1 week ago
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Barmer:
Amid the euphoria created around the Citizenship (Amendment) Act (CAA) in the ongoing general elections, a legislation which has brought respite for some, but those who came to India after December 31, 2014, have many unanswered questions. The latter now have to apply under the primary Citizenship Act, 1955, which has in the past seen the applicants waiting for years to get the same. The Pakistani Hindu families which have migrated to Barmer — bordering Pakistan — years ago feel that the CAA or citizenship law is waste until their life conditions are uplifted as many of them, even after becoming Indian citizens, continue to live in poor conditions and social stigma.
Hare Singh Lodha, 55, had come to India with nine other family members from Pakistan’s Sindh in 2017. He is living in a rented accommodation in Barmer’s Dan Ji Ki Hodi locality, where over 800 Pakistani Hindu families live. Mr. Lodha cannot apply under the CAA and he doesn’t want to go back to Pakistan where his life is in ‘danger’. But even living in India didn’t turn out to be ‘as expected’, he says.
“My family came to India with just four suitcases. We couldn’t carry much cash and gold due to custom issues. I took loan from my relative and started a confectionery shop in which my daily earnings are ₹1,000-1,200. In an annual income of ₹4 lakh, in which I have to run family and send children to school, I also have to save over ₹1.2 lakh to get the visa renewal of my family which is ₹7,000 per head,” says Mr. Lodha. He spends around ₹40,000-50,000 in travelling to Delhi from Barmer, with nine other family members, for visa renewal formality.
According to the Citizenship Act 1955, Mr. Lodha will be eligible for citizenship after 12 years of his stay in India as his parents were not born in undivided India.
“But the challenge will not end here,” says Jaswant Singh, another Pakistani Hindu, who moved to Barmer from Pakistan in early 2015 and is eligible to apply for citizenship after 7 years of his stay here, as per rules. He initially stayed at his brother’s place in Barmer but after a few months, he got a house on rent, little far away.
Negative report
“I had applied for citizenship under the 1955 Act but when the police came for verification for my credentials at my brother’s place, they didn’t wait for 10 minutes for my brother to call me, and left. I got to know that a negative report was filed for my citizenship application,” he says, adding that he has no idea how long it will take for him to get citizenship.
Jaswant’s 20-year-old son had completed his school from India and even managed to crack the medical entrance exam but he couldn’t take admission in a government medical college as he had no domicile certificate and local identity proof.
“They asked me to get my son admitted under foreign student category but it had two issues. First was that the fee was many times higher and second is that if we would have admitted him under foreign student category, he will have to go back after studies but we want to stay in India,” he says.
For several Pakistani Hindu families living in Daan Ji Ki Hodi, apart from citizenship, basic facilities such as proper roads, sewerage lines, clean drinking water, too are a distant dream.
“You had visited this colony where we are living. Have you seen any street lights? We don’t have sewage system in this side of the town. Most of us, the Pakistani Hindus, do menial jobs in India to survive. Its not just that our present is bad but we don’t have much hopes from future too as for how long I will work for my son or grandson to become at least a middle-class citizen of India,” says Darbar Singh, who came to India in 2017.
Ram Singh Lodha, who came to India in 2006, got the Indian citizenship under the CAA but is waiting for the same for his mother who migrated here in 2019.
“Why cant they relax some rules for people whose family members are already Indians” he asks the government.
The claims made by the successive governments at the Centre for upliftment of persecuted communities are “much said than done”, believes Hindu Singh Sodha, president of the Seemant Lok Sangathan (SLS), an organisation working for the welfare of families of Hindu migrants displaced from Pakistan.
“There are 35,000 non-resident Indians — mostly Pakistani Hindus — living in Rajasthan’s Barmer, Jodhpur, Jaisalmer, Jalore Jaipur. Around 75% of citizenship applications here are pending since 2019. In most cases, these Hindus live in ghettos or in rented accommodations, who can afford. No government has provided any land to them apart from the development of ‘Vinoba Bhave Nagar’ in Jodhpur, but the reserve price is so high that very few can afford to purchase them”, he said.
Criticising the visa renewal procedure of the Ministry of Home Affairs, Mr. Sodha said that the Indian government was not even realising that a family which was already struggling to earn was giving so much to Pakistan in the form of passport renewal and renunciation of Pakistan citizenship fees.
Integrated policy
“The government must prepare an integrated policy for rehabilitation, employment, education and healthcare of such people,” adds SLS president.
For Junjar Singh Lodha, who got Indian citizenship long ago, has a wish from the Indian government which is to re-start the Thar Express — an international passenger train which used to run between Jodhpur in Rajasthan and Karachi Cantonment of Karachi in the Pakistani Province of Sindh.
“Muje lagta hai sirf Modi ji hi is baat ko Samjhenge ki agar yaha rehne ko ghar nai de sakte hai to ghar jane ko train hi chala dein...” “(I think only Modi ji will understand this thing that if he cannot provide a house to live here, then he should get us a train to go back where we belong to…)”, says Junjar who works as a driver in Barmer to run the family.
