Rushdie and Atwood join calls to restore citizenship to critic of Modi

https://www.theguardian.com/books/2019/nov/14/rushdie-atwood-restore-citizenship-critic-modi

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More than 250 authors urge India’s prime minister to reinstate overseas citizenship of British journalist Aatish Taseer

Salman Rushdie, Orhan Pamuk and Margaret Atwood are among more than 250 authors calling on India’s prime minister, Narendra Modi, to review the decision to strip British Indian writer Aatish Taseer of his Indian citizenship, saying that the move “flies in the face of India’s traditions of free and open debate”.

Taseer, who was born in the UK but grew up in India, is a novelist, memoirist and journalist. In May, he wrote a cover story for Time magazine under the headline “India’s divider in chief”, which was highly critical of Modi’s government. Last week, Taseer was stripped of his overseas citizenship of India (OCI) status, meaning he may be blacklisted and thus never able to return to the country, according to the free-speech organisation PEN.

Taseer found out about the revocation of his OCI status when India’s home ministry announced the decision on Twitter.

Rushdie, Pamuk and Atwood were joined by 260 other writers, journalists, artists, academics and activists, along with PEN America, English PEN, and PEN International, expressing their “grave concern” in a letter to Modi about the move. They are calling for the Indian government to reconsider and “ensure that Aatish Taseer has access to his childhood home and family, and that other writers are not similarly targeted”.

”We are extremely concerned that Taseer appears to have been targeted for an extremely personal form of retaliation due to his writing and reporting that has been critical of the Indian government,” say the writers, who also include Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Don DeLillo, John Coetzee, Anita Desai, Louise Erdrich, Amitav Ghosh, Edna O’Brien and Gloria Steinem.

“Denying access to the country to writers of both foreign and Indian origin casts a chill on public discourse; it flies in the face of India’s traditions of free and open debate and respect for a diversity of views, and weakens its credentials as a strong and thriving democracy,” it continues.

Last week, India’s home ministry claimed that Taseer had “concealed the fact that his late father was of Pakistani origin”. Taseer was brought up by his mother, the prominent Indian journalist Tavleen Singh, and did not meet his father until he was 21, an experience he wrote about in a book and his journalism.

“I never had any problems with my citizenship until after the Time piece was written,” Taseer told the Guardian. “There have been a number of times where my father’s Pakistani nationality has been as clear as day.”

Salman Taseer was the governor of Pakistan’s Punjab province, until his assassination in 2011 for opposing the country’s blasphemy laws.

In another tweet, India’s home ministry also claimed Taseer had not asserted his right to appeal, which Taseer said was untrue.

“My work is so immersed in Indian life so there is a real pain as a writer, not being able to ever be in contact with this material again,” he added. “And the other kind of pain is very personal. My mother who is 70 lives there. My grandmother who raised me lives there and she is 90 next year. Even if I take this to court, it is unlikely I will ever be able to see her again and for me that is the hardest part of all.”