Taseer's OCI revoked: Writers term move 'outrageous', 'vindictive'

Arundhati Roy and Jeet Thayil were among the host of writers and academics who came forward on Friday to back their British-born colleague Aatish Ali Taseer after the Indian government's decision to revoke his Overseas Citizen of India (OCI) status.

Taseer, the son of Indian journalist Tavleen Singh and the late Pakistani politician Salman Taseer, has become ineligible for an OCI card as it is not issued to any person whose parents or grandparents are Pakistanis and he hid this fact, a Union Home Ministry spokesperson has said.

The move had the literary world abuzz, both on social media and outside.

While writer-activist Roy termed the move "outrageous and dangerous", poet Thayil called it "a vindictive and unfortunate tactic" and politician-author Shashi Tharoor took a dig at the Indian government asking if it was "so weak that it feels threatened by a journalist".

"The government is using this threat as well as the threat of denying visas to foreign correspondents of international media outlets as well as independent scholars and journalists to try and manage the media," Roy told PTI.

The decision comes seven months after Taseer wrote an article titled "Divider-in-Chief" in TIME magazine on Prime Minister Narendra Modi.

"This is a vindictive and unfortunate tactic that will embarrass the BJP. Aatish is Indian, a Delhiite and a writer. By sending him into exile you are making him a lightning rod, a martyr, and providing material for more books. Exile is a writer's natural state," Thayil told PTI.

In an article in TIME, Taseer said he had lived in India from the age of two and had not met his father until he was 21. He was born out of wedlock and his mother was his sole guardian while he was growing up, he said.

Responding to the MHA spokesperson, the writer shared screenshots of an email interaction with the deputy consul general of India, and said he was barely given 24 hours to respond instead of the customary 21 days.

"It is painful to see an official spokesperson of our government making a false claim that is so easily disproved. It is even more painful that in our democracy such things happen...Is our Govt so weak that it feels threatened by a journalist?" Tharoor tweeted.

Expressing his solidarity for the "The Temple-Goers" author, award-winning US-based writer Amitav Ghosh retweeted a post by Ashok Swain, a professor of international studies at Sweden's Uppasal University that said, "You write against Modi, you cease to be an Indian!"