There is something surreal about the photo-op of a smiling Rohingya refugee family heading back to conflict-torn Myanmar. In a similar case of mixed signals, Myanmar’s social welfare minister Win Myat Aye’s visit in April to the Rohingya refugee camps in Bangladesh spoke a language of resettlement but its message was a deeply unsettling one.
He announced that his country would take back only those Rohingya refugees who could furnish a proof of residency in Myanmar. In the complex game of political signals all nations play, this was as clear a warning shot as any, of trouble ahead. But one wonders how many in the Indian policy establishment heard it at all, given its increasing tone-deafness to both nuance and subtext.