India-born academic in Britain faces deportation

In a bizarre case involving Britain’s immigration laws, a 70-year-old academic born in British India and hailed as the symbol of national resilience after being a victim of the July 7, 2005 London, attacks, is reported to be facing deportation.

Professor John Tulloch, a prominent academic born in India in 1942, belongs to a family that served in colonial India for generations. His father was a major in Gurkha Rifles while his great-grandfather was in the Indian Civil Service. The Sunday Telegraph reported that since he was born in colonial India, he was conferred a lesser form of British nationality known as a “British subject without citizenship”.

After studies in Cambridge, Sussex and a career in British academia, he took a job in Australia and later acquired Australian citizenship. Due to his being a “British subject without citizenship”, his acquisition of Australian citizenship automatically cancelled both his British nationality and his right to live in Britain. The daily reported that when he applied to renew his British passport, it was confiscated. The report said: “Prof Tulloch, 70, who traces his ancestry here back to the 14th century, was born to British parents in a British colony. He has a British wife, children and brother. He was raised and educated in Britain from the age of three, has substantial assets and property here and has lived or worked in the UK for most of his life, holding a series of posts at British universities. He even held a British passport”.

“But now, his passport has been confiscated and he faces expulsion from Britain in the latest bizarre twist in this country’s ‘Kafkaesque’ immigration laws,” it added.

Reacting to the issue, Tulloch said: “I am totally gobsmacked by this. I’ve got a huge attachment to Britain. My family has served Britain for three generations. I’ve been banging my head against a wall trying to get this sorted out, but I’ve never before encountered so much frustration. It’s like Kafka.”

After the London blasts, in which he was seriously injured, he was hailed as an example of British resilience. “I was, hailed as an example of British courage, British pluck and the British spirit, an iconic image of British resistance. I get blown up as a British patriot, then I get kicked out,” he added. Tulloch said he was never told about the status of being a “British subject without citizenship”.