Refugees and the State: Practices of Asylum and Care in India, 1947-2000 by Ranabir Samaddar

This volume analyses India’s reasonably good record of providing protection and hospitality to refugees, while pointing out the contradictions in the relation between these positive aspects and the manner in which state power has been exercised in post-colonial India. In examining the varied encounters between the state and refugees, the contributors demonstrate that India’s story of providing care is simultaneously one of limiting care. It reveals the power of the state to decide whom to extend hospitality to and whom to deny it to. Thus, the issue of affording asylum becomes one of exercising power on the part of India’s political establishment.

This volume is the first of its kind in that it binds in a single chronicle writings on refugees in India at different time periods and in different regions of the country. It is also unique in bringing together contributors from a variety of law, administrative sciences, history, politics and feminist studies.