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According to information obtained from an RTI filed by this newspaper, between 2011 and 2022, almost 70,000 Indians surrendered their passports. However, MEA Minister V Muraleedharan shared in Parliament that the number is significantly larger (16 lakh for the same time period) counting the citizenships that have been relinquished at Indian embassies and High Commissions abroad. That Indians have always been desperate to leave India is not news — anyone growing up in the 1980s will recall the awe and admiration with which we greeted the foreign-settled aunt or uncle, who’d return bearing chocolates and other goodies. Those days an excursion to the international airport was a momentous occasion since hardly anybody travelled.
For decades, the symbol of the Hindustani achiever was someone who made it out of the frugality of pre-liberalisation India, and through grit and gumption asserted themselves in the global arena. The wannabe expatriate Indian of today has nothing in common with his predecessors, economic migrants who were hungry for opportunities unavailable here. The exodus now is by the rarefied one per cent, well educated and discerning, so at home in Monte Carlo that they’ve become faintly disapproving of Delhi.
Perhaps it’s outdated, the concept that citizenship is an emotional issue and it must be liberating to coolly observe borders and nations for what they are, imagined entities. Something on the lines of the “Overview Effect” (albeit on a smaller scale), the change in perspective noted among astronauts after the mind-blowing sight of a floating, far away earth from space, that fosters a sense of profound connection with the planet as a whole. That’s probably how a person of means feels, that man made boundaries are unnecessarily restrictive when you have the money to bounce around the planet.
For those of us who grew up dutifully reciting the National Pledge in school it’s a bit odd that one could so casually become a citizen of a Caribbean country with no links to our past, or our future; but therein lies the beauty, that so many Indians are confidently chasing alternate narratives, secure that the world offers many more possibilities than they originally imagined.
No doubt, the main motivation for somebody in their 50s to consider emigrating is convenient loopholes in international tax structures; individual tax rates are way lower in the UAE or Singapore but that’s not the whole story. The wry joke going around the Capital’s business circles is that you’re not financially relevant or cutting big enough deals if you haven’t received a notice from a certain, over-zealous, government department (that has struck terror in the hearts of entrepreneurs here). The opaque and often arbitrary functioning of these arms of law pose a looming threat, driving out the overly minted, who don’t consider it worth their while to second guess crafty officials, drunk on power.
Freedom of movement is the greatest perk of wealth; now that countries like Cyprus and Malta are essentially selling citizenships, for a chosen few the world, literally, is their oyster. So, dinner party conversation revolves around the relative merits of Antigua versus Portugal and alas, pretty soon the burden of fevered, flag-waving patriotism will be borne by the poor and middle class Indians left behind. Everyone else is on their way out.
National identity in Indians’ collective imaginations has always been bound up with periods of history, reflected accurately by Hindi cinema. In the 1970s hit film Purab Aur Paschim, life in the West despite its affluence is portrayed as hopelessly superficial, while in the 90s, nostalgic NRIs sang songs on screen with lyrics like “I Love My India.” Currently, the motherland, on screen at least, is rarely depicted as India shining. Streaming services favour stories from the heartland, the brutal realities of caste inequalities, discrimination and rape. The state of India is that a lucky few can exit amid sneering calls of “anti-national” while those who stay and represent the truth are deemed the same.
The writer is director, Hutkay Films
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