Your home may no more be your castle

The Centre's circular on foreigners can be seen as an assault on civil liberties, as potentially a dangerous weapon in the hands of the police, writes Neena Vyas.

FOUR WEEKS ago, the Union Home Ministry routinely breathed fresh life into an old circular, perhaps without bothering to apply its mind (to use a legal cliche). The circular mandated that every Indian living here was duty bound under the law to inform the nearest police station if any foreigner was staying a night or more at his or her residence. Failure to comply with the order could mean imprisonment.

It immediately attracted the attention of the media and became a controversy. Did this mean that each time a ``foreign'' daughter- in-law was visiting the person would have to rush to the police station to give information? Did it mean that if a person whose son or daughter was a British or American passport holder would have to inform the police each time his children came home to spend a vacation? Would the stay of small grandchildren holding ``foreign'' passports also necessitate a visit to the local `thana'? And finally, did it mean that collective paranoia had overtaken us and every ``foreigner'' had become a suspect and was to be seen as a potential terrorist?

There are many who see the new order as an assault on civil liberties, as potentially a dangerous weapon in the hands of an already lawless police.

The National Human Rights Commission is apparently planning a meeting of the full panel to consider issuing notice to the Government questioning the order. But in the meantime, it is learnt, some ``feelers'' have been sent to the Government and the feedback is that it may take back or modify the provision. The feeling in the Commission is that the order is ``impractical'' and it had ``potential for harassment'' leading to violation of civil liberties.

One view is that the order attacks the freedom of the individual, for it opens the door to invasion of privacy of the home by the police on the pretext of getting information on who is staying there. Mr. Rajeev Dhavan, senior Supreme Court lawyer, described the provision as ``most draconian which should not be brought into force''. The view was that it was only meant as a wartime measure to check the entry of foreigners. If implemented it would mean arbitrary powers for the police, for the violation of the order attracts a penalty of up to five years of imprisonment and fine.

Even more strongly, Mr. Dhavan asserted that the order would turn ordinary neighbours into ugly spies running to the police to tell on ``foreigners'' living in the house next door. How could such a law make sense when India had an open border with Nepal, and its ``foreign'' nationals were freely living in India and were also often employed here in large numbers? Perhaps the Government actually wanted to direct the order at Bangladeshi Muslims entering India by deterring people from employing them, giving them shelter or even renting out houses to them.

But even if that were so, one has only to look at the fate of the Illegal Migrants (Determination by Tribunal) Act in Assam which has proved to be powerless in identifying or helping to deport illegal immigrants.

The hard and sad fact is that there is hardly a middle class or even a lower middle class family anywhere - and the phenomenon is more acute in States such as Punjab, Gujarat and Kerala - which has not exported a close or distant relative to the golden lands ``abroad'' where they can make money. And it has also become somewhat of a status symbol to have a son or a daughter living in New York, London or Paris, and if they can manage to get a foreign passport, all the better. All these ``foreign relatives'' regularly visit home. The paper work involved in informing the police will only duplicate information which is available at the point of entry into the country.

The political class in India, which is never tired of giving lectures on patriotism to the masses, is no different. Its offspring are also making a beeline for ``abroad'' ready to throw their Indianness together with their passports into the dustbin as soon as opportunity arises.

In a country where the President is married to a person of Burmese origin, where an Italian daughter-in-law lived for years inside the official residence of a Prime Minister, where army chiefs have been allowed to have foreign wives, and where ``foreign'' daughters and sons of influential Ministers and even Prime Ministers freely walk in and out of their bungalows and offices, it seems that the new ``order'' is quite meaningless and smacks of a siege mentality. The Home Ministry's idea, if it can be called that, was perhaps meant more to cover its own back and pass the buck to citizens, the police and the State Governments than to take care of national security.

It is ironical that although we are admittedly unable to secure our borders - we have a legally open border with Nepal, a virtually open border with Bangladesh, and nationals from those countries come and go freely, even if sometimes surreptitiously, while in the South till not so long ago, the sea was not a deterrent for Sri Lankan Tamils to come and go as they pleased - the state is now pretending that some security need will be served by tens of thousands of people trudging to police stations everyday simply to give information about their friends and relatives staying with them.

Even if one were to concede that in the cities it will not be too difficult for anyone to walk to a police station and give the necessary information, what will happen in the districts and villages from where sometimes the nearest `thana' is several kilometres away? This could also become one more means for the police to extract money from unsuspecting people who may be unaware of the `order' and may have failed to comply.

For, 30 years since the circular was first issued by the Government, neither the people nor the police have taken it seriously. The fact that the Vajpayee Government has reiterated the order now with much fanfare perhaps indicates that something is up. The Government has made it a habit to point fingers at the ISI to cover its own failings whenever and wherever there has been any sign of trouble. As if containing the ISI was not the job of the state. What is to stop the Government from creating mass hysteria and harassing ordinary people by describing any ``foreigner'' staying with anyone they do not like as an ISI agent?

Already there are separate regulations to cover visitors from Pakistan. They have to keep the police informed of their movements. And if the Government feels that security needs demand that movements of nationals from some other countries be also restricted, it could have done so.

A point that is also being missed is that instead of collecting information that may be useful, the police will only be collecting a mountain of data with no one around to sift through it sensibly and make use of it intelligently. It can only clutter up their workplace and their minds.

Neither in 1971 when the order was first issued, nor now when it has been routinely extended could it possibly help to contain terrorism or insurgency or stop the entry of illegal migrants. And surely there are enough laws on the statute books to deal with any foreigner, or for that matter any Indian, engaged in any mischief.

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