Dear Dr S. Jaishankar,

I obtained my first passport in 1979, soon after the Passport Office in Bhopal was inaugurated by one of your predecessors, Atal Bihari Vajpayee. It was my assignment to report the inauguration for The Hitavada, whose office happened to be in the same building.

Though it was an official function, Vajpayee delivered a remarkably humorous speech. I do not know whether my report fully captured the flavour of the occasion.

Soon afterwards, I obtained my passport. All the entries were handwritten. On the front page was a prominent stamp bearing the words ‘National Status’. Beneath it, in much larger letters, appeared the words: ‘Citizen of India’.

I was delighted, believing I’d obtained the most authoritative document certifying my status as an Indian citizen, entitled to all the rights and privileges that citizenship entails.

I still possess all my old passports and each one records my nationality simply as ‘Indian’.

So I was deeply shocked when a spokesperson of your ministry recently said that a passport is no proof of citizenship, that it is just a document intended to facilitate international travel. This clarification was issued on Passport Seva Divas — a day whose existence, I confess, I hadn’t known until then.

Two years ago, I visited Sri Lanka, where Indian citizens are entitled to obtain a visa on arrival. If your ministry now maintains that a passport is no proof of nationality, how is an Indian traveller supposed to establish his nationality in this situation?

Your predecessor as foreign secretary, Nirupama Rao, wrote a piece trying to clear the confusion. Rao, who now dabbles in singing and writing poetry, argued that no immigration officer anywhere in the world will question the authenticity of an Indian’s nationality as stated in his passport. She may have been a distinguished ambassador, but that does not mean she can predict how every emigration officer’s mind........

© National Herald