NAGPUR: Gauri Shankar Malick was 21 when he travelled to India from the former East Pakistan to escape sectarian violence about a year before the creation of Bangladesh. Having worked as a government school teacher for the past 50 years and lived on land given to him by the government in Gondia, Malick had no reason to think he was not an Indian citizen. He applied for a passport in 2019 and was shocked to be told he had to first obtain Indian citizenship. This was a few months before the Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA), 2019, was passed, he said. After earlier failures, Malick, now 75, is finally hoping to become an Indian citizen legally under the CAA. As a native of East Pakistan, Malick stands out among over 100 Hindus from Vidarbha, Sindh province, Pakistan, seeking citizenship under the CAA. Malick currently lives in Chandrapur. He has spent most of his life in Gondia, where the government provided him with land like other settlers. He started working as a teacher at the Bengali Medium Zilla Parishad School for settlers from East Pakistan. In 2019, Malick made plans to visit his birthplace, Bayarbanga village in Khulna district, Bangladesh, and applied for an Indian passport. At the passport office, Malick was told he first needed to become an Indian citizen. “The 1949 birth certificate I submitted was issued in Khulna, and after partition, I moved to East Pakistan and later Bangladesh. That’s when I realised I wasn’t yet officially an Indian citizen. “I voted, I have my Aadhaar card and all the other documents, but I need to be a citizen legally to get a passport,” Malick said. He said the sectarian violence that forced his family to flee was unrelated to the atrocities against civilians that took place during the Bangladesh Liberation Movement. The CAA came into force four years after Parliament passed the law, and the rules were notified only in March this year. Two months ago, the post office became the nodal agency to accept applications under the CAA. Malik went to the main post office in Gondia to submit the documents. He expects a response soon. Under the CAA, applicants can submit documents such as birth certificate even without a passport, the official said. “I made my first citizenship application in 2019 after my passport was initially rejected. The CAA-2019 had not been passed by Parliament till then. But it requires a valid Bangladeshi passport and visa. My father had neither. Despite higher-up officials looking into the matter, my father was unable to get citizenship. The officials were very cooperative,” says his son Mrudul, a former bank employee. A hopeful Malik plans to apply for citizenship for his wife once he gets Indian citizenship. “Once I get citizenship, I will apply for my wife Bharti. I have a birth certificate but she doesn’t have one. Once I get citizenship, I plan to apply for her as my spouse,” he says. His wife is from Jessore district of Bangladesh.
