I am typing this only a few hours before the Supreme Court is expected to give its crucial Ayodhya verdict, but the cancellation of Aatish Taseer’s Overseas Citizen of India (OCI) card cannot be ignored.
One of the subcontinent’s gifted young writers, Taseer offended the Indian government in May his year when in an article in Time magazine he called Prime Minister Narendra Modi India’s ‘divider-in-chief’.
Taseer’s only surviving parent is his mother, the Indian columnist Tavleen Singh. She has been strongly and consistently pro-Modi while also deploring incidents in India where Muslims have been lynched.
Long separated from Tavleen Singh, Taseer’s father was the brave, in fact heroic, governor of Pakistani Punjab, Salman Taseer. He was gunned down in 2011 for standing up for Aasiya Noreen (better known as Asea Bibi), the humble Pakistani woman (a Christian by religion) whose execution was demanded on allegations (denied by her) that she had made blasphemous remarks to women co-workers on a crop-field that were blasphemous against Islam.
OCI rules indeed state that the permit or card may not be issued to one with a Pakistani or Bangladeshi parent. However, apart from the circumstance that his parents were not married to each other, the fact that Aatish was Salman Taseer’s son was widely known all this while. Aatish himself had written freely about it.
The sudden recall of his OCI card is plainly connected to Aatish’s Time article. It is also in line with numerous vindictive actions of the Modi government, including the freshest: the sudden withdrawal of the top security cover provided ever since Rajiv Gandhi’s 1991 assassination to his widow Sonia Gandhi, son Rahul Gandhi and daughter Priyanka Gandhi.
The prosecution/persecution of senior Congress leaders P. Chidambaram and D. K. Shiva Kumar falls in the same category. In today’s India, as in other lands where democratic rights are in sharp decline, the machinery of ‘law enforcement’ is triggered not by impartial assessment but by dislike of criticism.
The move to punish Aatish Taseer also shows that foes of coercion against minorities in Pakistan should not assume New Delhi’s support. Only one test wins favour or loses it. Do you sing praises of the Indian government?
Within India, there are signs of people willing to sing an opposite song. Weeks after the BJP-Shiv Sena alliance won a popular though diminished vote in Maharashtra, open and continuing criticism by the Shiv Sena (the BJP’s oldest ally) has so far prevented the formation of a government there.
The Shiv Sena’s displeasure may or may not endure. Whatever happens in Maharashtra, public bickering there has confirmed that India’s ruling establishment will not always have its way.
Meanwhile, opposition parties seem energized by elections results in the northern state of Haryana, where the Congress showed unexpected strength even though it could not stop the BJP from forming a government there with the aid of a new party that had sharply opposed the BJP at the hustings.