Hyderabad, June 20 -- There is a school in Hyderabad's Old City where 19-year-old Anam* teaches the same children she once sat beside. She scored 84 per cent in her Intermediate examinations, and for a while, things were moving. The process for college admissions had begun. Then, she said, everything stopped.

"All of a sudden," she told Siasat.com, and does not elaborate - because there is no single moment that adequately explains what it means to be a Rohingya in India.

Anam holds a UNHCR refugee card, the document that formally recognises her as an asylum-seeker. She does not have an Aadhaar card or an election card. India does not recognise Rohingyas as refugees. It is not a signatory to the 1951 UN Refugee Convention. In practice, t...