NEW YORK, USA—When prime minister Narendra Modi spoke of Sikhs and their patriotism in front of a capacity crowd at Madison square garden, it was a deliberate observation.
It’s purpose assuage sentiments expressed by a delegation of Sikh leaders from US and Canada – whose grievance was their treatment from the Indian bureaucratic machinery as they left in wake of 1984.
The MEA spokesperson Syed Akbaruddin noted some of the issues Sikh community leaders raised “related to their wanting to get back, because they have some issues as some of them had come out of India in the wake [of the 1984 Sikh massacre].”
The first point in the copy of representation submitted by one of the members was the visa and passport renewal issue of the community – a legacy of the post-1984 massacres.
The ‘blacklist,’ maintained by the ministry of home affairs and distributed to Indian missions world-wide and immigration check-points in India. At one time, it had nearly a lakh names, mostly of Sikhs. Many of them who sought political asylum in the west, on claims of persecution in India, were also made part of the list.
As the MEA official described, there are those people who “left India in difficult circumstances after 1984 and how do we treat them.”
Even during the Vajpayee government, and then the subsequent UPA regimes, there had been efforts to cut down the list – with it becoming a political issues raised by both Akali parties and congress men in Punjab.
It is learnt that there are currently 30,000 names in the blacklist – a pruning done on the basis on certain parameters.
Before Modi left for the US visit, MHA officials had held a meeting to keep the file ready, anticipating this demand being raised in the PM’s meeting with the Sikh community leaders.
Apparently, the leaders did not go into the specifics during the meeting, but gave a petition to the PM, who said that the matter will be examined by concerned authorities.
The second point was that of the provision that to get an Indian visa, people who had given up their Indian citizenship had to show documentary evidence that they physically returned their passports to the nearest Indian mission.
This rule was promulgated only a few years ago, but led to a lot of heart burn. “I became a US citizen over 20 years ago. Now, when I want a Indian visa, they want a copy of my old passport. Where will I find it?” asked Harbans Singh Dhillon, who is head of the largest Gurdwara in New York.
Interestingly, the last point of contention raised by the Sikh-Americans in the written petition submitted to PM was the issue of eviction of Sikh farmers from Gujarat.
While it is not known if PM made any observations on this, he certainly referred specifically to the Sikh community in his speech in front of 20,000 Indian-American supporters.
Incidentally, while the petition also talked about persecution for the perpetrators of the 1984 massacres – mentioning the role of the Congress party, it was not mentioned in the official briefing about the meeting.
