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India fetes its diaspora with dual citizenship (LEADS) By P. Jayaram, Indo-Asian News Service New Delhi, Jan 9 (IANS) India feted its 20-million strong global diaspora Thursday, with Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee announcing the government's decision to grant dual citizenship to people of Indian origin (PIOs) in selected countries and reservation of seats in educational institutions for children of Indians in the Gulf countries. The prime minister's announcement, in his inaugural address to a historic first-ever gathering of overseas Indians here, drew loud applause from the 3,000-strong audience at a specially erected conference hall at the sprawling Pragati Maidan fairgrounds here. Nearly 1,400 PIOs from 60 countries are attending the three-day "Pravasi Bharatiya Divas" (Indian Diaspora Day), many of them undertaking the journey to the land of their forefathers for the first time. It was on this day in 1915 that Mahatma Gandhi returned to India after spending nearly two decades in South Africa and, in the words of External Affairs Minister Yashwant Sinha, changed the course of Indian history. Perhaps underlining the importance of music in preserving the bond of cultural heritage between India and the diaspora, the convention started with an inspired joint performance by two of India's greatest musicians - sitar maestro Pandit Ravi Shankar and Shehnai wizard Ustad Bismillah Khan. Khan, 86, and Shankar, 82, had never performed together. But on Thursday their "heavenly music," as Yashwant Sinha described it, received a standing ovation, Prime Minister Vajpayee and Deputy Prime Minister L.K. Advani leading the way. Vajpayee honoured 10 eminent PIOs, including Mauritius Prime Minister Anerood Jugnauth, who delivered a special address at the inaugural ceremony, by presenting them with "Pravasi Bharatiya Samman Awards." Vajpayee also announced a compulsory insurance scheme for non-resident Indians (NRIs) in the Gulf countries and said the government was already considering a bill to establish a welfare fund for overseas Indian workers. He said the decision to grant dual citizenship for POIs of certain countries was in line with the recommendation of a high-level committee headed by former envoy to Britain, L.M. Singhvi. "We are now working on the administrative regulations and procedures governing dual citizenship," he said and added the government would introduce the relevant legislation in the next session of Parliament in February. "The welfare of NRIs (non-resident Indians) in the Gulf region is of utmost concern to us," he said referring to the three million Indians working in the region. "To meet the educational needs of children in the Gulf, we plan to reserve a certain proportion of seats in our academic institutions for the children of the Gulf NRIs," he said. "The odyssey of our people to the four corners of the globe has been a saga of courage enterprise and character," he said and referred to how Indians went over a century and a half ago as indentured labour to work in sugar, tea and rubber plantations in lands as far apart as Fiji and Mauritius, Suriname and Sri Lanka, Trinidad and Burma, Guyana and Malaysia. This, he said, was followed by the next wave of emigration by entrepreneurs and traders and by young professionals in the seventies to the "corporate boardrooms, research laboratories, engineering workshops and university faculties." "Today the success of every category of these emigrants all over the world testifies to the indomitable spirit, which they carried from Indian soil," he said. "Not many people today remember the painful Kamagata Maru episode of the early 20th century, when a boatload of Sikhs from India were most brutally left to fend for themselves on the high seas off the coast of Canada," he said, and noted that Sikhs from India are among the most prosperous Canadians and were increasingly influential in Canadian politics. He said unlike the British, the French, the Dutch and the Germans, India was never a maritime power. "All the same, Indians ventured forth across the seas to set up new homes in new lands. They went in peace, often with nothing more than faith in their destiny. "No country can claim that Indians entered its territory in the spirit of colonialism," he said amid applause. --Indo-Asian News Service
