Some recent developments, unrelated, of course, with another relating the Indian diaspora have impelled us to retrospect our policy and attitude towards the Indian diaspora, a motley group of Persons of Indian origin (PIOs). The first is the ill-treatment meted out to Indian doctors in the United Kingdom denying them the right and opportunity to continue working there while allowing doctors of Europen origin to continue working there. It is a different matter that later on the doctors got a reprieve when the aggrieved doctors won a writ petition. In April this year there were allegation that the ethnic Indian Community in Uganda were harassed and persecuted. Now there are charges and counter charges that ethnic Indians in Malaysia have been discriminated. It is propitious, therefore, to recall India’s policy towards her diaspora in the perspective.
Compared to China, India’s policy towards her expatriate population especially in the post-Independent era and prior to the initiation of economic liberalism and reform can at best be described as best of benign neglect. It was Mahatma Gandhi, who espoused the cause of Indian diaspora in an organized manner for the first-time even prior to Independence.
It is appropriate, therefore that the Government decided to celebrate 9th January, the day Mahatma Gandhi returned to India from South Africa way back in 1915, as the Pravasi Bharatiya Divasa. In this centenary year of Satyagraha, it is worth recalling that Gandhi started his experiment of Satyagraha in Sough Africa to highlight the injustice and unfair treatment meted out to the migrant Indians there. He valiantly fought for their rights, dignity and self-steem. Gandhi was not only concerned with the problems of the South African Indians but also with the lot of the Indians the world over.
During his prolonged sojourn in South Africa, Gandhi made two trips back to India and wrote the ‘green pamphlet’ and addressed the Indian National Congress, the Chamber of Commerce and other organisations to rally support for Indian Community abroad, especially in Sough Africa. Gandhi’s persistent campaign sensitised the travails of the Indian Community to the colonial authorities in India and the United Kingdom.
The national leadership of India who were fighting for the freedom struggle also attempted to raise the problems of the Overseas Indians in the multilateral for available to them. One such forum was the Imperial Conference where India made sure that the problems of Overseas Indians prominently figured on the agenda.
India also raised the issue of discrimination against Indians at the Imperial Conference of 1917. At the Imperial Conference of 1921, the Indian Government lobbied for the Overseas Indian population living in the Dominions to confer equal rights with the British. At the 1923 Imperial Conference, the issue of discrimination in South Africa was again taken up by Sir Tel Bhalur Sapru. India’s lobbying at the Imperial Conferences had some success as it overcome the refulgence to discuss the problems of expatriate Indians in general and made it one of the conference’s major issues.
The 38th Indian National Congress Annual Session in December 1923 declared that unless India became Independent, the grievances of the Indian Diaspora could not be properly remedied. In 1940 in his foreword to a book, ‘Our Countrymen Abroad’, Jawaharlal Nehru wrote, “ever since the national movement took shape in India, the problem of our countrymen abroad has been with us, as indeed it must be. And so it will remain till that movement triumphs and brings freedom and independence to India”. He further wrote, “it is true that India has never forgotten her children abroad, but it is also true that she might have taken greater interest in them than she has done”.
Predictably, with the attainment of Independence, India’s policy towards diaspora underwent a paradigm shift. The principles of Panchsheel and Non-Alignment restricted India’s maneuverability to interfere in the internal affairs of another country so as to protect and promote the interests of the expatriate population abroad.
Although India was committed to protect the legitimate interest of her ethnic population abroad, understandably she could not do so beyond a point. This was acknowledged by Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru himself in the then legislature called the Constituent Assembly on 4 December 1947. Yet in another occasion while responding to certain issues re lating to Overseas Indians raised by Seth Govind Das on the floor of the House, Nehru categorically said that, ‘our interest in them becomes cultural and humanitarian and not political’.
Ever since then non-interference in the another country’s internal affairs for the protection of interest, of Indian Community has been the guiding gospel of India’s policy and attitude towards expatriate population unless they are in possession of Indian passports. While the constraints of the government is well understood, in recent past the government has taken some very imaginative and thoughtful initiatives to exhort the Indian diaspora ever since the creation of a separate Ministry of Overseas Indian Affairs and such as the observance of Pravasi Bharatiya Divasa, the institution of Pravasi Bharatiya Samman Awards, the Overseas Indian citizens certificate and Persons of Indian Origin (PIO) cards.
These are some examples of Government of India’s seriousness to engage the Indian diaspora and to establish a cultural and emotional bridge with them. The Government has to do a very tight rope walking in this sensitive matter.
However, various diplomatic channels can be utilised and the Government of Malaysia can be persuaded to consider the issue on humanitarian ground.
