The ONGOING slanging match between the AAP (Aam Aadmi Party) and the BJP/NDA Central government over the status of 2,000 Rohingya Muslim refugees who fled ethnic and religious persecution by the brutal military regime in neighbouring Myanmar (aka Burma) and are living in pitiful makeshift slums of the country’s administrative capital, is indicative of the low level to which public discourse has sunk. Uncouth leaders of both governments are vilifying the handful of Rohingya refugees living in small communities and making ends meet by engaging in dehumanising odd jobs. Yet Union home minister Amit Shah has described this minuscule community as “termites” capable of destroying this country of 3.28 million sq.km with a population of 1.4 billion. And Delhi’s deputy chief and education minister Manish Sisodia has demonised them as terrorists undeserving of any civility and hospitality.

With leaders invested with learning-by-doing rather than formal academic experience ruling the roost, it’s doubtful if these wordy worthies are aware that the subcontinent has an age-old tradition of welcoming foreigners suffering persecution and discrimination in their native countries. Among them Persians (latter day Parsees), Jews from Europe, Bangladeshis who fled Pakistan in the late 1960s. Therefore, the heavens won’t fall if a few thousand Rohingyas are welcomed in our midst. But the rub is that these refugees are Muslims and therefore, disqualified from any quality of mercy.

These gents are very unlikely to recall that in 1973 when Uganda dictator Idi Amin expelled 73,000 Indians from that country overnight because God had so directed him in a dream, they were accepted into the UK despite the widespread belief that the British Isles were being “swamped” by immigrants. Such small-mindedness in pursuit of the majoritarian Hindu vote is unbefitting a country with global super-power ambitions.