24 June 2001
The Boston Globe
By Pamela Constable, Washington Post
NEW DELHI: The government newspaper ad looked routine, like those that invite bids for sewer contracts or announce results of civil service exams.
But the fine print conveyed a hostile-sounding message to foreign visitors and their Indian hosts. All private citizens and public establishments were ordered to report any overnight foreign guest to police within 24 hours or face a potential five-year prison sentence.
The order from India’s Home Ministry, published last month, aroused indignation and amused incredulity here in the capital. It was followed closely by the discovery of a second order requiring “prior clearance” for some visiting scholars and international conferences here, evoking serious concern among Indian academics. Officials said the orders were intended to curb the flow of illegal immigrants and safeguard national security. But critics fear that the government, feeling increasingly vulnerable to foreign terrorism, may be sacrificing some democratic principles in the process of protecting the country.
“There is paranoia beneath the surface of Indian democracy,” said Ravi Nair, executive director of the South Asia Human Rights Documentation Center, noting that foreign missionaries and nonprofit groups long have had difficulty obtaining Indian visas. “Some of us have been shouting ourselves hoarse about this for a long time, and it is only coming to the fore now.”
Indian newspapers called the 24-hour police notification Stalinist, Orwellian, and even “Taliban-like,” a reference to the fundamentalist Islamic regime in Afghanistan that imposes severe restrictions on foreigners and citizens alike.
The Times of India warned of creeping official paranoia in the world’s largest democracy and condemned the order as Draconian: “The need to effectively address security concerns must not be allowed to degenerate into mindless xenophobia.”
Business groups said the order hardly meshed with India’s efforts to woo foreign investors. Waggish observers noted that if it were rigorously enforced, India’s president would have to report an overnight visit by his daughter, a US citizen, and its finance minister would have to take his French sister-in-law to the police.
Taken aback by the criticism, the Home Ministry said it would review the new policy, actually a revived 1971 law aimed at illegal immigrants that had never been widely enforced. Officials said they would make it clear that foreigners with valid passports and visas need not rush to the police station.
“This is not meant to harass respectable people,” said P. D. Shenoy, a ministry spokesman. The order was intended to stop immigrants from Bangladesh, Pakistan, and Afghanistan who sneak into India or overstay their visas, he said. Because of possible “inconvenience to genuine foreigners,” the order will be reworded.
But last week, the “foreigner” controversy struck again. A group of professors at Jawaharlal Nehru University discovered and denounced another Home Ministry order, circulated in January, which said that any organization planning an international conference must obtain prior government clearance if the topic is political or religious, or if the visiting scholars come from certain countries.
The order specified invitees from China, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Bangladesh, and Sri Lanka. The first two countries are longtime adversaries of India, and influxes of illegal immigrants have arrived from the latter three at various times in the last 30 years.
But some Indian academics said the new order could discourage visits by scholars from other countries and have a chilling effect on the exchange of ideas.
“The government is saying foreign capital is welcome, but on the other hand, it is saying foreign ideas are an infection,” said one professor, Kamal Mitra Chenoy. Moreover, the new restrictions are so broad they could hamper conferences on topics as innocuous as “cricket or eucalyptus trees.”
Home Ministry officials, however, said they had no intention of quashing academic freedom. They said the new guidelines were meant to simplify rules under which all international conferences, in theory, had to be approved by the Home Ministry. Now, they said, only those dealing with politics or religion, or including visitors from the five named countries, need such approval.
“We don’t want something said at a conference to inflame [religious] passions” or promote “political disaffection between countries,” Shenoy said. While acknowledging that the new rules might cause inconvenience, he added that freedom must be balanced with national interests.
“We are a vibrant democracy,” he said, “but democracy doesn’t mean permissiveness.”