Though 90-year-old Shamsher was born and brought up in a small village in Jhunjhunu district in Rajasthan but for last 40 years he has been walking on a rope of hope and despair between India and Pakistan. His wife Salamat Bano and his children are Indian citizens while he is a Pakistani national. The aged and ailing Pakistani, Shamsher, seeks Indian citizenship or permission to live here with his family.
Shamsher came to India only on July 15 but he doesn’t want to go back. He said there is no one in Pakistan to go back to. “Shamsher submitted an application seeking Indian citizenship and requested to be allowed to stay with his family,” says Jhunjhunu district collector Jogaram.
“There lot of such cases of people seeking Indian citizenship. But the government is not ready to accept it,” says People’s Union for Civil Liberties secretary Kavita Srivastva.
This was only the fifth time when Shamsher could come to India to live with his family but he is on a one month’s tourist visa. According to his family, Shamsher went to Sindh when the freedom struggle was in full swing and because he remained in Sindh when the partition took place, he subsequently became a Pakistani citizen.
‘He married a girl from Jhunjhunu district but she passed away soon after and he again married his sister-in-law Salamat Bano,” says one of his relative.
‘We spent our whole lives almost lonely without the patronage of my father due to visa restrictions,” says Shamsher’s son Shafi Mohammed. “He has hearing problems, besides several other diseases afflict him,” says Shafi. “Who will look after him in Pakistan? We do not even have any relatives there,” he says.
“Right to choose a nation is a basic human right. People should be given the opportunity to live in their desired country. It is a case of separation due to partition,” Ms Srivastava asserted.