Rohingya refugees in Rakhine State, Burma Myanmar. Image from Flickr by European Commission DG/ECHO CC: BY-NC-ND 2.0 Year 2013 Many Indians are accusing the government of turning its back on human rights and the country's history of welcoming refugees with its declaration that it plans to deport the estimated 40,000 Rohingya Muslims living in India, including the 16,500 registered with the United Nations refugee agency. Recent violence in Myanmar between Rohingya insurgents and Myanmar security forces has forced tens of thousands of Rohingyas to flee the country. But the Rohingya people have long faced persecution in Buddhist-majority Myanmar. They are effectively stateless, as Myanmar does not grant them citizenship, despite historical evidence linking them to the country's Rakhine state. In the past decades, the more than one million Rohingyas living in Myanmar have faced crackdowns by Myanmar military, leading to a widespread exodus of Rohingya refugees to neighboring Bangladesh and India through land and sea routes, and to nearby countries Thailand, Indonesia and Malaysia by sea. After the latest flare-up of violence, UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said “we are facing a risk” of ethnic cleansing, and some have gone further, labeling what's happening a “genocide.” Hundreds have been killed, and witnesses have reported Myanmar troops shooting civilians and burning homes. The situation is grim, but the Indian government, under the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), doesn't view the Rohingya people living in India as refugees, but as “illegal immigrants.” As India's Union Minister of State for Home Affairs Kiren Rijiju recently put it: I want to tell the international organizations whether the Rohingyas are registered under the United Nations Human Rights Commission or not. They are illegal immigrants in India and since they are not legal immigrants, they stand to be deported. Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi made an official visit to Myanmar during the first week of September and offered his support for Myanmar's leader Aung San Suu Ki, a recipient of Nobel Prize who has been widely condemned for allowing the brutal treatment of the Rohingya under her watch. He seemed to share her version of events, which is uncritical of the military and places the blame entirely at the feet of “terrorists.” India has not signed the 1951 UN Refugee Convention or its 1967 Protocol, unlike the majority of the world. But this might not be enough to justify deporting the Rohingya back to Myanmar, Mani Shankar Aiyar explained for news channel NDTV: Surely Modi's government must know of the terrible suffering these Rohingya have fled from. Sending them back (“deportation”) amounts to transgressing the well-established principle of “non-refoulement“, that is, the principle in customary international law that no refugees may be pushed back to their place of origin if there is any apprehension that such persons will be subjected to the very suffering from which they fled. Two Rohingya men, Mohammad Salimullah and Mohammad Shaqir, have petitioned the Supreme Court against deportation; their lawyer has argued it would violate the constitutional rights to equality, life and personal liberty. The final hearing is to be held on September 11. The legal aspects aside, many Indians, such as politician and lawyer Prashant Bhushan, have balked at the notion of deporting the Rohingyas, asserting that India has a history of accepting refugees from all walks of life and religion without discrimination: Rohingyas facing severe persecution,genocide in Myanmar. India welcomes all persecuted minorities,but not Rohingyas? https://t.co/1XN79L4FWu — Prashant Bhushan (@pbhushan1) September 5, 2017 For example, in the past India has helped vulnerable populations fleeing from neighboring countries, including Sri Lankan Tamils, Afghans and Tibetans. And noted journalist Shekhar Gupta argued: Civilised nations don't throw out refugees. India shd work for Rohingyas’ safe return by diplomatically pressing Myanmar to stop persecution https://t.co/oKR43P8ULd — Shekhar Gupta (@ShekharGupta) September 4, 2017 The BJP government under Modi has ushered in a surge of Hindu nationalism, an ideology that believes the country should conform to Hindu, not secular, values. This in turn has led to a rise in animosity toward India's Muslim community, who are the country's largest religious minority. Enmity towards Muslims is also tinged by India's turbulent history with neighboring Muslim-majority Pakistan — once the same British colony, the two were violently partitioned along religious lines in 1947, and the relationship has remained rocky ever since.