Stateless ‘citizens’ of Kerala’s Malappuram and their lost battles for identity and citizenship

Ahmed’s Keralite wife, Kunhimariam, now in her early eighties, recalls that he moved to Mumbai in his early twenties to work as a daily wager at a restaurant. For ₹50, a travel agent offered to take him to Dubai in a wooden boat in 1953 and help him fetch a decent job there.

Ahmed consented, but the agent dumped him on the Karachi coast, leading him to believe it was Dubai. In Karachi, he began working at a restaurant. A few years later, his managers recommended that he apply for a Pakistani passport when he received word from his hometown of Thirunavaya that his mother was ill and wanted to see him.

Ahmed, who was illiterate, followed instructions from his Pakistani bosses. During his initial visit, Ahmed stayed in India for three months, and he used the same passport to visit Malappuram five more times during his 22-year-long stay in Pakistan.

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The deportation threat

He married Kunhimariam during his third visit, and the two had three children together. Kunhimariam said she and her children continue to be Indian citizens, and they have never travelled to Pakistan. After moving to Dubai from Pakistan looking for better opportunities, Ahmed was afflicted with diabetes in 1998 and had both of his legs amputated.

His problems began when he decided to go back to his native India and live under the permanent care of his wife and children.

After his return to Pattar Nadakkavu near Thirunavaya, he was classified as an “infiltrator” by the police and security agencies, who consistently attempted to either imprison or deport him to Pakistan. A stay order in favour of Ahmed was given by the Kerala High Court in 2004, granting him a short reprieve.

However, he believed that the police might terminate his stay at any time for technical reasons and try to deport him to Pakistan. So, he lived a life of constant worry and insecurity until the very end.

When this correspondent met an ailing Ahmed eighteen years ago, he begged with folded hands, “Give me at least a chance to die as an Indian.” He wasn’t the only one who landed in such a predicament in Malappuram.

Before and after Partition, more than 700 men from North Kerala travelled to Lahore and Karachi in Pakistan for employment. They didn’t perceive many differences between Karachi and Mumbai then; they sought a better way to support their large joint families back home.

Now, as the citizenship issue is creating a large-scale sensation in India, Kerala police remain clueless about the number of surviving ‘Pakistani nationals’ in Malappuram. The last available list of ‘Pakistani nationals’ in Malappuram, kept at the district police office, contains the names, addresses, ages, and contact numbers of 87 persons.

The remarks column says they either applied for Indian nationality or an extension of the stay period. But the list is over 12 years old, and no one can guess how many survive. According to Malappuram-based human rights activist K P Rahmathulla, efforts to trace the survivors and offer them legal support failed because of the lack of cooperation from their families.

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Fear of revealing identities

Most families fear revealing the identities of their relatives facing citizenship issues would invite unnecessary interference by police and intelligence agencies. They also fear the wrath of right-wing groups if their identities surface in the public domain. Aiswarya Sanath, a social science researcher who chose to dive deep into the issue as part of her project, told South First that she could not continue the work beyond a point because of humanitarian concerns.

She also feared subjecting these unfortunate people, who are at the very end of their lives, to public documentation would create unforeseen troubles.  Eighteen years ago, when this correspondent reached out to thirteen of them in different parts of Malappuram, disillusionment was looming large among them. Unlike Ahmed, who managed to stay on, several others who landed on the Pakistani coast after being cheated by travel agents were labelled infiltrators by the Pakistani side and deported.

After returning home, primarily located along the Malabar Coast in northern Kerala, these individuals were uncertain about their future as they did not belong to India or Pakistan.

Some others landed in Karachi and Rawalpindi before and after Partition, searching for jobs and thinking little about the animosity between the two newly born countries. To them, it was a common geographical entity where their relatives and neighbours had already gone and found decent jobs. They were in the autumn of their lives, always under threat of deportation.

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Lost his shop, and his wife

Hassan Koya, a resident of Pandikkad, was 84 years old when this correspondent met him. He resided in Mumbai at the time of Partition. He became a member of a caravan travelling to Karachi, where he established a fixed-location store and married a Pakistani woman. In 1953, Koya went to India for a month using a Pakistani passport.

Upon his return, he discovered he had lost his shop to somebody who even married his wife. The authorities apprehended individuals like him and incarcerated them for two years before deporting them to India.

Since then, Koya has become a pawn in political games. He was accused of being an Indian intelligence operative in Pakistan and a Pakistani intelligence operative in India, resulting in his expulsion from both countries on two occasions.

“Pakistani officials deported me four times and Indian authorities twice. The Pakistani side mistreated me and labelled me an Indian spy while I was living in Pakistan. Everything was the same when I arrived in India,” he said. “I told both sides repeatedly that I was not a spy for anybody. But there was nobody to listen.”

Vattassery Mohammed of Malappuram left India after Partition and moved to Pakistan. Three years later, he lost faith in the situation in the newly-born country and used a Pakistani passport to return to India. He was deported immediately after police verified his passport at the Parappanangadi police station in Malappuram. Compelled to cross the border close to Barmer in Rajasthan, he was shot by Pakistani soldiers.

Munnivoor resident Eranhikkal Kammu experienced four deportations and equal returns. As he could not speak Urdu, Pakistani officials called him an infiltrator, and they destroyed his teashop in Karachi. Before Partition, he claimed that some trains ran directly between Parappanangadi in Kerala, Karachi, and Lahore in Western Punjab. He regretted his decision to board one ever since.

About seventeen senior citizens in Kundoor village, near Thanoor, Malappuram, held Pakistani passports. They were required to sign the register at the Thanoor police station once a month. (There was a time when over 270 older men signed the register at Malappuram District Police Superintendent’s Office each month.)

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Issue raised in Parliament

In Kerala, all major political parties supported the demand to give them back their lost citizenship, except a few radical members of the BJP and RSS. As Thoppil Shajahan, a freelance writer based in Tirur, recalls, “Several Kerala MPs had brought up the issue in Parliament and made representations to the home ministry, but to no avail.” Shajahan reported on the whole issue in Malayala Manorama and wrote a book in Malayalam.

“Before India’s partition, I travelled to Baluchistan, never dreaming that the country would become two. I went back to India shortly after independence to be with my family. However, even though I am eighty, I will be deported,” said Kuthirodathu Mohammed, also known as Baluchi Mohammed. In 2006, he suffered from respiratory problems, and the Kerala High Court intervened twice to prevent his deportation. “I have never engaged in any anti-national activity of any type,” Mohammed said. “Poor people like me never wanted the creation of two states.”

Perumal Parambil Syed Alavi, 92, cannot remember where he lived in Pakistan before Partition. He cannot recognise his friends and family. However, his name is included as a “Pakistani citizen” awaiting deportation on the first page of the police list.

Alavi is used to regular visits from police officers. He mistook this correspondent and shouted: “Are you the same official who visited my residence last month to remove my name from the ration card?”

A sympathetic supply officer had put his name on the ration card, but his successor removed it, claiming that citizenship was needed to avail ration.

To avoid the continual fear of deportation, these people had to make do with short-term visa extensions and frequent trips to local courts or police stations. All they had ever sought was permission to be with their loved ones. They repeatedly had to demonstrate that they had no criminal history. The root of their problems stemmed from Pakistan’s post-Partition decision to bar foreigners from leaving the country without a Pakistani passport.

So, they took the Pakistani passport, which made them suspicious in the eyes of the Indian government. Local police officials in Kerala are sure that these old individuals have no criminal or extremist associations, even though “Pakistani nationals” are typically thoughtlessly linked to radical Muslim organisations.

Despite pressure from Kerala’s civil society, the Centre refused to give Indian citizenship to those ‘Pakistani citizens.’  The home ministry in Delhi never processed the applications the Kerala government routinely forwarded to it.

Take the case of K Masood, who recently passed away. The Indian authorities asked him first to prove his Pakistani identity.  They requested a document of renunciation from Pakistan for him. He was instructed to mention three witnesses in Karachi for issuing the certificate to the Pakistani embassy in Delhi.

“About 35 years ago, I moved away from Karachi,” he told this correspondent years ago. “How can I find witnesses?”

He never got an answer.