Why does India shun these Malayalis?

For 80-year-old Mohammed Haji, every ring of the phone and every chime of a bicycle bell on the street arouse great expectations. He looks up in hope when he hears a noise at his doorstep — only to feel disappointed when it turns out to be someone else, and not the postman bringing him the news he’s been waiting to hear.
For the past two years, Haji has been awaiting an answer from the high court to a simple question: Can he die as an Indian in his motherland, or will he have to continue living with the threat of deportment hanging over his head?

Haji, a Pakistani national known among his acquaintances as ‘Karachi Mohammed’, lives in Machinjery, a small town in Kerala’s Malappuram district. He is one among the many Pakistani Malayalis scattered across Malappuram and other districts of Kerala like Kannur, Kasargod and Kozhikode, which have large Muslim populations.

According to reports, in the 1950s and 1960s, these Malayalis, most of them in their early twenties, crossed the border illegally and travelled to Pakistan in a bid to escape the extreme poverty back home. In Karachi, they took up small jobs in restaurants and tea shops. “I went to Karachi in 1950 and worked as a helper in a hotel,” says Haji.

But once in Pakistan, without any legal documents, making a trip back home became a huge problem. “My wife was alone and I have no kids,” says Haji. He (and others like him in Karachi) was advised by an agent to get a Pakistani passport. Barely school-educated, the illegal migrants did not realise that a Pakistani passport will deprive them of their Indian citizenship. But Haji had to visit his wife in India, and since there was no other way out, he became a Pakistani passport holder. After that, he travelled from Karachi to Kerala many times on an Indian visa.

Ten years ago, at the age of 70, Haji moved back to Kerala, hoping to spend the last few years of his life at home. “I was born in India. This is my country. But I am considered a Pakistani here,” says Haji. Two years ago, Haji sent a petition to the high court, requesting for Indian citizenship. He is yet to hear from the Court.   

 “We have none of the rights that Indians enjoy. We can’t vote, we can’t stand for elections, we can’t own land, or even have a bank account. The Kerala government has to recommend us for citizenship to the central government. But for some reason, they aren’t doing it.” Haji, however, remains positive. “I am sure I will be granted citizenship one day. I keep thinking ‘The order will come today.’”

Cops and midnight raids

But the denial of a citizen’s rights is only one of the many problems faced by the ‘Pakistani Malayalis’. Until four years ago, 68-year-old Pilayil Alawi didn’t bother to fix a bulb in his house. Ever since he came home from Pakistan in 1992, Alawi and his wife Fatimah spent their nights at home in darkness in fear. They had their escape route chalked out before nightfall. Should a team of cops invade their home, one was to run and hide in the attic, and the other in the nearby paddy field.

Alawi, too, is a Pakistani national who now lives in a one-room house in Kundoor, another small town in Malappuram. In 1969, he slipped into Bangladesh (then a part of Pakistan) via Calcutta by foot. He was arrested at the border and put in prison. “I was in jail for eight months and badly beaten up,” recalls Alawi. He made it to Karachi later, where he made a living as an electrician, and got himself a Pakistani passport.

But things took a turn for the worse when he returned to Kundoor for good. “The police kept harassing us by conducting midnight raids. My wife and I were always prepared to run the moment we heard a police jeep.” Potential employers thought of him as a Pakistani spy. “Though I’d worked for many years as an electrician, I could never get a permanent job in Kundoor. I even went up to acquaintances and offered to fix their electrical appliances, but they wouldn’t hire me. I was reduced to doing coolie work when I didn’t have enough to support my wife.”
During the Kargil War in 1999, local political parties tried to extort money from Alawi, telling him that if he didn’t pay up, they would inform the police that he’s a Pakistani and get him arrested. “I refused to pay, and was thrown into jail for 17 days,” he says. Now an old man, and poor, Alawi dreads dying as a foreigner in India. “My Pakistani passport got stolen. My documents show I was born in India. My wife and I sent almost fifty letters to the central government asking for Indian citizenship but they never replied.”
In response to one of his numerous letters to the state government, the then Kerala Chief Minster VS Achuthanandan finally informed Alawi through a letter in 2007 that the Superintendent of Police (SP) will approve his stay in Kerala. “The police don’t bother me now,” he says.” But like every Pakistani Malayali, I want to die an Indian.”

Desperate measures

Until a few years ago, Pakistani Malayalis lived with a paralysing fear of being deported to Pakistan. “Some die, some get shot,” says Malayalam filmmaker P T Kunju Muhammed, whose film Paradesi (2007) narrates a poignant tale about a Pakistani Malayali.

Many resorted to desperate measures to ward off all the attention. “I know of this Malayali who would not speak to anyone when outside. Even if people asked him something, he would glare at them and keep walking. Or he would ignore them. A few people suspected he was of unsound mind. But at home, he would talk very normally,” explains Muhammed. “Some others say they have a disease and rarely step out of their house.” A few of them have insomnia. “With the late night police raids and constant harassment, they are simply unable to fall asleep,” says Muhammed.

At the SP office in Malappuram, Sankaran Kutty, junior police superintendent, says that these Malayalis no longer face the threat of deportation, thanks to the amendments that have been made to the Foreigners Act of 1946 and the Citizenship Act of 1955. “These Malayalis can now stay in India provided they have the right documents,” explains Kutty, whose job includes looking at applications for citizenship.

Yet, despite these amendments, they have to live under so many restrictions and rules (they can’t travel freely and are prohibited from visiting certain areas; they have to inform the SP every time they leave their district, even if they are travelling within Kerala, and so on) that even inadvertently flouting any of them could become reason enough for deportation. The threat of deportation will never be gone unless and until they get Indian citizenship.

Nowhere to go

At the SP office in Malappuram, we meet Mohammed Haji and Mohammed Ibrahim, Pakistani nationals in their late 70s. They travel regularly to Pakistan to take care of their hotel business there. “I dream of settling down in Kerala, but I see my friends suffer here,” says 78-year-old Haji. As there are no direct flights from Kerala to Karachi, the two take a connecting flight from Mumbai. “We have a long wait in Mumbai. But being Pakistani nationals, we are not allowed to wait at the airport. And once we go out, no hotel will give us a room. My wife is 73 years old and she has a hip problem. Our condition is horrible,” says Haji. Adds Ibrahim, “If I come to India for a month, I end up visiting the SP office at least ten times.” As we leave, we overhear Ibrahim wondering aloud whether officials will ever take note of their condition.