“Unsoluquency Person” fights for citizenship

Bahison Ravindran says he always believed he was an Indian.

Born to the parents of refugee refugees in Sri Lanka in southern Indian Tamil Nada, the 34-year-old web developer studied and worked there and had several identity document issued by the government, including an Indian passport.

But rough shock was waiting for him in April when police arrested him, saying his passport was invalid.

Authorities said he was not an Indian “birth citizen”, as both of his parents were the Shriers who fled India in 1990 against the backdrop of the Civil War there.

For a long time, anyone born in India is ranked for Indian citizenship, but a change in the 1987 law requires at least one parent to be an Indian citizen for a child born after July 1 of the same year to qualify.

Ravindran, who was born in 1991. Within months after his parents arrived in India, he told the Supreme Court of Madras in Chennai last week that he was not aware of the rule and had never hid his descent by the authorities.

He also told the court that if he had been informed that “birth citizenship” was not automatically in India, he immediately applied for “citizenship by naturalization”.

But for now, he has become “without citizenship”.

Its unique situation projected the difficult situation of thousands of Tamil refugees in India of Sri Lanka, who fled the island state over decades of conflict in the 1980s.

More than 90,000 of them live in the southern country, both in and outside refugee camps, according to the Tamil Nada government.

Many have chosen the state as a sanctuary due to historical ties, linguistic and cultural similarities and geographical proximity to Sri Lanka.

And now there are more than 22,000 individuals such as Ravindran who were born in India after 1987 to Tamil Sri Lanka’s parents.

But decades later, the status of their citizenship remains in the limbs.

Part of the reason is that India has not signed the 1951 UN Refugee Convention or its 1967 protocol and considers Sri Lanka refugees as illegal migrants.

The Law on Amendment of Citizenship in 2019 (CAA), which quickly traces applications from pursued non -Muslim minorities from neighboring countries in India, also excludes Tamils ​​from Sri Lanka.

Sri Lanka Tamils ​​status is an emotional object in the country, with various political parties promising to help solve their citizenship’s problems. But for most, it remains a distant sleep.

India provided citizenship only to the first Sri Lanka Tamil in 2022 – K Nalini was born a year before the 1987 law, which imposed Indian citizenship on at least one parent. Since then, at least 13 tamils ​​have been granted citizenship.

Ravindran hopes his case will soon be taken. He promises Faithfulness to India and says he never intends to return to Sri Lanka.

He recently told the BBC that he had traveled to the island nation only once in his life – in September 2024 to marry a woman from Sri Lanka.

He says his problems have begun after applying for a new passport this year to include his husband’s name.

Lawyer Sandsh Saravanan, who is a Ravindran, told the BBC that he was given a new passport after a police check -up, who were aware of his parental parenting in Sri Lanka.

But the Regional Registration Service of Foreigners (FRRO), which manages the registration of foreigners in India, later noted the origin of his parents in the police, he said.

Ravindran was arrested last month on charges of fraud, forgery and illegal detention of an Indian passport and detained in custody for 15 days before being released on bail.

Fearing more criminal action, he addressed the Supreme Court of Madras last week, which ordered the authorities not to take any coercive action until the next hearing on October 8.

“All these years, no one has ever told me that I am not an Indian,” Mr. Ravindran told the BBC.

“When I was told for the first time that I was a” endless citizenship “, I couldn’t accept it.”

And now, Ravindran nailed his hopes to the court to agree with him.

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