violence, and Subjectivity in India’s Naxalbari Movement. New Delhi: Oxford University Press. Sjoberg. Laura. 2014. Gender, War and Conflict. Cambridge, UK: Malden: Polity Press. Sjoberg, L., and Caron E. Gentry. 2007. Mothers, Monsters, Whores: Women’s Violence in Global Politics. London/New York: Zed Books. Sthapit, Lorina, and Philippe Doneys. 2017. Female Maoist Combatants During and After the People’s War. In Women, Peace and Security in Nepal: From Civil War to Post-Conflict Reconstruction, ed. Åshld Kolås, 33–49. New York: Routledge. Walzer, Michael. 1977. Just and Unjust Wars. New York: Basic Books, 2015. Yadav, Punam. 2016. Social Transformation in Nepal: A Gender Perspective, London. New York. Routledge. Taylor and Francis. Young, Iris M. 1980. Throwing Like a Girl: A Phenomenology of Feminine Body Comportment Motility and Spatiality. Human Studies 3 (2): 143. ———. 2005. House and Home: Feminist Variations on the Theme. In Motherhood and Space: Configurations of the Maternal Through Politics, Home and the Body, ed. S. Hardy and C. Weidmer, 115–147. New York: Palgrave Macmillan.

CHAPTER 16

Victims to Vanguards: Displaced Yet Determined Shubhra Seth

Forced to flee and not being able to return home while continuing to be in their homeland; when these two variables become constant in the lives of a category of persons, they get included in the teeming millions of Internally Displaced Persons (henceforth IDPs). A large mass of people who do not cross the defined borders of their states, unlike refugees, and continue to combat conflict in their homelands. The journey of Internally Displaced Persons begins when, due to a conflict situation, they are forced to flee their homes and are unable to return to their native homes even after several years of the pogrom or episodes of ethnic violence. And struggle to build their lives amidst changed meanings and contours of their citizenship. This chapter in two parts shall halt at two stations, one conceptual; locating the basic tenets of internal displacement and the different types of IDPs and second; to understand through a case study in India, the journey of victims of conflict-induced displacement to becoming vanguards of their community continuing to struggle for their rights as citizens.

S. Seth (*) Department of Political Science, Indraprastha College for Women, University of Delhi, New Delhi, India e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2022 N. Chowdhory, P. Banerjee (eds.), Gender, Identity and Migration in India, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-16-5598-2_16

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Central Idea of the Project on Internal Displacement The central idea behind the efforts to assist and protect IDPs was: ‘sovereignty as responsibility’. In their study titled ‘Masses in Flight’, Francis Roberta Cohen and Francis M. Deng (1998a) recommended ‘recasting sovereignty as a concept of responsibility, that is, as an instrument for ensuring the protection and welfare of those under a state’s jurisdiction.’ They suggest, furthermore, that a balance must be created ‘between the principle of non-intervention in internal affairs and the equally compelling obligation to provide humanitarian assistance and promote observance of human rights’ (ibid. 275). The authors laid out both the international legal basis for providing physical and legal protection to the internally displaced and strategies for implementing protection as well as emergency aid. The Guiding Principles on Internal Displacement set out specific rules for protection both from displacement as well as during displacement. In other words, in the kitchen called Project on Internal Displacement, the recipe that was being worked upon was that of a comprehensive approach to the problems of the IDPs. This idea has two essential parts: governments are responsible for the human rights of their citizens as part of the essence of statehood; when they are unwilling or unable to provide security and well-being to their citizens, an international responsibility arises to protect vulnerable individuals (Weiss and Korn 2006: 3). Hence, sovereignty is conceived as a conditional right dependent upon the respect for a minimum standard of human rights and upon each State honouring an obligation to protect its citizens. If governments are unwilling or unable to protect them, the responsibility to protect such vulnerable individuals should be borne by the international community of States (ibid. 101). Broadly, it was the responsibility to protect which reflected through the paraphrase of sovereignty as form of responsibility, often pointed to as the philosophical foundation behind the principles. The two crucial characteristic features of the IDPs were: coerced to move or flee and to remain within their own national borders. The most traditionally accepted understanding of the category of Internally Displaced Persons was those persons uprooted by conflict and human rights violations. Since this problem of Internally Displaced Persons was viewed and juxtaposed with that of the refugees but within one’s own border, conflict became a main variable to understand the needs of the IDPs. But during the debates and

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brainstorming discussions, it was felt that persons uprooted by natural and human-made disasters or development projects are also displaced and can be neglected or discriminated against by their own government on political or ethnic grounds or there can be other forms of human rights violations.1 The road taken for the formulation of Guiding Principles on the Internally Displaced adopted the ‘needs based approach’ as against the ‘rights based approach’. This approach was almost like reading the subject backwards, in other words it meant to identify the needs of the internally displaced and then to examine the extent to which the existing International Humanitarian Law and Human Rights Conventions could be tailored in one document to address their specific needs. Walter Kalin, Secretary General’s Representative on the Human Rights of the Internally Displaced Persons, took the baton from Francis Deng and continued to steer forward the Project on Internal Displacement (Kalin 2005). Kalin and Robert Goldman, another principal team member of the same project pointed out that, displacement, ‘breaks up the immediate family, cuts off important social and cultural community ties; terminates stable employment relationships; precludes or forecloses formal educational opportunities; deprives infants, expectant mothers and the sick of access to food, adequate shelter or vital health services; and makes the displaced population especially vulnerable to the acts of violence, such as attacks on camps, disappearances or rape’ (Cohen and Deng 1998b: 74, 92). The Guiding Principles reflected as the bill of rights for the IDPs sought to address each of the above under the headings of prevention, assistance, protection and return similar in content to the Bill of Rights for the Refugees as given in the 1951 Refugee Convention. Roberta Cohen, aptly summarized why this approach was taken to develop the Guiding Principles for the Internally Displaced and, once adopted, how they represented a sensible step forward: First, there was no government support for the development of a legally binding treaty on a subject as sensitive as internal displacement. Second, treaty-making could take decades, whereas there was an urgent need for a document now to address the emergency needs of the IDPs. Third, sufficient international laws existed to making it possible to weave together in one document, adapted to the needs of the 1   Roberta Cohen, (2004) “The Guiding Principles on Internal Displacement: An Innovation in International Standard Setting”, Global Governance, Volume 10, No. 4 pp. 459–480.

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internally displaced, the multiple provisions otherwise dispersed in a large number of instruments (op. cit. Cohen 2004). Further Cohen opines that these principles, 30  in number, provide guidance to all actors and institutions that deal with the internally displaced, be it the governments, international organizations or the nongovernmental organizations. These principles offer standards of protection during displacement, weaving together the spectrum of civil, economic, political, social and cultural rights to the specific needs of the IDPs. Most important, they provided the needed protection during return, resettlement and reintegration, to encapsulate, they provided the common minimum standard for the treatment of the IDPs, the latest challenge of masses in flight that the international community was faced with in the concluding decade of the twentieth century. The purpose of the Project on Internal Displacement was not to create a privileged category or a special status group for the IDPs but it was to ensure that in a given situation of crisis and conflict they, like others, would be protected and their unique needs would be acknowledged and addressed. The Guiding Principles throughout in the process of its debate and formulation kept one basic notion constant, that the primary responsibility of the displaced rests with their governments (UN 30 Guiding Principles on Internal Displacement 1998 are given as annexure).

Definition of Internally Displaced Persons In the backdrop of reservations and concerns discussed in the above section, the Guiding Principles on Internal Displacement covering an important ground to combat the challenge of internal displacement were presented by Francis M. Deng to the UN Commission on Human Rights and defined the Internally Displaced Persons as: Persons who have been forced or obliged to flee or to leave their homes or places of habitual residence in particular as a result of, or in order to avoid the effects of, armed conflict, situations of generalized violence, violations of human rights or natural or human-made disaster and who have not crossed an internationally recognized state border.2 Broadly, three 2  UN Guiding Principles on Internal Displacement, UN Commission on Human Rights, Report of the Representative of the Secretary-General, Mr. Francis M.  Deng, submitted pursuant to Commission Resolution 1997/39. Addendum: Guiding Principles on Internal Displacement (11 February 1998) E/CN.4/1998/53/Add.2.

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conditions of forced migration were recognized to begin understanding types of internal displacement. Forced migration due to natural disasters or environmental degradation, man-made disaster indicated towards development-induced displacement and conflict as a condition for forced migration underlined the growing numbers of IDPs worldwide as against refugees. Amongst the three conditions of internal displacement, most states came forward to recognize and provide rehabilitation policies for natural disaster-induced displacement and development-induced displacement. However conflict-induced displacement till date remains less commented and worked upon as often the states understand such displacement as a commentary on its own functioning and its lapses therein. The following section shall reflect on the types of displacement and highlight the dilemma entailing the similarity of loss factors in development and conflict-­ induced displacement, on the one hand. And the vast difference in the attitude and actions of the state in response to either of the two conditions of internal displacement.

Deconstructing Displacement This section shall attempt to understand the three primary types of displacement in which most of the literature is classified, thus enabling to read the characteristic features of each separately. The Guiding Principles spell out in the definition situations leading to displacement, which are armed conflict, episodes of generalized violence, violations of human rights, or natural and man-made disasters. Displacement can be studied through these classifications with reference to the trigger points or what causes internal displacement. Principle 6 of the Guiding Principles enumerates the following: 1. Every human being shall have the right to be protected against being arbitrarily displaced from his or her home or place of habitual residence. 2. The prohibition of arbitrary displacement includes displacement: (a) When it is based on policies of apartheid, “ethnic cleansing”, or similar practices aimed at/or resulting in altering the ethnic, religious, or racial composition of the affected population. (b) In situations of armed conflict, unless the security of the civilians involved or imperative military reasons so demand.

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(c) In cases of large-scale development projects, which are not justified by compelling and overriding public interests. (d) In cases of disasters, unless the safety and health of those affected requires their evacuation. And (e) When it is used as a collective punishment (E/CN.4/1998/53/ Add.2, p.7). Disaster-induced displacement, development-induced displacement and conflict-induced displacement are the three nodes, as reflected in the above mentioned Principle 6, are most studied and discussed amongst the literature on the study of internal displacement as a concept. A brief outline of each of the three shall enable us to understand the salient features of each of the above mentioned classifications.

Disaster-Induced Displacement The United Nations defines disaster as ‘a serious disruption of the functioning of a society, causing widespread human, material, or environmental losses which exceed the ability of the affected society to cope using its own resources’ (UN Disaster Relief Organization, 1992, An Overview of Disaster Management, New York: UNDRO).3 Disaster is generally classified into two types, natural and man-made. Natural disasters can further be read under three different sub categories, namely, sudden impact, slow-onset and epidemic disasters. While man-­ made disasters include the categories of industrial/technological disasters and complex emergencies (Holtermann et al. 1998). (a) Disasters that have a sudden impact include earthquakes, floods, tidal waves, tropical storms, volcanic eruptions and landslides. Floods often lead to sudden migration of large population, while earthquakes take a heavy toll on human life and may cause severe infrastructural damage. (b) Slow-onset disasters include droughts, famine, environmental degradation, deforestation, or conversion of arable lands to deserts. These disasters occur due to adverse weather conditions along with poor land use. 3  In December 1991, UNDRO was incorporated into the newly established Department of Humanitarian Affairs (DHA), which has since become the Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA).

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(c) Disasters triggered by mass spreading of diseases are termed as epidemic disasters like cholera, measles, respiratory infection, malaria, and increasingly, HIV; these generally do not cause large scale displacement but threaten displaced populations who are forced to stay clustered in overcrowded and unsanitary conditions. (d) Industrial/technological disasters result from industrial and technological activities that lead to pollution, spillage of hazardous materials, explosions and fires. They may occur from poor planning of facilities or from neglect of safety procedures. (e) Complex emergencies are usually human-made with multiple contributing factors (which may include war, internal conflict and even natural disaster). Such emergencies lead to large-scale displacement, food insecurity, human rights violations and elevated mortality.4

Development-Induced Displacement ‘Forced population displacement is always crisis-prone, even when necessary as part of broad and beneficial development programmes. Building of dams, clearing of forests for mining, large scale construction of industries, et cetera, have led to displacement leading to socio-economic and cultural disruption for those affected. Dislocation breaks up living patterns and social continuity. It dismantles existing modes of habitation, disrupts social networks, causes impoverishment of many of those uprooted, threatens their cultural identity, creates unemployment, lack of access to community services, increasing the risks of epidemics and health particularly of children’ (Cernia 1995 and Cernia 2000). All forced displacement is prone to major socio-economic problems and risks. Michael Cernea5 elaborated on the Model of Impoverishment Risks and Reconstruction that enumerates the different risks which await the Internally Displaced Persons. These risks can also be seen as different components or variables to deconstruct development-induced displacement and understand the intensity of complications that surround this 4  Keith Holtermann, Erik Gaull, and Ray Lucas, (1998) “Disaster Dimension” cited in W. Courtland Robinson, Risks and Rights: The Causes, Consequences, and Challenges of Development-Induced Displacement [An Occasional paper: The Brookings Institution-SAIS Project on Internal Displacement, Washington DC], May 2003, p. 9. 5  Michael M. Cernea is Professor of Anthropology and International Relations at George Washington University. He has extensively written and published on the themes of development, social change, population resettlement, grassroots organizations, and participation.

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category of IDPs. According to him, this Model of Impoverishment Risks and Reconstruction (IRR Model) is synchronic or an amalgamation of several interlinked applications, as it captures the processes that are parallel and simultaneously reflect the movement in time from destitution in displacement to recovery in resettlement. A common pattern of a set of eight interlinked variables (Cernia 1998, 2004) was formulated through his study, which defined the impoverished position and the socio-economic effects of the displacement. At the core of this model are three primary concepts of risk, impoverishment and reconstruction. Eight variables or eight common identified processes were identified to create this Model of IRR and cumulatively studied to construct a general risk pattern for the displaced. Cernea after researching for almost two decades notes that before displacement actually begins, these discussed eight components are only impending social and economic risks. But if timely and effective counteraction is not initiated when faced with the crisis of displacement in the State, these potential hazards convert into actual impoverishment disasters. (a) Landlessness: Expropriation of land damages the existing production system, commercial activities and disrupts livelihoods. It is one of the principal forms of de-capitalization as they lose both natural and man-­made capital. According to the IRR Model, unless these productive systems are relocated elsewhere or replaced with alternative steady income-generating employment, the affected families remain impoverished and gradually, over the years, landlessness sets in. Thereby making it increasingly difficult to break this cycle of impoverishment. (b) Joblessness: The risk of losing employment is very high for urban and rural displacement both. The process of generating new jobs requires substantial investment and time. Hence unemployment or underemployment among resettlers often continues for long after physical relocation has been completed. The previously employed may lose in various ways: in urban areas, workers lose jobs in industry and services. In rural areas, landless labourers lose access to work on land owned by others and also lose the use of assets under common property systems. Self-employed small producers—craftsmen, shopkeepers and others—lose their small businesses as well. (c) Homelessness: Loss of shelter is inherent in the definition of displacement. Most often shelters or relief homes are provided sooner or later thus making it a temporary settlement. These temporary

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settlements continue for years, leading to situations of worsening housing standards and the feeling of homelessness due to the loss of original habitat remains a crisis for the displaced. Subsequently, loss of the family’s individual home and the loss of a group’s cultural space result in alienation and status deprivation. (d) Marginalization: Marginalization occurs when the cultural status of the displaced persons is compromised in the relocation areas where they are considered as ‘strangers’ and denied entitlements and opportunities. Marginalization occurs as the affected families lose their economic power and spiral on a path that takes them downwards with severe livelihood problems. The middle-income farm households become small landholders, small shopkeepers and craftsmen downsize and slip below poverty levels. Many of the displaced are unable to use their earlier acquired skills at the new location, thus human capital is rendered inactive or obsolete. Economic marginalization is often accompanied by social and psychological marginalization, as the social status dips for the affected families with a feeling of injustice and deepened vulnerability. The IRR Model sharply points out that, the coerciveness of displacement and the victimization of the resettlers tend to depreciate the resettlers self-image and they are often perceived by the host communities as a socially degrading stigma. The facets of marginalization are multiple, but the measures for rehabilitation are few and far for the Internally Displaced Persons. (e) Food Security: Food insecurity and undernourishment are both results of forced migration. Lack of earning and perils of relocation increases the risk of people falling into temporary or chronic undernourishment. During relocation or resettlement, the availability of food crops drop and sources of income generation diminish. Rebuilding continuous food production capacity or sufficient means of livelihood take years for the affected families in most cases, so hunger and undernourishment tend to become long term effects. (f) Increased Morbidity and Mortality: Displacement-induced social stress and trauma have sometimes been the cause of outbreak of what Cernea terms as relocation-related diseases or illness. Ghettoized living quarters, unsafe water supply and improvised sewage systems increase vulnerability to epidemics and its outbreak. Infants and the elderly are the worst affected in such conditions.

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(g) Loss of access to common property resources: Loss of access to common property assets, particularly for the poor landless people, is a sweeping blow when displacement occurs. Loss of access to common property assets like pastures, forested land, burial grounds, et cetera, by the displaced families leads to deterioration in the income and livelihood sources. Most of these common property assets are seldom compensated for by the governments and the state. (h) Social disarticulation: Dismantled social networks, dilution of common interests to be mobilized around, or severing prior ties with neighbours. In other words, displacement manifests through social disarticulation within the family and social system, where intimate bonds weaken giving way to growing alienation and lower cohesion among the family structures. Forced displacement tears apart decades of existing social fabric, it fragments the community, scatters kinship groups, local voluntary associations and self-organized mutual service patterns are hampered, all of this collectively has long term deep consequences as this adds up to loss of ‘social capital’ and this loss cannot be compensated by government documents and policies as they are fostered over years of cohabiting in a particular neighbourhood and cements over time.6 Most recently, two more risks and impacts intrinsic to development-­related migration have been added to the above eight components in a paper by W.  Courtland Robinson on Risks and Rights: The Causes, Consequences and Challenges of DevelopmentInduced Displacement. These are borrowed from the works of Robert Muggah and Theodore Downing7 and highlight the pertinent risks of: (i) Loss of Access to the Community Services: Community health care facilities and education opportunities for the children are the most costly impoverishment impact in the situation of displacement because delayed opportunity for education of children pulls back  Michael M.Cernea, (2004) Impoverishment Risks, Risk Management, and Reconstruction: A Model of Population Displacement and Resettlement, paper presented at the UN Symposium held in Beijing, October 27–29, 2004, pp. 18–26. 7  See Robert Muggah, (2000), “Through the Developmentalist’s Looking Glass: Conflict-­ Induced Displacement and Involuntary Resettlement in Colombia.” In Journal of Refugee Studies 13(2): 133–164. Also see Theodore E. Downing, 2002, “Avoiding New Poverty: Mining-Induced Displacement and Resettlement” (International Institute for Environment and Development), p. 3. 6

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an entire generation otherwise waiting to build and carve their future. (j) Violation of Human Rights: Displacement from habitual residence, along with loss of property and absence of fair compensation, together constitute gross human rights violation. W.C. Robinson adds that in addition to this, arbitrary displacement can lead to violation of civil and political rights which may include degrading treatment, arbitrary arrest, temporary and permanent disenfranchisement and the loss of political mandate. Displacement not only creates conditions of human rights violations at the hands of the State authorities and the security forces but also the risk of spreading ethnic violence when new settlers move in amongst the existing population settlement (Muggah 2000). The above discussed Model of Impoverishment Risk and Reconstruction puts forward a valuable tool for understanding and assessing many risks inherent in situations of development-induced displacement. Though the normative bedrock of development-induced displacement rests on a given ‘eminent domain’ of the State, which consists of the State’s right to expropriate property in certain circumstances, mostly citing the for overall advantage of the nation as the rallying point (Muggah 2003: 8). In other words, the utilitarian principle of greater good and development has resulted in the displacement of population. Displacement of population caused by dam construction is one such example and a serious counter-­ development social consequence (UNDP 2011) which states have not been able to settle with their rehabilitation policies. It is pertinent to note here that each of the conditions and impending risks appearing under development-induced displacement occur in equal velocity in situations of conflict and subsequent internal displacement therein. The only factor that separates these two conditions is the kind of response extended by the state and the international community.

Conflict-Induced Displacement Reflecting on the available literature on displacement and forced migration, it may be useful to read them as three points situated along a continuum as: disaster-induced displacement, development-induced displacement and conflict-induced displacement. W.C.  Robinson opines that both disaster-induced displacement and conflict-induced displacement are situated on two sides or extremes of the spectrum of

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displacement with regard to the response from the State. In the context of disaster-induced displacement, States actively seek outside aid and attention for victims of floods, famine, or earthquake. However, at the opposite end is conflict-induced displacement; when such violent episodes of displacement take place where people are forced to flee, the States tend to become restrictive and highly selective about who is to gain access to such displaced persons and for what purpose. In this spectrum then, development-­ induced displacement occupies a middle ground where States encourage and accept international aid assistance and funding. But become selective and seldom make public the details of arbitrary treatment, impoverishment, or denial of rights of those displaced due to large-­ scale development projects (op.cit. Robinson 2003: 27). The archetypical example of forced migration is one that is undertaken by a refugee. The 1951 Refugee Convention spells out that a refugee is someone who ‘owing to a well-founded fear of being persecuted for reasons of race, religion, nationality, membership of a particular social group or political opinion, is outside the country of his nationality and is unable to, or owing to such fear, is unwilling to avail himself of the protection of that country.’ This definition of the refugees and asylum seekers according to the UN Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees (1951) guides the work of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR 2008).8 Conflict-induced displacement has identical ‘push factors’ as enumerated in the above mentioned definition for the refugees, the major point of departure being that the Internally Displaced Persons continue to reside within the confines of their State, while the refugees cross internationally recognized borders to seek protection in such situations. ‘Displacement’ occurs where coercion is employed, choices are restricted and the affected population faces more risks than opportunities and feel vulnerable by staying in their ‘place’ of residence. This forced migration distinguishes it from ‘voluntary’ and ‘economic’ migration. Thus displacement by its very definition is forced and involuntary involving some form of de-­ territorialization (Hyndman 2000; Barutciski 1999). Though the policies designed and formulated for the IDPs are distinct from those designed for refugees, yet, as Walter Kalin observed, that it should be noted, the discourse on internal displacement and resettlement draws heavily from the instruments for refugee protection and related works (Kalin 2000). The 8

 UNHCR website, http://www.unhcr.org/pages/49c3646c125.html

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movements under conflict-­induced displacement are sudden, unpredictable and illegal under the international humanitarian and human rights laws. Resettlement, after conflict-triggered displacement is usually uncoordinated, as the response is measured according to the need of the hour and is regarded by many donors and policymakers as temporary. As a contrast to this, development-­induced displacement is planned where, in some cases, detailed procedures of resettlement and compensation are worked out since the assets expropriated, are established by law and obligations on the part of the acquiring agency are included as matters of policy. In such situations, resettlement is perceived by donors and policymakers to be a regular process leading to a permanent relocation of the displaced (Robert Muggah 2003: 15–16). Conflict-induced displacement has long term and lasting consequences as continued social and economic exclusion intensifies the deprivation of such Internally Displaced Persons. This is more prominent for the conflict-­ induced internally displaced persons. Omprakash Mishra observes that the breakdown of some multinational States, proliferation of conflict involving ‘ethnic cleansing’, civil war, insurgency, guerrilla warfare, primarily within borders of the state but having international ramifications, were the pertinent features of the post-cold war world. ‘This has changed the very nature of conflict-from conventional wars between nation states to inter-­ communal conflict within states’ (Mishra 2004: 6). This change in the nature of conflict becomes a major catalyst, leading to a new classification of domestic refugees who, in the decades following the Cold War, increased manifold in numbers and surpassed the count of refugees (Chimni 2009), it is this category largely displaced by conflict, which came to be internationally covered under the term Internally Displaced Persons.

Victims Transform into Vanguards Having established the category of the conflict-induced displaced or conflict- induced IDPs, this part of the chapter shall travel the journey with victims of violence now living as IDPs in their homeland and read into the narratives of a few women who have transformed themselves from victims to vanguards. The Internal Displacement Monitoring Centre (IDMC) is the world’s definitive source of data and analysis on internal displacement. Since their establishment in 1998 as part of the Norwegian Refugee Council (NRC), they have provided independent and trusted service to

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the international community (NRC 2008; Birkeland and Jennings 2011). Their work informs policy and operational decisions that improve the lives of the millions of people living in internal displacement, or at risk of becoming displaced in the future. As per the country report of India in 2019 released by Internal Displacement Monitoring Centre, there are currently 470,000 conflict-induced IDPs in the country with 19,000 displacements to have happened between January to December 2019 (IDMC 2019; https://www.internal-­displacement.org/countries/india). Social scientist, Asghar Ali Engineer, opined that in India communal violence is a routine process and through his work he has documented annual episodes of communal violence, noting that not a single month passes without major or minor incidents of violence (Engineer 2004; Brass and Vinaik 2002). For the purpose of this chapter, to understand the journey traversed by women displaced by communal violence and continuing to live as IDPs in India, the state of Gujarat presents such a case study. Displacement can only be measured and studied when substantial time has lapsed from the outbreak of violence which led to forced migration, rather fleeing of a minority group owing to risk to their lives and survival. Most importantly, return to their original habitation has not been possible even after a decade and more. In the year 2012, the status report based on survey released by Janvikas Public Charitable Trust in Ahmedabad9 noted the existence of 83 colonies of IDPs in eight districts of Gujarat (http://janvikas.in/project/ status-­report/). Janvikas, in support with Action Aid, India, have been working tirelessly for the displaced families for over a decade now. These IDP families were displaced due to violence in 2002 and have not yet found a safe passage to return to their places of habitation/residence (Centre for Social Justice and ANHAD 2007; The Uprooted: 2007; Janvikas 2012; Centre for Social Justice 2013). One of the important caveats of public policy that is highlighted in this status report is the absence of a national policy on people displaced due to violence in India. The closure of relief camps after three to six months of the violence also signals the return to normalcy on paper for the state. However, ground realities continue to be harshly different and those displaced due to violence begin their second innings moving from being citizens to being displaced in their homeland (Calcutta Research Group 2006). This shift in their position with the primary loss of home, livelihood and most often state recognized vital documents confronts them 9

 To read more on Janvikas please visit http://janvikas.in/

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with the dilemma and a perpetual struggle to uphold their rights as citizens as they continue to live in the same country. Unlike refugees, even after confronting violence and being forced to flee, the IDPs do not leave their country nor seek asylum in other countries. Amongst the IDP families displaced post-2002, women stepped forward as vanguards for their families owing to their circumstances. Some became bread earners, while others primary care givers and almost all of them participated in transformational processes in their bid to survive, particularly for the sake of their children. The landmark Resolution 1325 by the United Nations Security Council on women, peace and security brings into focus the importance of organized participation of women on conflict resolving and peace building. The collective narratives of several IDP women living scattered in eight districts of Ahmedabad, Anand, Bharuch, Kheda, Mehsana, Panchmahal, Sabarkantha and Vadodara. The numerous roles that they played in their efforts to rehabilitate and weave together the torn pieces of their lives post-2002 can be seen under four divisions, they became ambassadors and advocates for the IDP families stepping forward to interact with various district- and state-level offices. Women who were mostly relegated to the domestic sphere of their homes became representatives of their community and created a network of self-­ help groups working for common goals like bringing health care facilities, primary schooling facilities, potable water, sewer systems and electricity connections to their colonies, most of which were located far away from towns and without access roads. Their other roles were both supportive and directive where they enabled, assisted and accompanied families in rebuilding their lives and homes in relief colonies. Several IDP families who lost male members of their families in the violence resolved to enrol themselves in small-scale training centres arranged and functioning under the aegis of various non-governmental organizations and donor agencies. Sewing, which was once only a hobby for several women, became their opportunity to earn and weave together the future of their children most of whom were left out of formal schooling post the violence. Cynthia Cockburn (1998) in her work involving accounts of women in post war communities and its reconstruction found a common thread of alliance, democracy and identity running through the study. The same can be observed for these women from IDP families living in Gujarat who have for years now been fostering supportive relationships, inclusive activity and regular transparent communication amongst themselves and continuously working for that one common agenda of one day being able to return to their homes and giving a normal life to their children. Inclusion

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is the key component in their understanding of a normal life because living in IDP colonies has meant being excluded from basic citizenship rights and living yet not being counted in the demography of the country (Banerjee and Das 2005; Banerjee et al. 2005). Loss of homes in the violence, losing of jobs due to displacement, social disarticulation and forced rehabilitation on the outskirts of cities and towns, denial of access to public distribution system in the absence of documents, and discontinuation of education of children, all these ­problems stared at the families displaced due to the violence in 2002. Several families lost their male members and, in most cases, they also were the only earning member for the family. In such conditions, women in most families took the mantle of rebuilding their lives and began to forge the way ahead for their families. In cases of development-induced displacement, the state under its rehabilitation policy arranges for new locations and monetary support for rehabilitating displaced families. However, for most of the IDP colonies in Gujarat, the relief colonies were built by faithbased organizations and civil society organizations. Living in new localities, shouldering the responsibility to stitch together their lives, women began to enrol themselves as community volunteers with civil society-based organizations. Multiple tasks like regularly visiting public offices for getting their lost documents like voter I-card, ration card, et cetera, being made in the absence of residential proof due to displacement posed a challenge. Formal education of their children was one important target which was taken up by women in almost all the IDP colonies. Community-based initiatives taken by women in collaboration with civil society organizations enabled primary level learning for children up to the age of 10 to 12 within the IDP colonies. This exercise helped the children affected due to violence to continue with reading, writing and learning, which later helped them to be inducted into the formal schooling system. Women became bread earners for their families taking up varied small-­ scale jobs like selling vegetables, joining tailoring units, or becoming full-­ time community workers with organizations that came forward for their rehabilitation. In some of the IDP colonies, electricity, clean drinking water and sewage system still remain pending, formal schooling for most children in such colonies remains an ardent dream and not all families affected due to the violence in 2002 have been able to procure all their lost documents, which are essential to access government-provided goods and services for the underprivileged.

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India needs a national policy on the Internally Displaced Persons based on the 30 Guiding Principles. Women need to be important participants in any dialogue or deliberation on displacement due to violence because, in such cases, it is they who face the tough challenge of rebuilding and rehabilitating their homes. The vanguards like Rasheeda, Nazima, Saira Banu and Farida may never be acknowledged for their constructive roles in rebuilding an entire community who lost their homes and identity in an episode of violence. Their voices and contribution are important resources as they provide inputs from the field, on the functional lacunae of relief packages, the hurdles with the state-level understanding of displacement due to violence and rehabilitation in the absence of any policy or template to address such a crisis. This journey of regaining that lost recognition is an everyday struggle for the IDPs, their struggle to be counted again as citizens in their own state. An important lesson that these vanguards impart is not to let circumstances defeat their vision and mission. Their vision to see an inclusive India and their mission to be ambassadors of peace enabling the displaced due to violence to rebuild their homes.

References Banerjee, Paula, and Samir Kumar Das, eds. 2005. Internal Displacement in South Asia. New Delhi: Sage Publications. Banerjee, Paula, Sabyasachi Basu Ray Chaudhury, and Samir Kumar Das. 2005. Internal Displacement in South Asia: The Relevance of the UN Guiding Principles. New Delhi: Sage Publications. Barutciski, Michael. 1999. Questioning the Tensions Between the Refugee and IDP Concepts a Rebuttal. Forced Migration Review No. 4, [Online web]. http://www.fmreview.org/. Accessed 14 Sept 2012. Brass, Paul R., and Achin Vanaik. 2002. Competing Nationalisms in South Asia: Essays for Asghar Ali Engineer. Hyderabad: Orient Longman. Cernia, Michael M. 1995. Social Integration and Population Displacement. International Social Science Journal 143 (1): 91–112. ———. 2000. Risks, Safeguards and Reconstruction: A Model for Population Displacement and Resettlement. Economic and Political Weekly 35 (41): 3659–3678. ———. 2004. Impoverishment Risks, Risk Management and Reconstruction: A Model of Population Displacement and Resettlement. Presented at the UN Symposium on Hydropower and Sustainable Development Beijing, 27 October 2004. [Online web]. http://www.responsiblemines.org/attachments/254_ population_resettlement_IRR_MODEL_cernea.pdf. Accessed 18 Aug 2019.

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Chimni, B.S. 2009. The Birth of a ‘Discipline’: From Refugee to Forced Migration Studies. Journal of Refugee Studies 22 (1): 11–29. Cockburn, C. 1998. The Space Between Us: Negotiating Gender and National Identities in Conflict. London: Zed Books. Cohen, Roberta. 2004. The Guiding Principles on Internal Displacement: An Innovation in International Standard Setting. Global Governance 10 (4): 459–480. Cohen, Roberta, and Francis M. Deng. 1998a. Masses in Flight: The Global Crisis of Internal Displacement. Washington, DC: The Brookings Institution. ———, eds. 1998b. The Forsaken People: Case Studies of the Internally Displaced. Washington, DC: The Brookings Institution. Engineer, Asghar Ali. 2004. Communal Riots. Economic and Political Weekly 39 (1): 517–520. Holtermann, Keith, et  al. 1998. Disaster Dimension. In The Johns Hopkins and Red Cross/Red Crescent Public Health Guide for Emergencies, ed. Saade Abdallah and Gilbert Burnham. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University. Hyndman, J. 2000. Managing Displacement: Refugees and the Politics of Humanitarianism. Minnesota: University of Minnesota Press. Kalin, Walter. 2005. The Guiding Principles on Internal Displacement as International Minimum Standard and Protection Tool. Refugee Survey Quarterly 24 (3): 27–36. Mishra, Omprakash, ed. 2004. Forced Migration in South Asian Region: Displacement, Human Rights and Conflict Resolution. Delhi: Manak Publications. Muggah, Robert. 2000. Through the Developmentalist’s Looking Glass: Conflict-­ Induced Displacement and Involuntary Resettlement in Colombia. Journal of Refugee Studies 13 (2): 133–164. ———. 2003. A Tale of Two Solitudes: Comparing Conflict and Development Induced Internal Displacement and Involuntary Resettlement. International Migration 41 (5): 5–31. Robinson, W. Courtland. 2003. Risks and Rights: The Causes, Consequences, and Challenges of Development-Induced Displacement. The Brookings Institution-­ SAIS Project on Internal Displacement, [Online web]. http://www.brookings. edu/fp/projects/idp/articles/didreport.pdf. Accessed 5 Sept 2019. Weiss, Thomas G. and Korn, David A. 2006. Internal Displacement: Conceptualization and its Consequences. Routledge: London.

Primary Sources Birkeland, N.M., and E.  Jennings, eds. 2011. Internal Displacement: Global Overview of Trends and Developments in 2010. Internal Displacement Monitoring Centre, [Online web]. http://www.internal-­displacement.org/ publications/global-­overview-­2010.pdf. Accessed 4 May 2011.

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Calcutta Research Group. 2006. Voices of the Internally Displaced in South Asia. Kolkata: Mahanirban Calcutta Research Group. Centre for Social Justice. 2013. Homeless in Homeland: A Study on Internally Displaced Persons in India. Ahmedabad: CSJ. Centre for Social Justice and ANHAD. 2007. The Uprooted: Caught Between Existence and Denial. Ahmedabad: Centre for Social Justice and ANHAD. Cernia, Michael M. 1988. Involuntary Resettlement in Development Projects, Technical Paper, No. 80. World Bank, [Online web]. http://hvtc.edu.vn/ Portals/0/files/6357013323426329920-­8213-­1036-­4.pdf. Accessed 14 Sept 2011. IDMC (Monitoring Centre 2019), Internal Displacement, India: Internal Displacement as of December 31, 2019. https://www.internal-­displacement. org/countries/india. Accessed 23 May 2020. Janvikas. 2012. Gujarat’s Internally Displaced: Ten Years Later. Ahmedabad: Janvikas. Kalin, Walter. 2000. Guiding Principles on Internal Displacement: Annotations. American Society of International Law and The Brookings Institution Project on Internal Displacement, [Online web]. http://Www.Brookings.Edu/~/ Media/Research/Files/Reports/2008/5/Spring-­G uiding-­P rinciples/ Spring_Guiding_Principles.Pdf. Accessed 02 Dec 2012. Norwegian Refugee Council (NRC). 2008. Guidance on Profiling Internally Displaced Persons. Internal Displacement Monitoring Centre and United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, [Online web]. https://docs.unocha.org/sites/dms/Documents/Guidance%20on%20 Profiling%20Internally%20Displaced%20Persons,%20OCHA-­N RC,%20 English.pdf. Accessed 25 Oct 2019. The Uprooted: Caught Between Existence and Denial. 2007. A Document on the State of Internally Displaced in Gujarat. New Delhi: Centre for Social Justice and ANHAD, [Online web]. http://www.centreforsocialjustice.net/images/ Gujarat%201.pdf. Accessed 18 Aug 2019. UN Guiding Principles on Internal Displacement. 1998. UN Commission on Human Rights, Report of the Representative of the Secretary-General- Mr. Francis M.  Deng, Submitted Pursuant to Commission Resolution 1997/39. http://www.refworld.org/docid/3d4f95e11.html. Accessed 25 May 2018. United Nations Development Programme (UNDP). 2011. Disaster-Conflict Interface: Comparative Experiences. Bureau for Crisis Prevention and Recovery. http://www.undp.org/content/dam/undp/library/crisis%20prevention/ DisasterConflict72p.pdf. Accessed 30 May 2020. United Nations High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR). 2008. Protecting Internally Displaced Persons: A Manual for Law and Policymakers, [Online web]. http://www.unhcr.org/50f955599.pdf. Accessed 29 May 2020.

CHAPTER 17

Gender, Identity and Migration: Concluding Remarks Paula Banerjee and Nasreen Chowdhory

As a discipline, forced migration is a fairly recent field in pedagogy. When it became clear that modern state-formation was often accompanied by large-scale population displacements that resulted in a huge number of people becoming refugees, suddenly there was an upsurge in interest on who these people were. Slowly it became apparent that these people were racially, and perhaps even by religion, different. The population movement came to be recognised as a crisis as it happened in Europe in 2015. What was ignored was the knowledge that population movements happened in all historical periods and not especially during or immediately after World War II (WWII). Until WWII the migration that the Global North witnessed had to do with racially similar people. Even though large groups of people from the Global South went to places like the United

P. Banerjee (*) Department of South and Southeast Asian Studies, University of Calcutta, Kolkata, India Calcutta Research Group, Kolkata, India N. Chowdhory (*) Department of Political Science, University of Delhi, New Delhi, India Calcutta Research Group, Kolkata, India © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2022 N. Chowdhory, P. Banerjee (eds.), Gender, Identity and Migration in India, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-16-5598-2_17

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States, since they were there to fulfil certain basic shortages like that of labour, such as the Chinese railroad workers, who were largely without any rights or entitlements, these people were hardly ever perceived of as equals and therefore benign but nonetheless despised. There was therefore much greater threat perception when racially different people began coming in during decolonisation and demanded social and political rights. With these developments, research on refugees gained grounds in the Global North. Oxford University began its Refugee Studies Centre in 1982. For a long time the research agenda of forced migration studies was dominated by scholars and thinkers from the Global North. Researchers of the Global South were expected to work on case studies that would support the meta-narratives produced in the north. However, with the entry of new group of scholars from the Global South in the last two decades, that picture has changed substantially. These scholars have brought in issues that have completely changed the agenda of research in forced migration. They have pointed out that categorisation of forced migrants—into rigid groups of refugees, IDPs, forced migrants, environmental migrants and economic migrants—is unhelpful to say the least. They have also pointed out that forced migrants are always vulnerable people irrespective of whether the particular vulnerability comes from poverty or political situations within a society, but that it always results in severe persecution. For instance, death caused by genocide or hunger is equally reprehensible and most conflicts at the end are conflicts over resources. As a result of research done by these new-age scholars, new issues such as labour migration and statelessness have become important theme of research. The question of positionality of researchers became a critical question. The issue of ethical dilemma also remained very muted. As was the figure of migrant that changed substantially as research progressed in the Global South. The new kind of subjecthood and ethical questions remained a moot issue. The production of knowledge has become a source of contention, yet hierarchical knowledge-formation remained prominent. Thus it became necessary to bring about new pedagogies and new alliances. The present collection of chapters is a case in point. With new alliances, demands have emerged that knowledge networks in this field should play the role of a bridge between research institutions of the Global North and Global South to take up joint research, that there should be more emphasis on qualitative research and joint leadership of research projects. The challenge is how to escape policy-driven research, because good research always produces policy critiques and policy implications. When around the mid-1990s, forced migration studies began in

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Kolkata. Refugee studies till then had not been taken up as a separate field of research, although there was awareness of bonded and indentured labour, village-to-city migration of labour, and of different forms in which the ‘forced’ comes into play. New writings and reports marked by collaborative research, critical post-coloniality, and a strong sense of the significance of the local in this globalising time started emerging. One can now thus say that forced migration studies have come out of the restrictive framework of refugee studies, and have evolved to embrace many other aspects of migration, and entered a critical post-colonial phase. This present volume is a clear indication of such developments. This volume has four major themes that deal with four different areas: the methodology and production of knowledge in the context of forced migration; labour, development and the migrant body and migrant identity; borders and borderland; and the last major theme of gender, conflict and migration. The book clearly portrays that categories such as refugees, asylum seekers, protracted displacement, statelessness, situations in limbo, refugee laws and conventions, borders, irregular migration, voluntary and forced migration—all these belong to a family of concepts. They are like signs of a phenomenon moving together and making sense only in association with each other. They basically point collectively to a particular power structure. Problematising these concepts and categories is a political task and is aimed at critiquing existing knowledge and power structure. In some cases problematising means showing the impossibility of certain claims; in this volume this is about acknowledging voices of victims of forced migration. This collection of chapters clearly shows the intersectionality of gender, age, religion, location, labour etc. as it constructs the refugee/migrant subjectivities. The authors foreground the ethical relations between knowledge corpus on forced migration and voices of the migrants themselves. The authors of this volume are largely located in the Global South and their knowledge corpus is informed by colonial and post-colonial understandings. Knowledge, as the authors in this book contend, is not just scholarly or scientific knowledge but also knowledge encompassing everyday experiences and social practices. Feminist theory has often questioned a corpus of knowledge that refuses to take into account the voices of the people. It also questions a knowledge base that is disengaged from human experience. One of the takeaways from this volume is that forced migration studies is not viable unless it is informed by the voices of forced migrants themselves. If forced migration is viewed through the legal perspective then the first thing that a forced migrant loses is her right to

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communicate. But the chapters in this volume challenge such a notion and bring to fore the understanding that voices matter, particularly voices of the silenced including people in conflict, on the run, particularly women and children who are habitually silenced. This brings us back to crucial questions of gender in forced migration. Gender is one major variable running like a skein throughout the chapters of this book: not just in the investigation of the ex-Maoist women from Chattisgarh or that of armed Maoist women in Nepal via oral narratives or the examination of lived experiences of internally displaced women but also through written sources like field notes, transcripts, letters, poetries, autobiographies. Gender is an essential category for understanding experiences of forced migration. Gender is often equated with women and that is a common fallacy. But for forced migrants there is a reason for this fallacy because forced migrants are inevitably emasculated and victimised and victims are often feminised in popular perceptions. As Ratna Kapur suggests: ‘the Third World victim subject has come to represent the more victimised subject; that is, the real or authentic victim subject. Feminist politics in the international human rights arena, as well as in parts of the Third World, have promoted this image of the authentic victim subject’.1 The study concerns itself with the subject position of women forced migrants starting from understanding why it is necessary to use a feminist lens to analyse forced migration to something that underlines in one microcosmic instance, in fact, how women are often a crucially ignored and overlooked section of homeless people as they play out roles under the grim fact of forced migration in conflict ridden (and riddled) societies. Interestingly through the prism of lived experiences the authors look at multiple forms of women’s migration that is largely ignored in the corpus of forced migration literature. The chapter on the experiences of four women belonging to different castes and economic backgrounds who were forced to migrate to Delhi post marriage is a case in point. A study such as this that concerns with the gendered nature of migration speaks of the emergence of some of the different forms of labour subjectivities marking our world today. In most of what might be termed the ‘human resources issues’ section of the book, the authors discuss labour subjectivities. In this volume, 1  Ratna Kapur, ‘The Tragedy of Victimization Rhetoric: Resurrecting the ‘‘Native’’ Subject in International/Post-Colonial Feminist Legal Politics.’ Harvard Human Rights Journal Vol. 15. (2002) p. 2.

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labour is often positioned in opposition to development. Again the context of different forms of women’s labour brings up issues of reproductive labourers on the Indian gestational surrogacy market and their interaction with their ‘agents’. For the women who are the reproductive mothers, it becomes a work and the labour they do is ‘reproductive labour’ for nine months for which they are compensated in lieu of the child reproduced. Something as intimate as motherhood is brought in this market of lives and these surrogate mothers navigate the stigma associated with this ‘work’ by using the language of helping the intended mothers. The volume also has a chapter on girls from Kolkata who were trafficked and pushed into prostitution thereby bringing out the proximity of forced migrant women’s labour with that of trafficking and sex work. What facilitates this continuum of trafficking and prostitution is that states have appropriated this image of silent female victim as the true representation of trafficked women. This image has also served the states well because now the state policy makers are able to argue that a police regime has to be imposed on the borders to protect these silent victims. Although such a regime is imposed for the protection of women, women are the most marginalised. The perception of threat derives from women’s sexuality and mobility because mobility ordains women’s sexual availability. It ignores the fact that feminists have for decades argued that even when women are taken to brothels they cannot be devalued as victim, rather their agency as those whose work is a form of labour has to be recognised. The authors writing of labour in this issue are in every instance closely concerned with the lived experiences of women under the shadow of forced migration, what the act of it pushes them into, and how they interact and negotiate with it as well as the repercussions and aftermath of it. They also have a different understanding of women’s labour. Perhaps, this goes some way in whatever small extent to rectify the overwhelming ‘male biases’ in earlier studies on forced migration. The book takes a critical look at how the ramifications and connotations of the act of forced migration create/construct these homeless people, these people with nowhere to ultimately go to, these individuals who have in a sense been forced to fall through the cracks of life and are just being barely allowed to live. In fact, that word ‘bare’ is probably the most appropriate fit to what those sections of the book seem to investigate: the fact that all that is left to these people is ‘bareness’ in life. They seem a very fitting example of the Agamben’s notion of bare bodies. This is perhaps most directly evident in the case of the young generation of the Rohingya

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community in West Bengal. The author focuses on the shocking fact that at the time of life when they are meant to be most energetic and most potentially productive, these Rohingya adolescents and teenagers are just trying to barely stay alive in some way. Another determinant and overriding variable of this bareness in this study is presented in the category of undocumented population from that region which was previously East Bengal and is now Bangladesh. These migrants who have crossed borders into India and are now in what the popular migrant discourse can be termed the ‘citizen-outsider’, a category that seem to question, particularly vis-à-vis its interplay with the subjective constructions of citizenship in everyday life that exist in the legal discourse of the country. But the questions around the existence of these exiled, isolated, ostracised, alienated people go beyond their identity vis-a-vis the border and borderlands and in fact in this volume it is brought centrally in contention with the citizen. Displacement and rehabilitation reveal the terrains of power relationship associated with place/space. That space is political, especially in the context of migrant spaces/places, is a major argument in this volume. There are critical discussions on spaces such as camps, penitentiaries and the home of the forced migrants. Camps, which are considered as exceptional spaces have now become a ‘tool’ of society, an absolutely de-­ exceptionalised space. But this goes beyond a mere meditation that is structural in nature focusing on a space as a ‘site’. The chapters look at the interactions between state and local authorities, and non-governmental actors, and questions about resources, entitlements and rights of the people without nowhere else to go, who are homeless but are now temporarily occupying that ‘space’ or ‘site’ as home. How do women migrants negotiate in such spaces? Are young women relocating after marriage to be considered as voluntary or forced migrants? Within the contours of the universally and culturally sanctified marriage norms, women have very little space to manoeuvre. Once, they relocate to a new geographical space post marriage, their spatial negotiations depend on their spousal/extended family relationships, education and skill levels and economic background. Many a time, they are forced to contribute their labour for the family, willingly or otherwise and their body is valued for its capacity to toil for economic gains. As feminist literature portrays their bodies, then can become machines for reproduction. Their womb or the home of their male child goes some way to rehabilitate them. In turn, the chapters in the book pose important challenges to the forced migration scholarship, keeping the

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politics of post-coloniality and that of Global South. The book therefore challenges many concepts that we have traditionally considered as given. Concepts are linked to several modes such as problematising, thematising, conceptualising, critique, genealogy, dialectical handling, quantifying, observing, narrating, analysing and several others including the ones that are deployed to de-construct a concept. In fact methods turn time into concepts. Forced migration studies are a particular field with specific concepts and its own history. It has policy implications. Also, its concepts are embodiments of social relations. For all these reasons, we usually begin with concepts, and hardly ever with pure descriptions. Even the purest of the descriptions has an underlying concept. Therefore, concepts are like signs. They suggest inherent questions, or research queries that bear the unmistakable imprint of belonging to an age in which the concepts and policies in forced migration studies seem to mistakenly appear as nature-­ imposed necessities instead of products of the politics and economics of this age. In all these kinds of cross-flowering matrices, the book promises an abundant and interesting study of treasures for a student deeply concerned about the issues surrounding forced migration as they manifest themselves in the world, and everything that sparks off from them. Interestingly, the book offers a wide range of ideas based on themes of forced migration and identity with gender as the central figure. The book intends to add value to the existing body of literature by pointing towards a dynamic nature of understandings of critical forced migration.



Annexure

UNITED NATIONS

E Economic and Social Council

Distr. GENERAL E/CN.4/1998/53/Add.2 11 February 1998 Original: ENGLISH

COMMISSION ON HUMAN RIGHTS Fifty-fourth session Item 9 (d) of the provisional agenda

FURTHER PROMOTION AND ENCOURAGEMENT OF HUMAN RIGHTS AND FUNDAMENTAL FREEDOMS, INCLUDING THE QUESTION OF THE PROGRAMME AND METHODS OF WORK OF THE COMMISSION

HUMAN RIGHTS, MASS EXODUSES AND DISPLACED PERSONS Report of the Representative of the Secretary-General, Mr. Francis M. Deng, submitted pursuant to Commission resolution 1997/39

© The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2022 N. Chowdhory, P. Banerjee (eds.), Gender, Identity and Migration in India, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-16-5598-2

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Guiding Principles on Internal Displacement Introduction: Scope and Purpose 1. These Guiding Principles address the specific needs of internally displaced persons worldwide. They identify rights and guarantees relevant to the protection of persons from forced displacement and to their protection and assistance during displacement as well as during return or resettlement and reintegration. 2. For the purposes of these Principles, internally displaced persons are persons or groups of persons who have been forced or obliged to flee or to leave their homes or places of habitual residence, in particular as a result of or in order to avoid the effects of armed conflict, situations of generalized violence, violations of human rights, or natural or human-made disasters, and who have not crossed an internationally recognized State border. 3. These Principles reflect and are consistent with international human rights law and international humanitarian law. They provide guidance to: (a) The Representative of the Secretary-General on internally displaced persons in carrying out his mandate (b) States when faced with the phenomenon of internal displacement (c) All other authorities, groups and persons in their relations with internally displaced persons and (d) Intergovernmental and non-governmental organizations when addressing internal displacement. 4. These Guiding Principles should be disseminated and applied as widely as possible. Section I. General Principles Principle 1 1. Internally displaced persons shall enjoy, in full equality, the same rights and freedoms under international and domestic law as do other persons in their country. They shall not be discriminated against in the enjoyment of any rights and freedoms on the ground that they are internally displaced.

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2. These Principles are without prejudice to individual criminal responsibility under international law, in particular relating to genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes. Principle 2 1. These Principles shall be observed by all authorities, groups and persons irrespective of their legal status and applied without any adverse distinction. The observance of these Principles shall not affect the legal status of any authorities, groups or persons involved. 2. These Principles shall not be interpreted as restricting, modifying or impairing the provisions of any international human rights or international humanitarian law instrument or rights granted to persons under domestic law. In particular, these Principles are without prejudice to the right to seek and enjoy asylum in other countries. Principle 3 1. National authorities have the primary duty and responsibility to provide protection and humanitarian assistance to internally displaced persons within their jurisdiction. 2. Internally displaced persons have the right to request and to receive protection and humanitarian assistance from these authorities. They shall not be persecuted or punished for making such a request. Principle 4 1. These Principles shall be applied without discrimination of any kind, such as race, colour, sex, language, religion or belief, political or other opinion, national, ethnic or social origin, legal or social status, age, disability, property, birth, or on any other similar criteria. 2. Certain internally displaced persons, such as children, especially unaccompanied minors, expectant mothers, mothers with young children, female heads of household, persons with disabilities and elderly persons, shall be entitled to protection and assistance required by their condition and to treatment which takes into account their special needs.

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Section II. Principles Relating to Protection from Displacement Principle 5 All authorities and international actors shall respect and ensure respect for their obligations under international law, including human rights and humanitarian law, in all circumstances, so as to prevent and avoid conditions that might lead to displacement of persons. Principle 6 1. Every human being shall have the right to be protected against being arbitrarily displaced from his or her home or place of habitual residence. 2. The prohibition of arbitrary displacement includes displacement: (a) When it is based on policies of apartheid, “ethnic cleansing” or similar practices aimed at/or resulting in altering the ethnic, religious or racial composition of the affected population. (b) In situations of armed conflict, unless the security of the civilians involved or imperative military reasons so demand. (c) In cases of large-scale development projects, which are not justified by compelling and overriding public interests. (d) In cases of disasters, unless the safety and health of those affected requires their evacuation. And (e) When it is used as a collective punishment. 3. Displacement shall last no longer than required by the circumstances. Principle 7 1. Prior to any decision requiring the displacement of persons, the authorities concerned shall ensure that all feasible alternatives are explored in order to avoid displacement altogether. Where no alternatives exist, all measures shall be taken to minimize displacement and its adverse effects.

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2. The authorities undertaking such displacement shall ensure, to the greatest practicable extent, that proper accommodation is provided to the displaced persons, that such displacements are effected in satisfactory conditions of safety, nutrition, health and hygiene, and that members of the same family are not separated. 3. If displacement occurs in situations other than during the emergency stages of armed conflicts and disasters, the following guarantees shall be complied with: (a) A specific decision shall be taken by a State authority empowered by law to order measures. (b) Adequate measures shall be taken to guarantee to those to be displaced full information on the reasons and procedures for their displacement and, where applicable, on compensation and relocation. (c) The free and informed consent of those to be displaced shall be sought. (d) The authorities concerned shall endeavour to involve those affected, particularly women, in the planning and management of their relocation. (e) Law enforcement measures, where required, shall be carried out by competent legal authorities. And (f) The right to an effective remedy, including the review of such decisions by appropriate judicial authorities, shall be respected. Principle 8 Displacement shall not be carried out in a manner that violates the rights to life, dignity, liberty and security of those affected. Principle 9 States are under a particular obligation to protect against the displacement of indigenous peoples, minorities, peasants, pastoralists and other groups with a special dependency on and attachment to their lands.

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Section III. Principles Relating to Protection During Displacement Principle 10 1. Every human being has the inherent right to life which shall be protected by law. No one shall be arbitrarily deprived of his or her life. Internally displaced persons shall be protected in particular against: (a) Genocide (b) Murder (c) Summary or arbitrary executions and (d) Enforced disappearances, including abduction or unacknowledged detention, threatening or resulting in death. Threats and incitement to commit any of the foregoing acts shall be prohibited. 2. Attacks or other acts of violence against internally displaced persons who do not or no longer participate in hostilities are prohibited in all circumstances. Internally displaced persons shall be protected, in particular, against: (a) Direct or indiscriminate attacks or other acts of violence, including the creation of areas wherein attacks on civilians are permitted (b) Starvation as a method of combat (c) Their use to shield military objectives from attack or to shield, favour or impede military operations (d) Attacks against their camps or settlements and (e) The use of anti-personnel landmines. Principle 11 1. Every human being has the right to dignity and physical, mental and moral integrity. 2. Internally displaced persons, whether or not their liberty has been restricted, shall be protected in particular against: (a) Rape, mutilation, torture, cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment and other outrages upon personal dignity,

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such as acts of gender-specific violence, forced prostitution and any form of indecent assault (b) Slavery or any contemporary form of slavery, such as sale into marriage, sexual exploitation, or forced labour of children and (c) Acts of violence intended to spread terror among internally displaced persons. Threats and incitement to commit any of the foregoing acts shall be prohibited. Principle 12 1. Every human being has the right to liberty and security of person. No one shall be subjected to arbitrary arrest or detention. 2. To give effect to this right for internally displaced persons, they shall not be interned in or confined to a camp. If in exceptional circumstances such internment or confinement is absolutely necessary, it shall not last longer than required by the circumstances. 3. Internally displaced persons shall be protected from discriminatory arrest and detention as a result of their displacement. 4. In no case shall internally displaced persons be taken hostage. Principle 13 1. In no circumstances shall displaced children be recruited nor be required or permitted to take part in hostilities. 2. Internally displaced persons shall be protected against discriminatory practices of induction into any armed forces or groups as a result of their displacement. In particular any cruel, inhuman or degrading practices that compel compliance or punish non-compliance with recruitment are prohibited in all circumstances. Principle 14 1. Every internally displaced person has the right to liberty of movement and freedom to choose his or her residence. 2. In particular, internally displaced persons have the right to move freely in and out of camps or other settlements.

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Principle 15 Internally displaced persons have: ( a) The right to seek safety in another part of the country; (b) The right to leave their country; (c) The right to seek asylum in another country; and (d) The right to be protected against forcible return to or resettlement in any place where their life, safety, liberty and/or health would be at risk. Principle 16 1. All internally displaced persons have the right to know the fate and whereabouts of missing relatives. 2. The authorities concerned shall endeavour to establish the fate and whereabouts of internally displaced persons reported missing, and cooperate with relevant international organizations engaged in this task. They shall inform the next of kin on the progress of the investigation and notify them of any result. 3. The authorities concerned shall endeavour to collect and identify the mortal remains of those deceased, prevent their despoliation or mutilation and facilitate the return of those remains to the next of kin or dispose of them respectfully. 4. Grave sites of internally displaced persons should be protected and respected in all circumstances. Internally displaced persons should have the right of access to the grave sites of their deceased relatives. Principle 17 1. Every human being has the right to respect of his or her family life. 2. To give effect to this right for internally displaced persons, family members who wish to remain together shall be allowed to do so. 3. Families which are separated by displacement should be reunited as quickly as possible. All appropriate steps shall be taken to expedite the reunion of such families, particularly when children are involved. The responsible authorities shall facilitate inquiries made by family members and encourage and cooperate with the work of humanitarian organizations engaged in the task of family reunification.

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4. Members of internally displaced families whose personal liberty has been restricted by internment or confinement in camps shall have the right to remain together. Principle 18 1. All internally displaced persons have the right to an adequate standard of living. 2. At the minimum, regardless of the circumstances, and without discrimination, competent authorities shall provide internally displaced persons with and ensure safe access to: (a) (b) (c) (d)

Essential food and potable water; Basic shelter and housing; Appropriate clothing; and Essential medical services and sanitation.

3. Special efforts should be made to ensure the full participation of women in the planning and distribution of these basic supplies. Principle 19 1. All wounded and sick internally displaced persons as well as those with disabilities shall receive to the fullest extent practicable and with the least possible delay, the medical care and attention they require, without distinction on any grounds other than medical ones. When necessary, internally displaced persons shall have access to psychological and social services. 2. Special attention should be paid to the health needs of women, including access to female health care providers and services, such as reproductive health care, as well as appropriate counselling for victims of sexual and other abuses. 3. Special attention should also be given to the prevention of contagious and infectious diseases, including AIDS, among internally displaced persons. Principle 20 1. Every human being has the right to recognition everywhere as a person before the law.

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2. To give effect to this right for internally displaced persons, the authorities concerned shall issue to them all documents necessary for the enjoyment and exercise of their legal rights, such as passports, personal identification documents, birth certificates and marriage certificates. In particular, the authorities shall facilitate the issuance of new documents or the replacement of documents lost in the course of displacement, without imposing unreasonable conditions, such as requiring the return to one’s area of habitual residence in order to obtain these or other required documents. 3. Women and men shall have equal rights to obtain such necessary documents and shall have the right to have such documentation issued in their own names. Principle 21 1. No one shall be arbitrarily deprived of property and possessions. 2. The property and possessions of internally displaced persons shall in all circumstances be protected, in particular, against the following acts: (a) Pillage; (b) Direct or indiscriminate attacks or other acts of violence; (c) Being used to shield military operations or objectives; (d) Being made the object of reprisal; and (e) Being destroyed or appropriated as a form of collective punishment. 3. Property and possessions left behind by internally displaced persons should be protected against destruction and arbitrary and illegal appropriation, occupation or use. Principle 22 1. Internally displaced persons, whether or not they are living in camps, shall not be discriminated against as a result of their displacement in the enjoyment of the following rights: (a) The rights to freedom of thought, conscience, religion or belief, opinion and expression; (b) The right to seek freely opportunities for employment and to participate in economic activities;

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(c) The right to associate freely and participate equally in community affairs; (d) The right to vote and to participate in governmental and public affairs, including the right to have access to the means necessary to exercise this right; and (e) The right to communicate in a language they understand. Principle 23 1. Every human being has the right to education. 2. To give effect to this right for internally displaced persons, the authorities concerned shall ensure that such persons, in particular displaced children, receive education which shall be free and compulsory at the primary level. Education should respect their cultural identity, language and religion. 3. Special efforts should be made to ensure the full and equal participation of women and girls in educational programmes. 4. Education and training facilities shall be made available to internally displaced persons, in particular adolescents and women, whether or not living in camps, as soon as conditions permit. Section IV. Principles Relating to Humanitarian Assistance Principle 24 1. All humanitarian assistance shall be carried out in accordance with the principles of humanity and impartiality and without discrimination. 2. Humanitarian assistance to internally displaced persons shall not be diverted, in particular for political or military reasons. Principle 25 1. The primary duty and responsibility for providing humanitarian assistance to internally displaced persons lie with national authorities. 2. International humanitarian organizations and other appropriate actors have the right to offer their services in support of the internally ­displaced. Such an offer shall not be regarded as an unfriendly act or an interference in a State’s internal affairs and shall be consid-

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ered in good faith. Consent thereto shall not be arbitrarily withheld, particularly when authorities concerned are unable or unwilling to provide the required humanitarian assistance. 3. All authorities concerned shall grant and facilitate the free passage of humanitarian assistance and grant persons engaged in the provision of such assistance rapid and unimpeded access to the internally displaced. Principle 26 Persons engaged in humanitarian assistance, their transport and supplies shall be respected and protected. They shall not be the object of attack or other acts of violence. Principle 27 1. International humanitarian organizations and other appropriate actors when providing assistance should give due regard to the protection needs and human rights of internally displaced persons and take appropriate measures in this regard. In so doing, these organizations and actors should respect relevant international standards and codes of conduct. 2. The preceding paragraph is without prejudice to the protection responsibilities of international organizations mandated for this purpose, whose services may be offered or requested by States. S ection V. Principles Relating to Return, Resettlement and Reintegration Principle 28 1. Competent authorities have the primary duty and responsibility to establish conditions, as well as provide the means, which allow internally displaced persons to return voluntarily, in safety and with dignity, to their homes or places of habitual residence, or to resettle voluntarily in another part of the country. Such authorities shall endeavour to facilitate the reintegration of returned or resettled internally displaced persons.

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2. Special efforts should be made to ensure the full participation of internally displaced persons in the planning and management of their return or resettlement and reintegration. Principle 29 1. Internally displaced persons who have returned to their homes or places of habitual residence or who have resettled in another part of the country shall not be discriminated against as a result of their having been displaced. They shall have the right to participate fully and equally in public affairs at all levels and have equal access to public services. 2. Competent authorities have the duty and responsibility to assist returned and/or resettled internally displaced persons to recover, to the extent possible, their property and possessions which they left behind or were dispossessed of upon their displacement. When recovery of such property and possessions is not possible, competent authorities shall provide or assist these persons in obtaining appropriate compensation or another form of just reparation. Principle 30 All authorities concerned shall grant and facilitate for international humanitarian organizations and other appropriate actors, in the exercise of their respective mandates, rapid access to internally displaced persons to assist in their return or resettlement and reintegration.

Index

A Acknowledging vulnerability, 93 Alternate discourses, 49 Alternate ordering, 68 Armed Communist movement, 12 Autonomous identity or agency, 65

Civil wars, 4 Commercial surrogacy, 165 Complex emergencies, 6 Concentration camp, 57 Counter discourses, 45 Cultures, 3

B The barbed-wire aesthetic of camps, 56 Bare life, 60 Bhadramahila, 50 Border area, 264–278 Borderland district, 235–251 Borderland/s, 3, 11 Borderlines, 3 Borders, 3, 11

D Development, 9 Dialectics of positionality, 87–88 Displacement, 4, 10 Dispossession, 4, 8, 81–97 Dominant migrant, 43

C Camps in South Asia, 8 Camp space, 8 Capitalism, 2 Centrality of margins, 74

E Emerging care economy, 124–126 Epistemological innovation, 48 Essentialised subject positions, 141 Established practices, 56 Ethics of witnessing, 3, 8, 81–97 Everyday experience, 236–240 Expulsion of scape-goat communities, 59

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2022 N. Chowdhory, P. Banerjee (eds.), Gender, Identity and Migration in India, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-16-5598-2

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INDEX

F Facilitators, 165–182 Female body, 119–136 Feminist epistemologies, 3 Feminist methodology, 48 Feminization of migration, 85–87 Feminizing domestic work, 122–124 Fluid borders, 3 Forced migration, 4 Functionality of ‘segregation,’ 67 Fuzzy cultural boundaries, 73

Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs), 324–325 Intersection of power, 3

G Gender, 8, 81–97, 341–347 Gender and invisible migration, 185–201 Gendered analysis, 85–87 Gendered division of labour, 2 Gendered forms of political engagement, 3 Gender-neutral, 45 Geographical positioning, 105

L Labour, 9 Languages, 3 Legacies of partition as conquest, 3 Legacy of partition, 11, 253–280

H Histories of partitions, 3 Humanitarian and human rights law, 2 “Humanitarian” management, 63 Humanitarian method, 6 Humanitarian roots, 6 I Identity and place, 3 Identity/ies, 3, 11, 341–347 Indian gestational surrogacy market, 165–182 Innovative research methodologies, 7 Institutional accountability, 93 Institutionalisation of displacement, 143

J Janmabhumi, 248 K Knowledge formation, 13

M Making women partners, 287–288 Maoist People’s War of Nepal, 12 Marginalised and under-privileged geographies, 5 Marxian notion of praxis, 84 Mass human mobility, 85–87 Materiality of the global, 99–114 Method as intervention, 8, 81–97 Methodological nationalism, 3 Methodologies and the production of knowledge, 7 Methodologies of dismemberment, 3 Migrant body, 9 Migrant identity, 11 Migrant lives, 235–251 Migration, 341–347 Militant research conundrum, 101 Minority persecution, 4 Mixed and massive population flows, 3 Mobility, 112–114 Modern political community, 45

 INDEX 

N Namashudras in Bangladesh, 247 Nationalism, 2 Negotiations and navigation, 235–251 Non-combatant roles, 285 Non-dialogic mechanism, 6 P Partition of states, 4 People of borderland, 11, 253–280 Politics of migrations, 9, 99–114 Population growth, 263 Post-colonial, 2 Post-coloniality, 3 Post-imperial, 2 Post-neoliberal, 2 Post war rehabilitation and reconstruction, 58 Precarisation of labour, 105 Product of social activity, 10 Q Question of the political subject, 109–112 R Raw data, 1 Refugee camps, 58 Refugee law, 2 Refugee management, 56 Refugee villages, 71 Reproductive laborers, 10, 165–182 S Sanlaap Home, 213 ‘Seeing like the state,’ 3

Sex trafficking (India), 185–201 Social constructions, 242–243 Space of exception, 8 Spatial consciousness, 10 Spatial justice, 10 Srikakulam Armed Struggle, 285 State-endorsed violence, 4 Structural victimisation, 11, 253–280 ‘Supermodernity,’ 69 Surrogacy industry, 173–181 T Transnational migration studies, 3 V Value, 119–136 Victims to vanguards, 13, 321 Vulnerability, 19 W Welfare villages, 71 Women in India’s CPI (Maoist) Ranks, 12 Women in South Asia, 4 Work, 119–136 X Xenophobic policies, 4 Y Young Rohingyas, 207–230

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