Refugees in India
[citation needed] Over several centuries, India has offered shelter to people fleeing from persecution in their homeland.
[7] The descendants of newer Zoroastrian immigrants, fleeing the persecution of non-Muslims by Iran's Qajar dynasty (1794–1925), are known as Iranis.
Since India became an independent country, its government has recognised legal immigrants from only Tibet and Sri Lanka as refugees from the past, providing free education and identification documentation to the former.
[18] After Citizenship Amendment Bill 2019 was passed on 12 December 2019 in the Parliament of India, migrants that came as refugees from persecuted minority communities like Hindus, Sikhs, Buddhists, Jains, Parsis, and Christians from neighbouring Afghanistan, Bangladesh, and Pakistan before 31/12/2014 would be eligible for Indian citizenship,[19][20][21] except Muslims, who make up the majority of the three countries.
[23][24] There has been concern raised at the lack of inclusion of several Non-Muslim countries around India in the Citizenship Bill, such as Sri Lanka, over whom Shiv Sena and several religious figures have raised concern over the citizenship status of Tamil-speaking Hindus who were allowed to legally settle in the Indian state of Tamil Nadu due to previous discrimination on the island, and Nepal and Bhutan, the latter of which is accused of discriminating against Hindus through a Buddhist-only society.
"[35] On 9 August 2012, the Supreme Court heard a public interest litigation petition for the deportation of illegal migrants.
[37][38] The Indian government has allowed the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) in India to operate a programme for them.
Chakma immigrants[44] from Bangladesh have settled in the southern part of Mizoram because they were displaced by the construction of the Kaptai Dam on the Karnaphuli River in 1962.
[47] In 2001, the BBC reported that many Bangladeshi Hindu families had entered India to escape repression in Bangladesh because they were members of minority religious groups.
[48][49][50] Following the partition of India, massive population exchanges occurred between the two newly formed nations, spanning several months.
Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru agreed to allow Tibetan refugees to settle in India until their eventual return to Tibet.
Three more settlements were built in Karnataka: Rabgayling in Gurupura village near Hunsur, Dhondenling at Oderapalya near Kollegal, and Doeguling at Mundgod in Uttara Kannada.
Jeerango in Gajapati district, Odisha, has a large Tibetan community and South Asia's largest Buddhist monastery.
A document called the Registration Certificate (RC) is a permit for Tibetans to stay in India, renewed every year or half-year depending on the area.
Another official document, the Indian Identity Certificate, nicknamed "Yellow Books", allows Tibetans to travel abroad.
The Citizenship Amendment Act of 2019 (passed on the 11 December 2019) gives a path to Indian citizenship for Hindu, Sikh, Buddhist, Jain, Parsi, and Christian religious minorities from Pakistan, Bangladesh and Afghanistan that have suffered religious persecution (provided they arrived in India before December 31, 2014).
The practitioners of Indic religions (Buddhists, Hindus, Jains and Sikhs) who are persecuted in other countries are generally accepted as refugees in India.
[59] A total of 5,655 firms, ranches, farms, and agricultural estates were reallocated; cars, homes, and other household goods were also seized.
Most Sri Lankans are settled in the southern states of Tamil Nadu (in the cities of Chennai, Madurai, Tiruchirappalli, and Coimbatore), Karnataka (in Bengaluru), and Kerala.
Between 1950 and 2020, it is estimated that there somewhere 3.5 Lakhs Pakistani Hindus living in India specially in the northern parts of Delhi, Punjab, Rajasthan, Gujarat and Haryana.
That number dropped sharply to 15,000 as most of them took refugee in India afterwards when the Islamic militant mujahideen was in power during the 1990s and remained at that level during the Taliban regime.
