After missing CAA cut-o , many Pakistani Hindus in Rajasthan stare at a bleak future
Around 75% of citizenship applications in the State have been pending since 2019, says an activist working for their welfare; besides that, basic facilities such as proper roads, sewerage lines, and clean drinking water too are a distant dream for them wh
Amid the euphoria around the Citizenship (Amendment) Act during the Lok Sabha election, those who came to India after December 31, 2014, the cut-o date under the new law, face a difcult path to citizenship. They have to apply under the primary Citizenship Act, 1955, which has in the past made applicants wait for years.
The Pakistani Hindu families that have migrated to Barmer — bordering Pakistan — years ago feel that the CAA is of no use until their living conditions are uplifted. Many of them, even after becoming Indian citizens, continue to live in poor conditions and face social stigma.
Hare Singh Lodha, 55, came to India with nine family members from Pakistan’s Sindh in 2017. He is living in a rented accommodation in Barmer’s Daan Ji Ki Hodi locality, where over 800 Pakistani Hindu families live. Mr. Lodha cannot apply under the CAA and he does not want to go back to Pakistan where his life is in “danger”. But even living in India did not turn out to be “as expected”, he says.
“My family came to India with just four suitcases. We couldn’t carry much cash and gold owing to Customs issues. I took a loan from my relative and started a confectionery shop in which my daily earnings are ₹1,000-1,200. With an annual income of ₹4 lakh, with which I have to run a family and send children to school, I also have to save over ₹1.2 lakh to get the visa renewal of my family which is ₹7,000 per head,” Mr. Lodha says. He spends ₹40,00050,000 on travelling to Delhi from Barmer, with nine other family members, for visa renewal formality.
Under the Citizenship Act, 1955, Mr. Lodha will be eligible for citizenship after 12 years of his stay in India as his parents were not born in undivided India.
Negative report
“But the challenge will not end here,” says Jaswant Singh, another Pakistani Hindu, who moved to Barmer from Pakistan in early 2015 and is eligible to apply for citizenship after seven years of his stay here. He initially stayed at his brother’s place in Barmer but after a few months moved into a rented house a little far away.
The families that migrated to Barmer — bordering Pakistan — years ago feel that the CAA is of no use.
“I had applied for citizenship under the 1955 Act, but when the police came for verication for my credentials at my brother’s place, they didn’t wait for 10 minutes for my brother to call me, and left. I got to know that a negative report was led for my citizenship application,” he says, adding that he has no idea how long it will take for him to get citizenship.
Mr. Singh’s 20-year-old son had completed his school from India and even managed to crack the medical entrance exam but he could not secure admission in a government medical college as he had no domicile certicate and local identity proof.
“They asked me to get
my son admitted under foreign student category but it had two issues. First was that the fee was many times higher and second is that if we admit him under foreign student category, he will have to go back after studies but we want to stay in India,” he points out.
For several Pakistani Hindu families living in Daan Ji Ki Hodi, apart from citizenship, basic facilities such as proper roads, sewerage lines, and clean drinking water too are a distant dream.
“You visited this colony where we are living. Have you seen any street lights? We don’t have a sewage system in this side of the town. Most of us, the Pakistani Hindus, do menial jobs in India to survive. Its not just that our present is bad but we don’t have much hopes of a future too. For how long will I work for my son or grandson to become at least a middle-class citizen of India,” says Darbar Singh, who came to India in 2017.
Teething issues
Ram Singh Lodha, who came to India in 2006, secured Indian citizenship under the CAA but is waiting for the same for his mother who migrated here in 2019.
“Why can’t they relax some rules for people whose family members are already Indians,” he asks the government.
The claims made by successive governments at the Centre for uplifting persecuted communities are more in words and not in action, says Hindu Singh Sodha, president of Seemant Lok Sangathan (SLS), an organisation working for the welfare of families of Hindu migrants displaced from Pakistan.
“There are 35,000 nonresident Indians — mostly Pakistani Hindus — living in Rajasthan’s Barmer, Jodhpur, Jaisalmer, Jalore, and Jaipur. Around 75% of citizenship applications here are pending since 2019. In most cases, these Hindus live in ghettos or for those who can aord, in rented accommodations. No government has provided any land to them apart from the development of ‘Vinoba Bhave Nagar’ in Jodhpur, but the reserve price is so high that very few can aord to purchase them,” he says.
Criticising the visa renewal procedure of the Union Home Ministry, Mr. Sodha said the Indian government was not even realising that a family that was already struggling to earn was giving so much to Pakistan in the form of passport renewal and renunciation of Pakistani citizenship fees.
Integrated policy
“The government must prepare an integrated policy for rehabilitation, employment, education and health care of such people,” he said.
Junjar Singh Lodha, who got Indian citizenship long ago, has a wish from the government which is to restart the Thar Express — an international passenger train that used to run between Jodhpur in Rajasthan and Karachi Cantonment of Karachi in the Pakistani province of Sindh, which was suspended in 2019.