Rohingya Muslims in Hyderabad: field notes from the refugee camps

Mahaprajna Nayak

In 2013, I came across a digital campaign called OpRohingya, spearheaded by the Internet collective Anonymous, which sought to draw global attention to the plight of Rohingya Muslims belonging to the Rakhine province of the South-east Asian nation Myanmar, erstwhile Burma. There were reports of sustained engagement between internet activists and Rohingyas on the ground. The digital campaign was preceded by a Twitter storm to the same effect earlier that year. By January 2013, over 5000 Rohingyas had crossed borders and were seeking refuge in India and Bangladesh. Rohingya Muslims are one of the worst persecuted communities in contemporary history. They have been systematically discriminated against or to be precise, disowned, by their own government in Myanmar and purged by the Buddhist monks acting with impunity. All eyes were on the government led by the crusader of democracy and Nobel laureate Aung San Suu Kyi. Incidentally, Suu Kyi’s refusal to accept Rohingya Muslims as legitimate citizens drew the ire of the international community and human rights watch.

A quick search on the internet and a couple of mail exchanges later, I landed in the office of the volunteer association that worked with the UNHCR ( United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees) to instate Rohingya migrants in the refugee camps in Hyderabad. The office building was nondescript but easily accessible in the midst of a busy Old City routine. In my very first meeting, the Director, Azhar, asked what my objective was. I said I was trying to understand the social media practices among refugees. He didn’t seem impressed. Perhaps it was in my head, but I felt a tinge of disapproval. The objective was not serious enough. I must say, in the midst of a humanitarian crisis, uttering the word social media seemed flamboyant and not-so-empathetic. Perhaps ethnography and the human subject are inextricably bound to guilt and apology. Is any enquiry worth making people revisit trauma? Is any enquiry worth the breach of privacy however little that be?

Azhar said all refugee camps were more or less the same. I could go and just observe them. He was quite stern when he asked me not to talk about anything that would ‘give them ideas’. As patronising as it sounded, I got a sense of what he meant through the course of my visits to the camps.

I was introduced to Sharda and Afrin, the on-field coordinators for the association. I was to spend the next few days with them on their rounds to enumerate and assess the Rohingya refugees.

It was the summer of 2014. We were supposed to meet Ibrahim at the Indiana Restaurant. I had never seen the beyond-Charminar face of Hyderabad. In fact, I had very little idea of Old City in itself. So, when Sharda, Afrin and I caught an auto-rickshaw to Kishenbagh, I was busy trying to figure out why people romanticised Old City so much. Perhaps, it was the general sense of nostalgia the space seemed to be screaming of. Charminar, the place, and Charminar, the historical structure, do not pretend to be mutually inclusive. There are shops and thelas bustling with different kinds of businesses; from petty to prosperous. It somehow reminded me of Kolkata, with its colonial buildings and the crowd bursting in seams. The palaces and the structures were reminiscent of Nizam’s prosperity. The voices reverberated with Hyderabadi Hindi, a colloquial and quite an endearing mix of Urdu and Hindi.

“You see the cemetery over there? They are cleaning up for Jumma,” Afrin pulled me out of my reverie. I looked around as the autorickshaw sped ahead.

“So, you are fasting today? Does it tire you out?,” I asked.

“No, no. It’s a matter of habit now,” she said in spirited animation.

Sharda joined the conversation. She began talking about the refugee camps. I was curious if there was a fear of demolition of the camps. Both of them gave a reassuring smile and explained how the campsites were the property belonging to local musclemen. They had donated the land for the refugees, and given their political clout, the possibility of external intervention into the camp was remote. It made me wonder if the help for the Rohingyas came from the Muslim community because they practised the same faith. Sharda would say the connection is not necessary. Quite ironically, the external intervention was an implicit reference to the administrative machinery of the State. The State was the external from which the refugees had to be secured, protected.

I was expecting a ghettoized piece of land, but Kishenbagh seemed like any other locality. We got down from the autorickshaw. Ibrahim was waiting there with two other boys. They led the way. We walked as Ibrahim talked. There were some more Rohingya families who had escaped from Myanmar. They had to be enlisted. Ibrahim was among those refugees who had managed their economic prospects to the point of being able to buy a motorcycle and rent a house for INR 4,000 a month.

We reached the local ice factory. It was merely a factory amidst a dull, dusty, housing locality. Perhaps it was the heat which made it look so insipid. The houses around were unassuming, the floors stony and unpolished. It literally offered just a roof over the head.

Afrin was a trained nurse. She helped with the health concerns and hygiene practices of the refugees and facilitated their access to the local government hospital. “They have no sense of hygiene. They don’t bathe for days together. We are tired of teaching them basic hygienic practices,” Afrin exclaimed with displeasure.

Sharda coordinated with the field on a general basis. Her job was to enumerate refugee families, keep a record of their occupation, income, etc. Both of them worked for a voluntary association for refugees. Soon, they got busy gathering information from the refugees working at the ice factory, as I sat listening. Meanwhile, I asked Ibrahim if the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (UNHCR) Refugee card enabled them to get a SIM card for mobile communication, legally. It didn’t. The UNHCR card protects them from police and authorities. It’s of no immediate relevance. They can’t even book a railway ticket based on that! The Refugee card does not guarantee trust. Rather, it is through cohabitation and labour within the locality over a period of time, that created trust. That helped them get a SIM.

I wanted to know whether he used the internet on his mobile phone. The boys standing beside him smiled and quickly responded with an enunciation typical to Hyderabadi Hindi. “Hau. We all use the internet.”

“What do you use it for?”

“Facebook.”

“And?”

“Sometimes news. About our country you know.”

“What kind of friends do you have on Facebook? Friends back home? Burma?”

“Yes. Friends.”

The last response was coy, unconvincing and reluctant. I instinctively understood social media platforms were a private matter for them as it would be for any of us. They did not shy away from narrating assault, trauma, rape or massacre or a cry for help. But, they didn’t indulge conversations on how they used Facebook. I decided not to pursue it.

I switched back to listening to Ibrahim. He was explaining to Sharda why none in the community would want the security guard’s job that she had just mentioned. The money they would earn as a permanent employee in a month is less than what they earned as labour, informally, in half a month. They want the option to not work every day. Looking into Sharda’s notes, the average monthly income of the male members came to around INR 6,000.

Kishenbagh was different from the idea of a refugee camp. The Rohingyas at Kishenbagh wanted to live as residents, if not necessarily citizens. The locals were aware of their Burmese identity but that had not caused any trouble for either of them. However, they didn’t want to be perceived as people seeking refuge. That is why the children enrolled in the local government school made conscious efforts to be known as Muslims than Rohingyas or Burmese.

“There will be segregation. We will be seen as not one of their own. That does not feel good. So the children don’t talk of their identity in school”, Ibrahim mentioned.

There were a few new families who had come from Burma (none of them ever mention Myanmar, the revised name of Burma) and Sharda wanted them to be on the record so that they could get the UNHCR Refugee Card. The card resembled a driving license card — name, nationality, date of birth, date of expiry of the card, photograph and a smart chip.

We went into a few of the houses. The houses, referred to as rooms, were taken on rent for INR 2,000 per room. Afrin enquired about the health of a pregnant lady. Pregnancy was looked after in the nearby ‘doodh khana’. Sharda wrote down the information of the newcomers. One of the men came into the room with a few -months- old baby. As Afrin enquired about the baby’s health and her mother’s, the father replied dramatically, “Everything is fine, they registered our baby as Indian”. There was a general mirth in the room as soon as ‘Indian’ was mentioned. Now, the baby had a place to belong to.

The last household we visited, we spent a long time there. We were seated on a mat. Illias opened a bagful of printed paper sheets. The sheets had the profile of Rohingyas in Kishenbagh. The logic, he said, was to have a record of themselves so that when the police enquired, they could prove that they had rendered themselves as traceable refugees. The paper document bore no official mark. It was no legal paper. But the information was validated by thumb prints of individuals. It was categorised in terms of name of the person, name of Father/Husband/Dependant and Address. This suo motu registering of selves, the self organisation, to be able to render themselves available to an authoritarian figure, spoke of fear, insecurity and efforts towards self preservation. However, it made things easier for Sharda. She did not have to go from door to door, collecting data.

The following week, I accompanied Afrin to two camps in Baba Nagar, roughly 15 km from Old City, ahead of Faluknama. It was a half-an-hour long ride. On the way, both of us tried to break the silence through mundane remarks like how busy the roads were, that monsoon was round the corner, and how the mangoes had not gone well with me.

We were riding through an area which looked like we were in the outskirts of the city. I asked Afrin, “Does Hyderabad end here?”

“No no. This is the middle of the city,” she replied.

For Afrin, one who claimed did not know where Panjagutta or Somajiguda was, Faluknama was the centre. Somajiguda (the place I had taken refuge in), was the heart of the city (of course as goes the mainstream discourse) and that was where the official residence of the Chief Minister of Andhra Pradesh and now Telangana, was. The centre for the same city was different for both of us.

The camps were ghettoed settlements enclosed with huge, walled boundaries where trespassers were prohibited from entering without permission. There was a line of rooms, some of them unfinished, some looked like scaffolding. They were numbered. There was a tiny general store inside the compound. We went inside and stood among the women. Afrin was angry that one of them, who needed treatment, did not turn up at the Osmania General Hospital. The woman protested. “It costs money. Twenty rupees”, she said.

I tried engaging with some more women present over there. They didn’t quite understand what I was talking about. Only one of them could grasp a bit of what I was saying. She was a scrap collector. I forget her name. She said she managed to earn INR 100–200 a day.

“How do you know where the dealers are?”

“We live here. We get to know”, she said with a wry smile.

She could speak a bit of Hyderabadi Hindi. Having had dealt with scrap dealers, having functioned outside the enclosures, there was confidence in her demeanour and in her speech. She wore a wrist watch. It made her stand out. She was a working lady.

We walked around a little bit, and went to the second camp nearby. Afrin talked at length about dirt. She felt the refugees entertained dirt. Standing in front of one of the makeshift tents, I saw a young lady with a child. They looked decked up; fresh with powder on their face. The lady smiled at me. Across her shoulder, I could see her husband looking into a mirror and neatly parting hair. They invited us in. We made polite enquiries about their health and well-being.

On our way back, Afrin stopped by a place where quite a number of people had gathered.

I recognised Abul Haq. He was writing down names of fellow refugees on a register.

I had met Abul with four other Rohingyas the previous week in the voluntary association’s office.

I had joined a group of refugees towards the end of a meeting. After lunch I got to talk to the Rohingyas. I asked if they understood Bangla. I said I had read over the internet that they could. In fact, one of the reasons Rohingyas were pushed to a stateless limbo is the narrative peddled by Myanmar that they were Bengalis while Bangladesh claimed they belonged to Rakhine which is effectively Myanmar.

They were startled, excited and immediately started the conversation in Bangla. Out of the five people there, one of them could not understand Bangla. He had graduated with honours in Physics. He had striven for his education. The government had prohibited Rohingyas from education. He stealthily pursued his education in another province in Myanmar.

Abul was excited to have been able to converse with me in Bangla. He started narrating their stories. How the educated amongst them could not bring themselves to work as informal labour, how some of them taught children of their own community. One of them pointed out the Somali Refugees present in the meeting and expressed a desire to learn English, to be able to fluently communicate like the Somali people. English would emancipate them, they felt.

In retrospect, it seems to be the nature of organised groups who represent the civil society to be patronising and simultaneously anxious. The patron expects docility, humility, in lieu of protection provided. Throughout my experience the refugees were vocal and assertive about their needs. Abul told me with an air of authority that they needed to take things into their own hands. Maybe a small community media platform for themselves like the Palestinian refugees would be a good idea. That alarmed me a little bit. Abul had perhaps forgotten that it was I, who in previous interaction in the camp, while discussing social media practices with some of them had mentioned of the instance of Palestinian youth writing their own stories for the world. In the meeting, the association had expressed displeasure for not having been informed about a school the refugees had managed to open for themselves. The refugees had an opinion. They argued. They were thinking. That made the patron anxious. I was worried if I had given them more to worry about. Did I violate the request of the Director who had strictly said “do not put ideas in their head”? It made me uncomfortable. I let it be.

Amongst the few conversations that I managed to have, the question of why they fled from home received a casual response. Pain was an inescapable part of who they were. They were attacked, ransacked, and there was fear for life. They invariably shifted to how they wished to make life liveable ‘now’ and ‘here’. The fear of police was expressed like any citizen’s concern with the law. An Indian citizenship was desirable. But, they didn’t speak of their lives in terms of India. They had not come to India. They had come ‘here’. Hyderabad was expressed in terms of a nation-neutral space, a place to be. Being an Indian would be a straw against the current.

(Names of participants have been changed in respect for privacy)

Mahaprajna Nayak is a freelance editor and nowadays dabbles in Odia recipes for most part of the day. She was an ICSSR fellow at CSSSC Kolkata, has been a teacher of English to Second Language learners, and had stints in publishing as well as news media.