In 2019, British-born Indian writer Aatish Taseer found out on the microblogging site Twitter (now X) that he had been 'banned' from entering the country where he was raised and where his mother, journalist Tavleen Singh, continues to live. His 'Overseas Citizenship of India' (OCI) had been revoked by the Indian government, which claimed Taseer had attempted to “conceal information” about his father, politician Salman Taseer's Pakistani origin.
Critics, however, felt the timing of the cancellation, which followed a contentious article by Taseer in Time magazine where he referred to Prime Minister Narendra Modi as India's 'Divider-in-Chief', was politically motivated.
Taseer, who has authored several books, has recently come out with his latest, A Return to Self, which grapples with the complexities of home and belonging. In an intimate interview with senior journalist Harinder Baweja for The Quint, Taseer talks about the cancellation of his OCI, about life in exile, about the brutal murder of his father in Pakistan and the longing to be able to return home to his mother and the place he grew up in.
Read the edited excerpts from the interview:
Let's get straight to the politics, Aatish, because that's how your book begins. You say, 'On November 7, 2019, the government of Prime Minister Narendra Modi revoked my overseas citizenship of India. Effectively banning me from the country I grew up in'. Was it PM Modi himself who did not want you to step foot in India?
I think everyone was pretty clear that the action was coming from the Home Ministry, even the consular services here as well as the External Affairs Ministry, and anyone who's tried even to get me a tourist visa, quickly realises that origin of the action was Union Minister Amit Shah.
What did you feel when the doors to India shut firmly on your face, and India became a closed chapter? It's a very difficult thing to deal with.
I was in Greece exactly six years ago when it happened. I remember my mother saying, 'You've committed the crime of hubris, and now there's a sort of nemesis, or there is some sort of revenge or punishment that's to come'. I didn't know at the time. I think initially, there was a lot of panic, a lot of frenzy to get a handle on the situation and maybe find some way to return. But, as the years went by, everything became a lot colder. It became clear that even something as simple as a tourist visa was not to be given to me. The Prime Minister and his cohorts went after many other people subsequently. So, you find yourself in a kind of group of people who cannot return home to their parents, or have any access to their country. It's painful. A huge part of life becomes almost entombed.
You say in the book that you became a 'Pakistani' and a 'Muslim' in the eyes of the Modi government. Did you never consider contesting the OCI cancellation. And, I mean, suddenly, Pakistani and Muslim have become bad names?
Well, to answer your second question, I think that Pakistani was always used as a kind of dog-whistle to sort of indicate Muslims in India, and the Prime Minister knew very well.
You know, my mother is a journalist in India, and she'd covered Modi for many years. So he knew her personally, still does. He knew the circumstances of my situation, which is that, of course, I did have a Pakistani father, but only one I'd met when I was 21. My entire upbringing and entire life had been in India.
Coming to your second question, the legal action part... The OCI is fundamentally a visa, and no court can really interfere with the executive's power to grant visas. Over 100 people lost their OCIs, and in those cases, far more transparently, using the rules of the OCI to keep them out. In my case, I was a sitting duck because the circumstances of my situation were actually difficult.
What was the kind of relationship that you shared with your father, Salman Taseer?
I met him only when i was 21-year-old. In that first meeting, there was a kind of mutual curiosity... I was dumbstruck by the sort of power of this massive connection. You know, it's not like an uncle or an aunt, it's your father, and you've never met him, and suddenly there he is, in another country, in another society, with a family of his own. It was hugely overwhelming for me for many, many months.
You know, I'd grown up with a single mother, very liberal, very free, very much allowing me to be my own man, and he was very quickly, quite domineering, quite patrician. He had these very strong ideas of the Taseer name, and what I could say, and what I couldn't say. And so I found that the atmosphere became very quickly suffocating. It was not something that I could have endured for too long, actually.