The Rights of Citizen Sonia, by Mushirul Hasan (The Indian Express, 22 May 1999)

Sashi Tharoor:
"...Yet it suffers a further inaccuracy: by law, even a “natural-born Indian” is one who has one grandparent born in undivided India, as defined by the Government of India Act, 1935. You do not have to be of this soil to be an Indian by birth.

"This argument [Sonia Gandhi may never fully understand the intricacies of our culture] is preposterous, since some of the greatest experts on Indian culture, who have forgotten more than most Indian will ever know about Bharatiya sanskriti—A. L. Bhasam to Richard Lannoy to R. C. Zaehner—are foreigners. Worse, by this logic no South Indian should be able to marry a North Indian.

"But Sonia is not the issue. Her fate if for her party. Herself and above all for the electorate to decide. The real issue is whether we should let politicians decide who is qualified to be an authentic Indian.

"I have often argued in these columns that the assertion of ‘us’ versus ‘them’ is the worst kind of thinking that can poison the national mind. ... ... This land imposes no narrow conformities on its citizens: you can be many things and one thing... ... To start disqualifying Indian citizens from the privileges of Indianness is not just pernicious: it is an affront to the very premise of Indian nationalism. An India that denies itself to some of us could end up being denied to all of us."

Mushirul Hasan:
"... ... Let us also not ignore its profound implications for the people of Indian origin settled the world over... ... let me quote what Sardar Patel had said in the Constituent Assembly in 1947: “There are two ideas about nationality in the modern world, one is broad-based nationality and the other is narrow nationality. Now, in South Africa we claim for Indians born there South African nationality. It is not right for us to take a narrow view”. Remember, he continued, “the provision about citizenship will be scrutinised all over the world. They are watching what we are doing.” Just as everybody is watching what we are doing now.

"Krishnaswami Ayyar: In dealing with citizenship we have to remember we are fighting against discrimination and all that against South Africa and other states. It is for you to consider whether our conception of citizenship should be racial or should be sectarian.

"B.R. Ambedkar: We claim for Indians in South Africa the nationality of that country not merely by birth but by reason of settling there."

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