Nobel laureate Sir Vidiadhar Surajprasad Naipaul was asked to get an affidavit from Gorakhpur from where his grandparents come from originally in order to prove his Indian origin to apply for a Person of Indian Origin card.
Sir Vidia, 77, who won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2001, was born in Trinidad to parents of Indian origin. He has lived in Britain since 1950. He is married to Nadira, a former Pakistani journalist, and lives in Wiltshire.
Lady Naipaul, who is now in Turkey, had visited the Indian high commission in London with friend and writer Farrukh Dhondy three months ago. “I took her to the high commission myself,” Dhondy told this newspaper. “We were shown down to the basement, and the official there didn’t know anything.”
“The second officer we met at India House, whose name I cannot recall, told us that Sir Vidia would need documentation in order to apply for the PIO card. The documentation needed included an affidavit from Gorakhpur in Uttar Pradesh to certify that his parents/grandparents belonged to that area,” Dhondy said.
Sir Vidia is well-known in India and around the world and he has written a lot about his roots in India. One of his first non-fiction works includes details about his visit to his ancestral village, Dhondy said, adding that he thought the diplomat concerned would tell “Lady Naipaul that the requirement for this document could be waived for Sir Vidia.”
“Lady Naipaul was very distressed,” he said. “She kept saying, ‘How can they treat him this way,’” Dhondy said.
The requirement for documentation means that Sir Vidia would have to go to Gorakhpur, to the panchayat of the village in question, and hope that there was some record of his parents or grandparents there. “I am certain that he will not go to Gorakhpur to get that paper,” Dhondy said, adding that if the Indian officials waive that requirement, Sir Vidia would willingly take the PIO card.
PIO card holders are exempt from the requirement of having to apply for an Indian visa and can travel to India at any time.
The Indian high commission insisted on Monday evening that no application for a PIO card had been made by Sir Vidia. “Lady Naipaul had visited the high commission some three months ago and enquired about procedures regarding the application for a PIO card for her husband, which were explained to her by the concerned officer,” the high commission’s spokesperson said. The spokesperson did not respond to any other questions regarding the matter.