DUAL CITIZENSHIP: THE OVERDUE MOTHER OF ALL DEALS

 The recent India-EU deal has been dubbed “the mother of all deals.” Made on the sidelines of India’s Republic Day celebrations, the deal was welcomed across the political divide in India and Europe. But if cheaper olive oil, wine, and BMWs are the headline achievements, then the real deal—the one that actually shapes Indian lives—remains unspoken. That deal is dual citizenship for Indians.

Citizenship, too, entered the conversation along with the India-EU trade deal because António Costa, the Goan-origin head of the European Union and former Prime Minister of Portugal, was seen as the counterweight against the arm-twisting of Donald Trump’s tariffs.

As he had done previously when he visited India as Prime Minister of Portugal, António Costa flashed his Overseas Citizenship of India (OCI) card. This recognition of Costa's Goan and Indian heritage is not surprising in the least. António Costa has been known to flaunt his OCI card to facilitate better relations between India and Portugal, and now, as head of the European Union, between India and Europe.

The fact that António Costa’s origins became a diplomatic resource should give all Indians pause. The OCI card is not citizenship per se, but  simply a long-term, effectively permanent visa given at the express pleasure of the Government of India. Hence, António Costa is allowed to return home as many times as he wants, but he is not exactly a citizen of India. The Government of India retains the sovereign right to revoke the OCI. The Government of India has exercised this power on several occasions, especially against those it views as dissidents.

Goans, particularly, have been very sensitive about the fact that OCI is not citizenship but simply a visa. In fact, they have been demanding dual citizenship as their connection with their ancestral land, property, culture, and family is forcefully taken away by the Indian citizenship regime. In the last two decades or little over it, many Goans have reclaimed Portuguese citizenship and left for better prospects—better jobs in the United Kingdom and now increasingly in other parts of Europe.

In order to take up Portuguese citizenship for better mobility, socially as well as internationally, Goans must surrender their Indian citizenship. This legal requirement is rather unfortunate. In 1975, after relations between India and Portugal normalized, Portugal recognized the right of Goans to retain Portuguese citizenship because, before 1961, before the annexation of Goa by the Indian army, Goans were citizens of Portugal by birth. India, too, agreed with Portugal. The Portuguese state never extinguished that right, even though sovereignty over Goa had transferred to India. António Costa is simply returning the favor.

To get Portuguese citizenship is no easy task. Goans, and other residents of the former Portuguese India (Daman and Diu), must prove that their ancestors, either parents or grandparents, were born in Portuguese India. In other words, they have to prove that their ancestors were, by birth, Portuguese citizens.

Thus, if one goes to the historical archives in Goa, where most of the birth and other records are preserved, you see anxious people waiting to find out if birth certificates or baptism records of their parents or grandparents are available. They are helped by certain ‘agents’ who have a rudimentary knowledge of Portuguese. The other people there are landsharks and real estate agents who want to cash in on the land market (but that is a story for another day).

In 2023, I was a regular visitor to the archives, not because I wanted Portuguese citizenship or buy land but because as an historian, I was looking for traces of rice and cultivation in early modern Goa. It was over these months that I spent in the archives that I befriended several agents who would help these anxious people find birth records.

One of these agents told me something very interesting, something that I had always intuitively known. I asked this man how many Hindus also take up Portuguese citizenship. This man leaned into me—now bear in mind that the COVID contagion still posed a serious threat in early 2023—and so I could sense that he wanted to reveal a shocking secret. For my ears only.

He told me that almost half, if not more than half, of his clients were Hindus. It is a common stereotype that Catholics, branded ‘anti-national’, take up Portuguese passports and desert their motherland. I knew many Goan Muslims had also taken up Portuguese passports, but then again, that was only stereotypically expected of them. But Hindus? That revelation was still shocking, although I intuitively knew that many Goan Hindu were also reclaiming Portuguese citizenship.

A few days after this conversation, I overheard a Hindu man talking to another agent about the abysmal job situation in Goa. He belonged to the Bahujan Samaj, as was clear from the name he told the agent. This man, a mechanic working for the Government of Goa, was complaining about not making enough money and not being able to provide enough for his wife and children. As he spoke, I could see dark clouds of frustration darkening his face, and there was sadness in his eyes. “I should also make a Portuguese passport and earn better,” he said casually. Stereotypes collapse instantly when confronted with the economic realities of jobs and joblessness.

The situation in Goa is hardly unique, though the legal circumstances are. In states like Gujarat, Punjab, and Kerala, the numbers of Indian citizens giving up their citizenship is a lot higher. Goans can legally be Portuguese; Gujaratis and Punjabis cannot—unless they fake their papers. The other option for Indians is to go via the dunki route and risk their lives. Or get deported in shackles with the blessings of Trump.

Yet, in the last five years, more than 900,000 Indian citizens have given up their citizenship, and the number will grow. For many Indians, across class and caste, the quality of life has measurably deteriorated. The numbers of the AQI do not lie and they affect rich and poor. While the rich will legally abandon the country for cleaner air and a better quality of life, the poor will escape, even by treacherous illegal routes from India, because they want better jobs and better futures for their children.

In such a situation, it makes sense for all citizens of India to demand dual citizenship. It makes sense for the Indian Government to open routes for dual citizenship. India needs to follow the path shown by one of Goa’s most well-known sons, António Costa. There are more Antónios waiting to return home—or invest in its economy. Dual citizenship is the mother of all deals that is long overdue.

Published in The Wire.

HOMECOMING AND BELONGING: ANTÓNIO COSTA IN INDIA

Until January 7, 2017, Cristiano Ronaldo was arguably the most famous Portuguese personality in India. This changed when Portugal’s current Prime Minister António “Babush” Costa came on a state visit. The reason for this shift in emphasis was Costa’s supposed‘Indian roots’. On a visit to boost bilateral ties, inter-governmental cooperation, and Portuguese business opportunities, Costa’s ‘Indian roots’ received a lot of attention. Costa himself did not shy away from proclaiming his pride for ‘Indian origins’. Both Costa and his Indian hosts seemed pleased that he was the first person of “Indian-origin” to lead a country in Europe. As a symbolic gesture that would unfailingly win him admirers amongst Indians, Costa displayed his PIO or Person of Indian Origin card to the audience, during the course of his joint press statement in New Delhi and his address in Bangalore.

But to insist and hark repeatedly to Costa’s “Indian-origins” is to commit a gargantuan historical error. In fact, Costa’s visit to India and his use of symbolic acts like affirming his Indian roots and displaying his PIO card offers us the opportunity to deepen our understanding of issues of homecoming and belonging, especially since the issue of dual citizenship is heating up. The legal anthropologist and Herald columnist Jason Keith Fernandes spoke to a Portuguese news portal and claimed that the notion of “Indian-origin” as applied to a person like Costa is in fact “quite racist”. It is so as “those acclaimed as Indians, such as Costa, often do not have Indian origins, that is, they have no origins as citizens of the Indian state. The term Indian is being extended to people who have ethnic origins in territories today claimed by the Indian state”. Fernandes makes a critical distinction between ethnicity, which is the staple of racial politics, and legal identities. Thus, in Costa’s case, his father, the writer Orlando Costa, was born a Portuguese citizen in Mozambique and raised in Margao before 1961. His mother Maria Antónia Palla is Portuguese. Thus one could argue that Costa is ethnically half Goan and half Portuguese.

To think of the issue more deeply, it appears that Costa has origins and roots in multiple locations: in Goa, in Mozambique, and Portugal. He can justifiably claim to belong to each of these places. Perhaps Costa could do the same things, that is, similar public celebrations of his ‘local’ identity, in Mozambique as he did in India/Goa.

When one thinks of ‘ethnic origin’ and ‘nationality’, the celebration of Costa’s “Indian-origin” appears to be problematic. With the current laws of citizenship in place both in India and Portugal ethnicity does not necessarily translate to nationality, and therefore citizenship. A person born in Goa today automatically gets Indian citizenship by birth, but if they opt to reclaim their Portuguese nationality the same person is only entitled to be a PIO. If one chooses (Indian) ‘ethnic’ origins then one cannot claim (Portuguese) ‘nationality’. Therefore, for a large number of Goans homecoming and belonging are not necessarily a matter of pride or celebration; it is more of a legal mess that one has to negotiate.

While the Indian government is using Costa’s roots to promote economic interests, it is ignoring other crucial problems that beset people who are Indian nationals. When Goans demand their right to dual citizenship, given the particular history of Goa, and in order to have greater (and easier) mobility to access jobs while at the same time stay connected to Goa where they have roots and ties, the Indian government acts as if this is unimaginable. While one arm of the Indian government is busy promoting economic interests and closer ties with Portugal via an ‘Indian’ PM, another arm, i.e. the election commission, is poised to delete thousands of Goan names from its rosters, thereby forcibly breaking links that Goans have with Goa. This doesn’t make sense because, like Costa, the many Goans who have opted to reclaim Portuguese nationality are socially, economically and emotionally invested in Goa. Like Costa they still have family here, and they visit Goa as often as possible. And like Costa they too should be allowed to belong to two or three places. Indeed, as Fernandes put it, they are not going from Goa, and India, but only coming back. Their departure is the result of their being forced out by the Indian state.

While Costa’s visit may have indeed been a moment of great celebration of Goan identity – the easy-going Costa surrounded by throngs of adoring admirers in the streets of Panjim and Margao was a sight to behold – it also exposes the fragility of this Goan identity, sandwiched between an Indian order that erases its history, and a global order that seeks to curtail human migration as much as possible. In both instances the rights of Goans (either as dual citizens or not) get severely underrepresented and unrecognized. 

Goan identity loses when it comes to the promotion of large-scale business interests. What this means is that the average hard-working Goan loses out. In a racist and indifferent world, the contribution of the Goan migrant is deemed to offer states and global orders nothing in particular. This is surprising as the remittances of the Goan migrant, one of the highest in the country, keeps (and kept) the Goan economy afloat and contributed foreign exchange to the coffers of India. To not accept Goans and their history, while celebrating Costa and his history, is to treat them as disposable commodities. Costa’s visit needs to be remembered for precisely this reason.

(First published in O Heraldo, dt: 1 February, 2017)