[India does not recognize dual citizenship. But people of Indian origin and their spouses can apply for a special status that confers many of the benefits of citizenship, including the right to live and work in India indefinitely.]
By Joanna Slater
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India
Prime Minister Narendra Modi attends the East Asia Summit in Bangkok
on
Monday. (Chalinee Thirasupa/Reuters)
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NEW
DELHI — India has stripped a
prominent writer of his citizenship status after he wrote an article describing
Prime Minister Narendra Modi as the country’s “divider in chief.”
The move was denounced by advocates for press
freedom, who called it a “vindictive” step that shows India’s ruling party is
increasingly “intolerant of criticism.”
Aatish Taseer was born in Britain and now
lives in the United States. He moved to India at the age of 2, where he was
raised by a single mother, Tavleen Singh, who is a noted Indian columnist.
India does not recognize dual citizenship.
But people of Indian origin and their spouses can apply for a special status
that confers many of the benefits of citizenship, including the right to live
and work in India indefinitely.
Taseer held such status, which is known as an
Overseas Citizenship of India card.
Late Thursday, a spokeswoman for India’s
Ministry of Home Affairs wrote on Twitter that Taseer was “ineligible” for such
citizenship because he had “concealed the fact that his late father was of
Pakistani origin.”
People whose parents and grandparents are or
were citizens of Pakistan and Bangladesh are not eligible for the special
status.
Taseer did not meet his father, Salman
Taseer, until he was 21. His father became a political leader in Pakistan and
was assassinated in 2011 after he opposed the country’s anti-blasphemy law.
In 2009, Taseer published a book about his
parents’ brief relationship that was widely reviewed in India. “I was living in
India at the time, and at no time was my legal status ever questioned or
challenged by the government,” he wrote Thursday.
The questions began, Taseer said, after he
wrote a cover story for Time magazine during India’s national elections earlier
this year. In it, he called Modi “at once an inevitability and a calamity for
India.” Modi supporters and members of his Bharatiya Janata Party criticized
the piece and attacked Taseer in personal terms.
Modi weighed in days after the article was
published in May. Time is a “foreign” magazine and “the writer has also said he
comes from a Pakistani political family,” said Modi, according to local news
reports. “That is enough for his credibility.”
A spokeswoman for the Ministry of Home
Affairs did not respond to questions about whether the review of Taseer’s
citizenship status was linked to his critical coverage of the prime minister.
Taseer said that an Indian diplomat had
informed him that he may no longer be able to receive any type of visa to enter
India because of the government’s allegations that he engaged in
misrepresentation.
“An example is being made of me,” Taseer said
in an interview. “Anyone who has that connection to India had better be ready
to never go back if they publish something that’s bold and critical of the
prime minister.”
“I’m completely cut off from my mother, my
family, my material as a writer, my grandmother who’s 90,” he said. “From one
day to the next, you don’t have the country you’ve lived in most of your life.”
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