Modi And Shah Have An Earthquake Coming Their Way

AATISH TASEER

- Anjuly Mathai

The drama began in September, when Tavleen Singh, the mother of Brit-ish-born writer Aatish Taseer, sent him a WhatsApp message—a letter sent by the home ministry of India, informing him that the government was revoking his Overseas Citizenship of India. An OCI status is the closest thing to a dual citizenship in the country and allows one to live and work here. Aatish got the letter on the 20th day of the 21 days the government had given him to respond. Although he immediately responded, on November 7, the government announced via Twitter that his OCI status had been cancelled. The reason given was that he had concealed “the fact that his late father was of Pakistani origin”.

Contrary to the government’s claim, he has never tried to hide it. In fact, he has written extensively about it in his first book, Stranger to History: A Son’s Journey Through Islamic Lands (2009). Aatish, 39, was born out of wedlock to a Muslim father and a Sikh mother; Salman Taseer was the governor of Punjab in Pakistan when he was assassinated in 2011. Aatish is a British citizen, but since the age of two, he has lived in India with his mother and grandparents. Although he studied at Amherst College in the US and now spends a large part of his time in New York with his lawyer-husband Ryan Davis, India remains home.

Taseer who, in many ways, has the soul of a poet and whose own prose is often imbued with a lilting cadence, can also be scathing in his writing. Especially when he directs his full intellectual firepower at, what he calls, the “cauldron of religious nationalism, anti-Muslim sentiment and deep-seated caste bigotry” that India has become. Many of his articles have been deeply polarising. But perhaps his most divisive one has been India’s Divider in Chief, that appeared in