Write An Essay On The Role Of Democracy In Rohingya

INTRODUCTION

The Rohingyas are often called the “nowhere people”. A title that looms over the bleak situation the world has thrown them in. The Rohingya Muslims are indigenous to Myanmar where they have not only faced gross violence and persecution but have also been denied citizenship. What has ensued thereafter can only be seen as a game of ping pong being played with human lives. Using trawlers, traffickers have got them on the sea, but most countries such as Thailand, and Malaysia are unwilling to let them embark on their shores. About 40000 Rohingyas are supposed to have come into the various states of India as refugees: an act that should make Indian authorities and the government finally awaken from their denial of the Rohingya problem.

India and China

Myanmar calls

This stance taken by the Indian State, seemingly rooted in principle, is the cause for much cognitive dissonance. There are two aspects to democracy - while one side of it is purely functional, in terms of elections and structures; the other is far more intangible but is the essence of democracy itself. The foundational principle of democracy is the inalienable rights of all the citizens living within the borders of its country. A honest support of the spirit of democracy, in the context of Myanmar, is for India to step up and go beyond the easy option, to look beyond the tag of democracy that it thinks it is supporting. As the self-proclaimed bastion of democracy, India must pressurize the government of Myanmar to behave in a truly democratic manner, by recognising the ethnicity of the Rohingyas and granting them citizenship. It is time India acknowledged that Myanmar symbolises a hollow democracy, on account of the genocide that is carried on their soil on people of their own kind. At best, citing democracy as an excuse is a justification for inaction; a feeble and inaccurate one at