The Hindu : Front Page : Dual citizenship for NRIs who left after January 26, 1950

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Saturday, Jan 08, 2005

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Dual citizenship for NRIs who left after January 26, 1950

By Arunkumar Bhatt

MUMBAI, JAN. 7. Paying rich tributes to the 2.5 million knowledge and opportunity-seeking Indians settled abroad, the Prime Minister, Manmohan Singh, today offered dual citizenship to all those who migrated from the country after it became a Republic on January 26, 1950, provided their home countries allowed them to do so.

Dr. Singh said he would work towards the goal of getting Indian citizenship for every single overseas Indian who wished to get it. His announcement was applauded by about 1,900 delegates from the Indian diaspora in 70 countries at the three-day-long Third Pravasi Bharatiya Divas that he inaugurated.

The Prime Minister said the procedure for applying for Indian citizenship would be simplified and the Government was considering options, including the possibility of issuing smart cards to overseas citizens.

The Manmohan Singh Government has set up a Ministry of Overseas Indian Affairs to look after the interests of the Indian diaspora and the Pravasi Bharatiya Divas aims at further cementing their ties with the motherland.

The Pravasi Divas is celebrated on January 9 for it was on this day 90 years ago that the Great Pravasi (migrant), Mahatma Gandhi, returned home from South Africa to lead the country in its freedom struggle.

The chief guest today was Jules Rattankoemar Ajodhia, Vice-President of Suriname, who is of Indian origin.

Many leading persons of Indian origin, including Singapore's Education Minister, T. Shanmugaratnam, Leader of the Opposition of Trinidad and Tobago, Basdev Pande, Chairperson of the European Parliament delegation for South-East Asia and SAARC, Nina Gill, chief executive of Cobra Beer, Karan Bilimoria and tennis star, Vijay Amritraj, are participating in the deliberations.

`Idea of India'

"We speak different languages, we practise different religions, our cuisine is varied and so is our costume... yet, there is a unifying idea that binds us all together, which is the idea of Indianness," the Prime Minister said. He called it "the empire of minds of the children of Mother India spread over all continents including the icy reaches of Antarctica, on which the sun truly cannot set."

The Prime Minister said that since the initiative of 1991 to liberalise and modernise the Indian economy, successive governments had taken steps that enabled the Indians abroad to invest at home.Mr. Ajodhia recounted the toil and achievements of the Indian community of 24,000 indentured labourers who worked on sugarcane and coffee plantations in Surinam, replacing freed slaves. Many of them returned to India but those who stayed back had struggled and succeeded in many professions.

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