No one has the right to comment on my citizenship: Adnan Sami

It’s been more than a year since Adnan Sami (above) was made a citizen of India, but the singer says he’s still taking heat from Pakistani Twitterati for applying for Indian citizenship. Speaking over the phone from Germany, Adnan says he is still “bullied” by social media users from Pakistan. “There’s a famous saying that goes, ‘Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned’. I want to change it to: ‘Hell hath no fury like a nation scorned’,” he says, laughing.

“I get sarcastic comments from them saying ‘if you have become an Indian, then change your religion, and become a swami or something like that’. Who are they to tell me that I should change my religion? The biggest irony is that there are more Muslims in India than in Pakistan. Pakistan is not the torchbearer of Islam, and if I change my country, it doesn’t mean that I have to change my religion,” he says.

The singer also maintains that choosing Indian citizenship was his choice and no one “has the right to criticise” him for that. “I can understand when people say that they’re not a big fan of my music. That’s an individual opinion, and I respect that. But you don’t have the right to comment on my choice of citizenship, my skin colour, or my religion. That’s not open to discussion,” says the singer.

Adnan says every time he expresses his support for India on any issue, he gets “browbeaten and abused” by social media users from Pakistan. This may possibly be a reference to the time when the singer was criticised by Pakistani users for his tweet against the Snapchat CEO, who was allegedly quoted as saying that India was too poor for him to consider as a market.

Adnan says, “A friend told me that Pakistani users didn’t have a problem that my tweet was against the Snapchat CEO. They were bothered by the fact that I had included myself in that 1.25 billion people [of India]. It bothers them that I decided to become an Indian citizen.”