THE LOST HOME

The absence of a refugee policy is making Afghan refugees in India more and more uncertain about their future

- Abhik Bhattacharya and Shreya Basak

SITTING in a dingy, blue-walled basement room of southern Delhi’s Bhogal, Ahmed Khan Anjam, a 30-year-old Afghan refugee, does not know what the future holds for him. “From a multi-storied palace, we are reduced to a basement. Don’t know where we will go from here,” he says. Miniature flags of both the countries—Indian and Afghanistan—are prominently placed in the room.

In the busy streets of Bhogal’s Samman Baazar, it is difficult to notice the basement room of ‘Anjam Knowledge House’ unless one follows Afghan children going in numbers to learn the ‘skills’ necessary to survive in a foreign land.  

Anjam, “the English teacher” who came to India in 2017 escaping the warnings of Talibans started this ‘knowledge house’ to train these children who were losing out on learning about the Afghan culture and tradition. “They were smoking cigarettes and consuming drugs. Without any proper guidance, they were going astray. So, I started the classes with a very few students. Gradually, the numbers grew,” says Anjam whose mother and sister are still stuck in Kabul.          

He is among thousands of Afghan refugees who have come to India in the last few years since the dominance of Taliban effectively grew in different parts of the country. According to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), as of June 2023, there are 11,530 Afghan refugees registered with them, among which 2,520 are asylum-seekers.