This Uttar Pradeshborn Pakistani citizen wants to ‘at least’ die as an Indian
RUDRAPUR: Nand Kishore landed in Pakistan as a young boy in 1946 and returned to India 19 years later as Hasmat Ali. In the last stage of his life, the 80-year-old now wants to die an Indian.
Basking in the winter sun at his home in Narayanpur village on the outskirts of Rudrapur, 250km from New Delhi, he shuffles in his seat at the thought of deportation to a land he never called his own. “I am staying here for so long. I wish to remain Indian before I die,” he said in a toothless slur, delivered in a mix of Bhojpuri and Hindi.
The octogenarian can barely walk and his words are almost unintelligible but his expressions convey the emotions he struggles to communicate. Slowly, he narrates how his impoverished mother from a village in Devariya in eastern Uttar Pradesh sent him to Karachi to work as a domestic help for one Abu Ahmad, a landlord.
He was eight then, and a year later the British rule ended. India and Pakistan emerged as two nations, and the horrors of Partition made his mother anxious about his well-being.
“I came back as a grown man with a Pakistani passport and with a new name, Hasmat Ali,” he said.
Since he is no longer the Nand Kishore of Devariya, but a man with a Pakistani passport, Ali had to live the life of a fugitive. Every year between 1974 and 1998, his visa was extended. But the external affairs ministry stopped it and ordered his deportation. But Ali had married and made Rudrapur his home by then.
“In 2000, he was supposed to be deported but the process was stopped on humanitarian ground. His case was referred to the government in 2008 for action,” senior SP police Sadanand Date said.
Ramnavam, the eldest of Nand Kishore’s four sons, said on Saturday that the then foreign minister, ND Tiwari, intervened and his father was sent back home from the Attari border post.