Fragile Havens

In the aftermath of the Pahalgam terror strike on April 22, in which 26 people were butchered in cold blood, the Narendra Modi-led BJP government has moved swiftly to tighten its visa policies towards Pakistani nationals. Amid this legitimate security impulse lies an alarming failure: the vulnerable Hindus who fled Pakistan’s religious persecution, hoping for a safe and dignified future in India, now find themselves on the verge of being cast adrift once again.

Fear and anxiety have swept through refugee camps near Delhi’s Majnu Ka Tila and the Signature Bridge, home to over a thousand Pakistani Hindu migrants. With their visas set to expire soon, and the Union Ministry of Home Affairs ordering a broad revocation of Pakistani visas, their existence hangs by a thread. Though the government later clarified that Long-Term Visas (LTVs) would remain valid, uncertainty festers. Many applicants awaiting Indian citizenship under the Citizenship (Amendment) Act of 2019 (CAA) are still trapped in bureaucratic limbo. Their visas require renewal every two years, each cycle exposing them to fresh peril.

The plight of these refugees demands urgent compassion and clarity. These are not opportunists seeking economic advantage. They are families who fled real and brutal persecution, trading their ancestral homes for squalid slums in India’s capital. They endure without electricity, education or medical care. Their hopes for a new life where their children might study, thrive and live without fear are steadily eroding.

The question gnaws at every refugee: will they be allowed to stay, or forced back into a land where their only certain future is persecution?

The Modi government has rightly championed the cause of persecuted minorities from India’s neighbourhood. The passage of the CAA was a recognition of India’s moral responsibility towards Hindus, Sikhs, Jains, Buddhists, Parsis and Christians who have faced systemic oppression in Pakistan, Bangladesh, and Afghanistan.

It is not enough to issue clarifications exempting LTV holders. India must act with decisiveness and heart. First, the government must expedite the processing of citizenship applications under the CAA, particularly for those who have already spent years in India. Bureaucratic inertia cannot be allowed to determine the fates of families whose very survival depends on it. Second, recent arrivals who have fled from Pakistan’s deepening religious intolerance must be treated not as suspicious aliens, but as vulnerable asylum seekers. They deserve at least a temporary sanctuary while their claims are assessed fairly.

India is, and must remain, a natural home for Hindus facing persecution elsewhere. The subcontinent’s bloody partition drew frontiers across communities, but not across civilizational bonds.

Security is a legitimate concern in times of heightened tension. But a blanket tightening of rules without nuance or humanity risks harming the very people India has vowed to protect. Fragile havens must not be shattered by bureaucratic indifference. To send these refugees back would be to condemn them to certain reprisals and, quite possibly, death.