Prof Hari Om
Convinced that Rohingyas have all the potential of jeopardizing national security, many concerned citizens, social organizations and strategic affairs experts have been demanding their deportation. Reports suggest that thousands of Rohingyas have settled in many parts of the country. However, an overwhelming majority of these illegal aliens from Myanmar is found in the highly sensitive Jammu city and its adjoining area and Jammu province’s border district of Samba.
According to one estimate, there are nearly 8,000 Rohingya families living in these area since years and each Rohingya family consists of 10 to 12 members, and even more. To be more precise, their number could be around one lakh. These Rohingyas have been settled or living at more than 40 places in and around Jammu city, including Narwal, Bathindi; near Jammu Railway Station, vital army camps at Sunjuwan, Nagrota and Kaluchak; and at strategic high hills along the national highway across River Tawi. And, there are umpteen reports which suggest that many Rohingyas have not only got Aadhar Cards, Ration Cards, Sim Card, Voter-Id Cards and Pan Cards, but also constructed their own houses after getting Permanent Resident Certificates. So much so, they have been provided water and electric connections and set up their own market in Jammu, styled as Burmese Market. According to J&K Government, “some non-government organizations (NGOs), namely Sakhawat, run by Muhammad-ul-Umar of Srinagar, along with Dr Rashid, son of Ghulam Muhammad of Vidhata Nagar, Bathindi, Jammu, SR Institute of Development, based at Rambagh, Srinagar, a New Delhi-based NGO, namely Daji, run by Ravi Hemadri, and Save the Children, run by Neha Gandotra, are helping them in cash and kind from time to time”. The J&K Government has also named three madrassas and their teachers, which have been associated with Rohingyas. “They include Madrassa Raiaz Ul Uloom Tahfaz Ul Quran Muhajreen, Narwal Bala, Madrassa Tul Mahajreen, Jallalabad, Sunjuwan, near Gole Masjid, and Dharo Alam in Jugi Railway Station, Bari Brahamana, Jammu. Eleven teachers have been associated with Madrassa Raiaz Uloom Tahfaz Ul Quran and 12 associated with Madrassa Tul Muhajreen. Only one teacher was associated with Dharo Alam Madrassa”.
The most significant aspect of the whole situation is that all the Kashmir-based political and separatist outfits, including Pakistan-based, civil society groups, legal fraternity and others extend their unstinted support to the Rohingyas, saying “it’s a human issue”. Former J&K CM Mehbooba Mufti, who only on Monday, Nov 14, 2022, urged the people of Kashmir to “unite to achieve more than special status like India did against the British”, has even gone to the extent of saying that “initiation of deportation proceedings against Rohingyas would not be appropriate”. It’s a different story that all of them, without any exception, always dismissed, and continue to dismiss, the Hindu-Sikh refugees from Pakistan living in Jammu since their migration in 1947 as “foreigners” and termed, and continue to term, “their presence in Jammu as an attempt at changing J&K’s demography” and opposed, continue to oppose, any right to any non-Kashmiri in J&K on the same outrageous ground.
Did the Rohingyas come to Jammu on their own or they were brought to Jammu by certain mischievous elements to promote their sinister agenda? Reports suggest that they were motivated to leave Delhi and settle in Jammu and they were exported to Jammu from West Bengal in 2008 and ever since then, they have been coming to Jammu at regular intervals, as they consider Jammu “as their second home”. For example, Molvi Yunus, who has been living in Jammu city since 2008, has said: “I crossed into Bangladesh from Burma (Myanmar) when persecution of Muslims became unbearable. From Calcutta I shifted with my family to Delhi where I begged for food to keep myself and my family alive. It was in Delhi that I met a Kashmiri who told me J&K is a state in India where Muslims lived in majority. I came here in 2008”.
What Molvi Yunus revealed is very significant. But what is all the more significant and revealing is what another Rohingya, Mohammad Yusuf, head of a Jammu-based Rohingya camp, has said. While explaining why they landed in Jammu, several thousand kilometres away from their homes, he said: “We were boarded into a train (read Sealdah Express or Himgiri Express) and asked to embark at the last station (read Jammu) when the whole train gets empty. We were not aware that it is Jammu. We came to know at the railway station that some Rohingyas are living here and met them. This is how we reached here”. Take, for example, what Rohingya Rafiqi said in this regard. It is also important to underline what another Rohingya, Rafiqi, has said: He said: “we came to Jammu in 2009. Jammu is a second home to us now”.
What these Rohingyas have revealed raise many questions. Why did the said Kashmiri induce Rohingyas to quit Delhi and settle in Jammu? What was the motive? Was it to change Jammu’s demography and help create Kashmir-like situation in Jammu? Why all the Rohingyas were settled in Jammu city and around it and that, too, at strategic locations? Why no Rohingya was settled anywhere in Kashmir or Kargil? Who exported the Rohingyas from West Bengal? What was the intention? Why did not the Rohingyas get down in Bihar, Jharkhand, UP, Uttrakhand, Haryana, Punjab and HP – the stated located between Bengal and Jammu? Why the Bengal-based exporter(s) exported the Rohingyas to Jammu alone? How could the Rohingyas obtain vital documents? Why certain NGOs and dubious organizations like the Amnesty International fund the Rohingyas and fight on their behalf in courts, including the highest court of the country?
These are some of the questions which need definite answers. Only a high-powered committee set up by the Union Home Ministry could find who brought Rohingyas to Jammu and to achieve what. Now that strategic affairs experts and security forces see “this Rohingya population as a potential threat in the militancy-hit state close to a highly hostile neighbour, it would be only desirable to constitute a high-powered committee to look into the whole issue. Remember, the “insecurity grew after one of the two foreign militants killed in a shootout in South Kashmir turned out to be a native of Myanmar”. Also remember, a military official called “the Rohingyas a ticking time bomb”.
