Ten Million Reasons for Self-Determination

This chapter explores India’s rejection of the 1971 East Pakistan refugee crisis as an extension of the unfinished project of Partition, instead placing it as a political issue of self-determination for the people of East Pakistan and the violation of their collective rights even as the UNHCR-led international community focused on apolitical humanitarianism. Despite a massive fundraising effort and coordinating international and transnational aid agencies, the UN operation ‘Focal Point’ failed to address what India saw as Pakistan pushing its ‘internal matter’ onto India, constituting a demographic and economic aggression against Indian sovereignty. In insisting that all the refugees return, India was indicating an end to the Partition project in embracing the East Pakistanis displaced across the border as refugees in line with international definitions, even as the international community saw this as an India–Pakistan matter. India’s prioritisation of a political solution was, in a way, its understanding of how the international community could intervene meaningfully in refugee crises even as secession posed a challenge to sovereignty worldwide and assistance became increasingly oriented towards material assistance.