Tavleen Singh on Aatish's OCI card.

Tavleen Singh writes in the Indian Express-

As I sit down to write this, I still find it hard to believe that a prime minister whom I have openly supported for more than five years has allowed his government to exile my son. 

Her son is Aatish Taseer, a British citizen settled in America with his husband, an American. He can't  be 'exiled' from a country he does not live in. Previously, Aatish had a OCI card which permitted him to visit or live and work in India without having to pay for a visa. However, by Law, since his father was Pakistani, he was not entitled to it. I don't know whether the Home Ministry received a complaint that Aatish was illegally in possession of OCI status or whether some official or politician within the Ministry decided to initiate proceedings to deprive Aatish of OCI status. What is certain is that the action was legal. Whether there was a malicious motive behind it is irrelevant. It is unfair that I have to pay Visa fees to visit India while Aatish does not. True, had he been born after 1992, the fact that his mother is Indian would entitle him to OCI status. But he was born in 1980.

Tavleen Singh feels that she and her son are very special. The law of the land ought not to apply to them. Indeed, she made headlines in 2007 when she insisted that even her dog should be exempt from the law. It should be allowed to poop all over the place.

When the notice arrived from the home ministry, three months ago, asking Aatish to explain why his status as an Overseas Citizen of India (OCI) should not be revoked on the grounds that he had not revealed that his father was Pakistani, my first reaction was to call the home minister.

Aatish says he only got the notice 24 hours before the 21 day deadline expired. Now his Mum says she knew about it 3 months ago. One of them must be lying.

When I get an official letter, my first reaction is not to call a Minister. It is to contact the relevant office and present factual evidence. Tavleen however feels she and her son are Royalty. It would be infra dig to speak to anyone less than a senior member of the Cabinet.

I thought there was some misunderstanding and wanted to clear it up. I wanted to show him a document in my possession that shows that when I brought Aatish to live in India in 1982 as his sole legal guardian, he was given permission till the age of 18.

Aatish was eligible to live in India because his mother was Indian. He was also eligible to opt for Indian citizenship at the age of 18. He chose not to do so.

His father’s name is on the affidavit I signed. When he turned 18, I tried to apply for another indefinite visa and was advised by the officials to get a PIO card instead.

Relying on the 'advise of officials' is foolish. One must get proper legal counsel from an Immigration lawyer.

This I did and nobody asked me if his father was Pakistani.

What officials ask or don't ask is not relevant. The onus is on the applicant to state all relevant facts. In this case, what was relevant was that the father had Pakistani citizenship. The fact that he also had British citizenship was irrelevant. India has specific laws banning those (born prior to 1992) with a Pakistani father from gaining a PIO or OCI card.

In any case, this was irrelevant since neither Aatish nor I were in touch with his father. I thought if I explained all this to the home minister, he would be supportive.

This is crazy. If I break the law, explaining things to a Minister is not going to change the outcome of any judicial or administrative process. Ministers may be 'supportive' but they would be guilty of breaking the law if their 'support' involves ultra vires interference.

My calls to the home minister were ignored. So I then tried to call Hiren Joshi who, as the prime minister’s man in charge of the media, has an obligation to at least return the calls of a journalist. He refused to come on the phone. I wrote him several e-mails.

So, this Joshi dude is a sensible man. He knew that nothing could be done but that Tavleen was crazy enough to believe that the law of the land can't be applied to her dog or her son or her own person.

They were also ignored. It was then that I realised that somebody very high up wanted revenge on Aatish.

Very true! I was issued a notice by the Council saying I had to properly dispose of an old fridge I'd put on the pavement. I tried calling the Prime Minister. My calls were ignored. I went in person to Buckingham Palace and insisted on seeing the Queen Gor'bless'er. I was turned away politely but firmly. It was then that I realized that somebody very high up indeed wanted revenge on me. I think it was the Archangel Michael coz I once got drunk and said Archangel Gabriel could whup his ass.

Anyway, the Council did remove the fridge as it was their responsibility to do. But they fined me £100.  This was clearly a racist action comparable to Hitler's genocide. I have reason to believe that the Council is controlled by crypto-Iyengars who are intent on destroying the Iyers by insinuating that we put garlic in the sambar.

This had been a niggling fear at the back of my mind ever since he wrote that article in Time magazine that appeared on the cover with a distorted sketch of Narendra Modi and the words, “Divider in Chief”.

Aatish had no right to an OCI card. People reading the Time magazine article may have got angry with the fellow and complained to the Home Ministry as to why this cretin was able to roam freely around India defaming its people and its culture.

I remember telling Aatish, then, that the article was inaccurate and ill-timed because this was in the last week of the Lok Sabha campaign and there were clear indications to me that Modi would be winning a second term. The title of the piece was offensive but the content should have offended Rahul Gandhi more than Modi because in it the then Congress President was described as “an unteachable mediocrity”.

Modi does not care about Time magazine or Aatish Taseer or Tavleen Singh. Such people have no sway over the voter. True, every time a Taseer or a Pankaj Mishra publishes some shite, contributions from NRIs to the Sangh Parivar go up. But, that is a drop in the proverbial bucket.

In any case, it was only after this article appeared that the plot to exile my son began to unfold. Modi’s troll army on Twitter went ballistic and it was not long before Aatish was being described not just as a Pakistani but as an ISI agent and a jihadist.

Aatish is circumcised and was given an Islamic name. He has performed 'Umra'. However, he may not be a Muslim. Even if he is a Muslm, the fact is he is married to a man. His fate at the hands of the jihadists would be even worse than that of his father. His views are not 'anti-national' because his nationality is British and he is domiciled in the US.

The inevitable happened yesterday when Twitter was used to inform Aatish that he was no longer entitled to an OCI card because he had “lied” about his father’s nationality. The truth is that neither he nor I have ever lied about it.

 Tavleen and Aatish can read. Both would have seen that the relevant forms carry a stipulation of the following sort-  '  However, no person, who or either of whose parents or grandparents or great grandparents is or had been a citizen of Pakistan, Bangladesh or such other country as the Central Government may, by notification in the Official Gazette, specify, shall be eligible for registration as an Overseas Citizen of India Cardholder.

Salmaan Taseer’s mother was English and as far as I know, Salmaan had a British passport since as a Pakistani he is allowed dual nationality. Aatish was born in London in 1980 and British law at the time allowed him to become a full British citizen.
We got him a British passport because of the hope that it would make it easier for him to go between India and Pakistan. My relationship with Salmaan ended badly soon after and I brought Aatish back to India. He did not meet his father till he was an adult.

So, both were aware that Salmaan Taseer was Pakistani. Even if he had renounced his Pakistani nationality, still his own father would have been Pakistani. Thus Aatish would have needed to pursue some other course to gain OCI status. Of course, if he had elected to give up his British nationality and take an Indian passport when he was 18, then no difficulty would have arisen.

Bringing him home to India as a baby made my family less disapproving of my “mistake”. Financially, the only support I had was the job that MJ Akbar gave me in The Telegraph as soon as I returned home and told him I needed work. What I earned was not enough to live on. My mother helped by paying the rent of my barsati in Golf Links.
And, my sister and my friend, Vasundhara Raje, helped financially whenever I was too broke to get through the month. Luckily, my sister’s twins are only two years older than Aatish, so there was a regular supply of clothes. And, as I wrote in my book, Durbar, the only really nice clothes Aatish had as a child came from Sonia Gandhi. We were friends then and she helped, as did my other friends, in whatever way they could. But, grateful as I am to all those who helped me through those difficult years, I have to say that I would not advise any woman to become a single mother.

So Vasundhara Raje and Sonia Gandhi were nice to Tavleen. Thus, all Home Ministers must kowtow to her. Her dog should be allowed to shit all over the street. Her son must be allowed to retain an illegally issued OCI card. What's next? Must Prime Minister Modi come to her home and personally kill any cockroaches she finds in her kitchen? What about President Kovind? Is he not greatly remiss in his duties not to come and bring nashta for the Memsahib?

To return, though, to the exile that Aatish now faces, I have to say that I am truly horrified that this was done without my even being given a hearing. Of course, as the BJP’s Twitter trolls tell me gleefully, I could go to court.

Exile? The fucker can get a Visa same as anybody else. Mummies don't get a hearing in legal cases involving a hefty fellow aged 39. His hubby may have salience, but Mummy doesn't.

But, I am not sure that I can afford to spend the next 10 years fighting a legal battle against the mighty Indian state.

What legal battle? Mummies have no locus standi. She can't demand of the Court that her 40 year old son be turned back into a little baby.

Even as I write these words, my heart goes out to those people whom the home minister calls “termites” who may actually be Indian “termites” but will probably spend the rest of their lives in detention centres because if I cannot afford a legal battle, how can they?

They will receive pro bono legal help. If Taseer wants to challenge this, he can do so himself. I'm sure he'd get very able legal counsel on nominal terms. His Mummy, however, simply does not have any locus standi.

Let me say as clearly as possible that I believe what has happened to Aatish is not just wrong but evil, just as what is happening to the desperately poor people who are running around trying to prove their Indian citizenship is evil and wrong.

This woman thinks the plight of a British national living in America with his wealthy American husband who can easily afford Visa fees to visit India, is comparable to that of very poor people who fear deportation to a country which, though rising economically and socially, is still quite poor and overpopulated.

The damage done to India’s image as the world’s largest democracy is incalculable.

No damage has been done at all. Aatish has suffered no material deprivation whatsoever.  The sad fact is that Democracies gain by showing they are tough on immigration. 'Operation Windrush' in the UK saw the forced- often wholly illegal- of hundreds of Black British people who had lived all their lives in this country. They had paid taxes and raised families. Many of them have won compensation from the Government for their illegal removal. Similarly, in America, under Obama's 'Operation Janus', thousands of tax-paying, law abiding, naturalized citizens have had their citizenship revoked- even if the error was on the side of the administration.

Was Theresa May- the author of the 'hostile environment' approach- penalized for a blatantly racist and illegal deportation scheme? No. She became Prime Minister. What about Obama? Was there a reaction against 'the deporter in chief'? Nope. Trump got elected on a promise to basically 'fuck 'em all to death'. Okay, maybe that was Mr. Garrison on South Park. Still, the fact remains that getting tough on migration is popular in Democracies. So is telling Tavleen Singh to pick up her doggies' poop and quit pretending a 39 year old British guy living happily in American with his hubby is being snatched from her warm and clammy bosom and being forced into exile in some horrible shit-hole of a country.