A few days ago, I was made aware of a situation currently in India, which I was totally ignorant of. Since I left the country with my family half a century ago, I was so eager to start a new life that I hadn’t paid much attention to those ethnic Chinese who remained in India and had made India their home. I assumed everything had changed for the better after the ’62 war was long over. Apparently, I was wrong. Those Chinese born before 1950 that hold Chinese passports, are still being denied Indian citizenship. They have to renew their resident permit every year and pay around 10,000 rupees each time. When they want to travel outside the jurisdiction of Kolkata, they are required to obtain special travel permits.

 

There is something grievously wrong here. India prides herself of being the biggest Democracy in the world. Where is the justification of this? How can the central government allow this injustice to continue for 65+ years? I repeat. These residents have been denied citizenship for 65+ years!! These residents are a small minority and are getting smaller by the year. They have, by and large, been too scared to speak up for themselves. This is a violation of their human rights and needs to be rectified.