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‘She is made in India!’
Updated On: 17 March, 2024 12:41 AM IST | Mumbai | Gautam S Mengle
Once Pakistani Hindu father, now Indian, hopes his children—one born in Karachi, the other in Ulhasnagar—bag Indian citizenship. We talk CAA with Pakistani Sindhi Hindus across Maharashtra to explore old dreams and new challenges
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Ulhasnagar resident and garments business owner Prakash Dewani managed citizenship for himself and his wife Saveeta in 2020 after arriving in India in 2008. He has now registered son Manesh, 21. Dewani isn’t sure if he will have to register his daughter Harshita, who was born in India in 2010, for citizenship under CAA. Pic/Sayed Sameer Abedi
"There would always be extortion calls,” Jaikesh Nanjani recalls for mid-day. He was barely 18 when he came to India on a tourist visa, with his parents and younger sister. His father had a transport and flooring material business in Karachi, but what Nanjani recalls clearly of his days there was the looming, inescapable fear. “We never went to plush hotels for a meal or bought a vehicle that was evidently expensive. Any well-to-do businessman was always targeted. Then, in 1996, my father was kidnapped and held to ransom for several days before being released. We had to move out.”
As soon as they got here, they made their way to Ulhasnagar—home to four lakh migrants from the Sindh province, who arrived in waves during Partition, the war of 1971, and the decades that followed. Ulhasnagar is where Nanjani’s uncle stayed. The whole family applied for a Long Term Visa (LTV), stating to the Indian government that they could not return to Pakistan.
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