Dear Dr S. Jaishankar,

One day, when I went to my boss, the late Mr HK Dua's office, neither he nor his secretary was available. They were both busy contacting the management to clear the remuneration dues of our regular columnist, K Subrahmanyam. I found something suspicious.

When I asked Dua saab about it, he showed me an email he had just received from the former director of the Institute for Defence Studies and Analyses, asking for money because he had lost his belongings at a foreign airport.

I had once received a similar letter from former minister Mani Shankar Aiyar. I knew he would never ask me for money, and I had his phone number. So I contacted him and told him his email account had been compromised. He managed to recover it within 24 hours.

I told Dua saab that if K Subrahmanyam were ever genuinely in distress abroad, he would certainly contact his son — you — an officer of ambassadorial rank, rather than The Tribune. Dua saab immediately stopped the money transfer.

I had great respect for your father and read his articles with admiration, first in The Times of India and later in other publications. For a brief period, he also looked after the editorial page of the Times of India. Although I could never entirely share his enthusiasm for India becoming a nuclear power, I always admired his intellectual rigour.

An editor once remarked, without naming anyone: "These South Indians clamour for bombs because they know they will never be dropped on the arid soil of Tamil Nadu or Andhra Pradesh."

Subrahmanyam was an IAS officer before he became known as a defence strategist. I mention all this to tell you that I hold you in special regard as the son of an illustrious father.

Now, let me come to the subject.

I obtained my first passport in 1979, soon after the Passport Office in Bhopal was inaugurated by one of your predecessors, Atal Bihari Vajpayee. It was my assignment to report the inauguration for The Hitavada, whose office happened to be in the same building.

Though it was an official function, Vajpayee delivered a remarkably humorous speech. I do not know whether my report fully captured the flavour of the occasion.

Soon afterwards, I obtained my passport. All the entries were handwritten. On the front page was a prominent stamp bearing the words "National Status." Beneath it, in much larger letters, appeared the words: "Citizen of India."

I was delighted. I believed I had obtained the most authoritative document certifying that I was indeed an Indian citizen, entitled to all the rights and privileges that citizenship entails.

Since then, I have renewed my passport every five years. I still possess all my old passports, and each one records my nationality simply as "Indian."

That is why I was deeply shocked when a spokesperson for your ministry recently clarified that a passport is not proof of citizenship and is merely a document intended to facilitate international travel. The clarification was issued on Passport Seva Divas — a day whose existence I confess I had not known until then.

Until that moment, I had always believed that a passport was the single most important document establishing a person's nationality. Whenever I travelled abroad and was asked to prove my nationality, I invariably produced my passport.

As recently as two years ago, I visited Sri Lanka, where Indian citizens are entitled to obtain a visa on arrival. If your ministry now maintains that a passport is not proof of nationality, how exactly is an Indian traveller expected to establish his nationality in such circumstances?

Your predecessor as Foreign Secretary, Nirupama Rao, wrote a piece explaining the confusion your ministry has created for no rhyme or reason, except perhaps as part of a deeper political agenda. I will come to that in a moment.

Rao, who dabbles now in singing and writing poetry, argued that no immigration officer anywhere in the world will question the authenticity of an Indian's nationality as stated in his passport. She may have been a distinguished Ambassador, but that does not mean she can predict how every immigration officer's mind works.

I once landed in Los Angeles in the US and was stopped by an immigration officer. I had an invitation from Star TV. He asked me whether I would report from America. I said yes. He said that in that case, I should have had a work visa. After about 45 minutes, I was allowed to proceed after I told a senior officer that I was invited to interview stars from shows like Baywatch, The X-Files, and The Simpsons, and that I would return as soon as the work was done. He finally let me through.

During those 45 minutes, I even visualised catching a return flight from Los Angeles itself, like the Bangladeshi official who your government detained for about two hours at the Delhi airport. He returned to Dhaka via Colombo, rejecting your belated clearance.

I am not a handsome person like you. If, say, an emigration officer in North Macedonia or São Tomé and Príncipe doesn't like my face and doesn't want me to enter his country, he could ask a simple question: "What is your nationality?"

When I reply that I am an Indian and show my passport, he can check on his mobile and find out what your ministry said on Passport Divas—that the passport is not proof of nationality. What can I do in such a situation, except return without the tamarind toffee my grandson Nehemiah loves so much, which we get from relatives abroad?

Let me ask you a simple question: what proof would you show in a foreign country if asked about your identity? You are a minister and hold a diplomatic passport. Is your passport weightier than my ordinary passport when it comes to proving nationality?

There are many countries where citizens are issued identity cards with a unique number. They only need to quote that number to prove their citizenship.

I am sure you remember the fanfare with which the Manmohan Singh government introduced the Aadhaar scheme. It was touted as a single document serving all purposes of identity proof within the country. Since it involved collecting biometric data, I was initially opposed to it. The Supreme Court also had reservations. But when I saw the Court gradually accept the government's arguments, I, too, obtained an Aadhaar card.

A huge building came up in Delhi to house the Aadhaar authorities. The scheme cost over ?10,000 crore. Today, when almost everyone has an Aadhaar, the government says it is only proof of residential address and nothing more. True, you can use it to enter an airport or book a train ticket, but it is not proof of nationality.

You have an explanation for everything. Like Aadhaar being required for children to get their mid-day meals. In West Bengal, where 98 per cent of people eat fish, children are reportedly served satvik food by ISKCON, as decreed by a minister who enjoys beef steak wherever available.

A PAN card merely proves you are an income taxpayer. It is also not proof of nationality. I thought the voter ID served that purpose until the Election Commission came up with its own rules.

In West Bengal, Bihar, and Assam, even those who had such cards and voted in the 2024 Lok Sabha elections were disenfranchised if they belonged to certain identifiable communities. The Election Commission even had the temerity to ask no less a person than Professor Amartya Sen, a Nobel laureate in Economics, to prove his eligibility to vote in the recent Assembly elections.

I don't know how I will prove my nationality. One proof I have is an old Bible in which my mother recorded the date and time of birth of all her five children. Fortunately, my father was in the Army, and I have his discharge certificate signed by a British officer. But neither a Bible nor a British signature is acceptable to you.

This is not my problem alone. Prabhu Chawla, a senior journalist known for his right-leaning views, writes: "So, am I an Indian citizen? I wield an Aadhaar etched with biometrics, a voter ID baptised in ballots, a PAN card chained to every tax I've ever paid. Yet, because I was born beyond today's borders, in a place now painted as Pakistan, and because my parents' papers have perished with time, the courts declare I am no one—nameless, nationless, until I summon proof from the shadows."

You are a diplomat and a Minister. You are expected to find solutions, not create problems. Why can't you clarify that passports will be considered proof of nationality? Any document is valid only if it is not fraudulently obtained.

You may recall a woman in Maharashtra who joined the elite IAS and served for a few months before she was caught and dismissed by the UPSC. Would you, based on this isolated incident, make a general statement that an appointment letter issued to a young IFS officer is not proof that he is eligible for the job?

No document or certificate is valid if obtained fraudulently. So why cast aspersions on the nationality mentioned in passports? It is your responsibility to ensure that a passport is issued only to a genuine Indian citizen. You cannot shy away from this responsibility.

When I obtained a passport in 1992, a Joint Secretary in your ministry recommended my case to the Chief Passport Officer, who then called the Passport Officer to expedite the process because I had to travel abroad urgently. Before that, a Secretary-level officer had endorsed my application.

If a "Bangladeshi" in Mumbai managed to obtain a passport and travel abroad several times, why should I—or any citizen—suffer on that account?

I have reason to believe that your statement about passports and nationality is deliberate. Not many people would have noticed one surreptitious change the Modi government introduced in passports.

Earlier, a passport showed both the permanent address and the present address of the holder, as well as the full address of the father/guardian and details of previous passports. Now these details are omitted. The official argument is that such information is already with the emigration authorities and that addresses may change during the passport's validity. But this is a cover-up. The real intent was to strip the passport of its status as proof of identity. Thus, the process of demystifying the passport began as early as Narendra Modi's coming to power.

I also recall another scheme your ministry tried to impose: issuing orange-coloured passports to people requiring Emigration Clearance Certificates for travel abroad. Today I checked my first passport. When renewed in Patna in 1984, the Superintendent had put "emigration check required"—even though I was a postgraduate and exempt from such checks. Since I could not use the passport, I did not have to get any emigration clearance.

To justify the orange passport for the poor, you made the absurd argument that it would raise their aspirations—that those with orange passports would strive to get blue ones by studying and earning degrees. How farcical can arguments become! We would have been the only country in the world issuing two-colour passports for its citizens, not counting the maroon diplomatic passports.

Let me conclude with a humble request. Please issue a clarification that, ordinarily, a passport will be accepted as proof of Indian citizenship. Exceptions are exceptions and can be dealt with separately. I hope you will do the needful.

Yours etc,