Nagpur, India

Long-time Indian resident, Gauri Shanker Mallick, was shocked to discover he was not a citizen of India when he applied for his passport. Mallick was told that he has to apply for Indian citizenship before he can apply for a passport.

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Mallick migrated from East Pakistan during the communal riots right before the partition. For over 50 years, the 75-year-old has been living at his residence in Gondia, a city in the Indian state of Maharashtra, on the land provided by the government. He also worked as a teacher at a Bengali medium zilla parishad school for immigrants from East Pakistan.

Mallick wanted to visit his birthplace, Bayarbanga village in Khulna district in Bangladesh. To travel there, he applied for a passport. This is when he learned that he was not an Indian citizen and needed to apply for citizenship first. He has an Aadhar card and other documents and has also voted in elections. So, he never doubted that he was not a citizen of India. 

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Mallick applied for Indian citizenship under naturalization which requires 12 years of stay, and a Bangladesh passport and visa, which he did not have and his application was denied. This happened just a few months before the Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA) was passed in 2019.

Now, Mallick has applied for Indian citizenship under the CAA, for which he is hopeful as he can submit his birth certificate in case he does not have a passport. Once he becomes a citizen of India, he plans on submitting his wife's application as a spouse because she does not even have a birth certificate. He currently lives in Chandrapur, a city in Maharashtra.

What is CAA?

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The CAA law passed in 2019 provides Indian citizenship to religious minorities from Bangladesh, Pakistan and Afghanistan. It amended the Indian Citizenship law of 1955, which forbids illegal immigrants from becoming citizens of India.

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Although the law was passed in the parliament, its implementation was delayed as a massive protest broke out against it, with the protesters deeming the law anti-muslim.

During the partition of India, Pakistan, and Bangladesh, many people from Pakistan and Bangladesh migrated to India to escape communal riots and have been living in India ever since.