SK Shahi Writes: The Rohingya Muslims are a minority group estimated at about 800,000 in the northern part of Arakan State adjacent to Bangladesh. They are ethnically and religiously related to the Chittagonians of southern Bangladesh. They have been rendered Stateless, officially on the basis of their ethnicity. The 1982 Citizenship Law deprived them of legal status because they do not feature among the 135 national races which had settled in Burma prior to 1823, the start of British colonization of Arakan. The resultant sectarian divide in Myanmar seems to have provided an opportunity to Inter-Service Intelligence (ISI, Pakistan’s external intelligence agency)-backed Islamist formations to consolidate their hold in Bangladesh making the Bangladesh-Myanmar Border their operational base. The Lashkar-e-Toiba (LeT) and its front, Jama’at-ud-Dawa (JuD) are working in tandem to extend their footprints along the Bangladesh-Myanmar border. While the JuD leader Hafiz Muhammad Saeed is personally leading the Myanmar campaign, espousing the cause of Rohingyas from various public platforms in Pakistan. Jaish-e-Mohammed (JeM) and Jama’atul Mujahideen Bangladesh (JMB), the latter with known links to Pakistan-based terrorist formations, are also trying to exploit the issue of the Rohingyas. India cannot be oblivious to the regional dimensions of such human migrations based on ethnic discontent. India has an interest towards containing the Rohingya issue, so that the refugee spillover do not disturb the political situation and economic conditions in the adjoining Indian states of Mizoram and Tripura and also adversely impinge on the security of other north-eastern states. Earlier, the Buddhist Chakmas of Chittagong Hill Tracts of Bangladesh, who had felt discriminated in that country, had migrated to Mizoram state of India. The Chakma presence had been a source of considerable local tension in Mizoram. The rise in number of Rohingya Muslims settling in India has set the alarm bells ringing among the security agencies with Bureau of Immigration (BoI) claiming that more than 10,000 families are reported to have settled in India with Jammu and Kashmir recording the highest number. The numbers, security agencies suspect, may be higher as large number of Rohingyas are also staying illegally in India and poses more serious security threat. The arrest of a Rohingya by NIA last year in connection with Burdwan blast is a case in point. He however was not charged by NIA for the blast and was found to be illegally staying in India and was in touch with the Burdwan blast co-conspirators. Another alarming development, intelligence agencies point is to the fact that Rohingya Muslims in the valley are marrying Kashmiri girls which may pave the way for their permanent settlement. India’s primary concern is that the Pakistani militant groups will use recruits and cells in Myanmar and Bangladesh to carry out terrorist activities in the Northeast and try to encourage communal violence in places like Assam. Spillover of persecuted Rohingyas from Myanmar to Bangladesh and also their forced eviction thereafter from Bangladesh is likely to lead to their eventual movement towards India to find shelter in the north-eastern states like Mizoram and Tripura, jeopardizing normal civic life and demographic balance. A mediatory role by India will be a welcome step by Bangladesh and Myanmar as both have friendly relations with India. On humanitarian grounds, New Delhi will have to subtly prevail upon the Myanmar to at least provide the Rohingyas rights to continue to reside in the places where they were originally settled, give them permits to work and earn their livelihood through their traditional economic activities, i.e. without pressing for their political rights of citizenship. If India can help facilitate normalization of the Bangladesh-Myanmar border related problem then its Look-East Policy also gets traction.