Citizen vigilantes

There are certain false notions that most people carry around, without ever checking—such as Hindi is the national language of India, that Qutb Minar is named after Qutbuddin Aibak, that the Great Wall of China is the only man-made object visible from space, that the passport is a citizenship document, and so on and more.

- R. PRASANNAN

In truth, Hindi is only the official language of the Union, along with English. The minar in Delhi is named after Qutbuddin Bakhtiar Kaki, a pir revered by Sultan Iltutmish who built its top storeys. No man-made object on the earth is visible to a low-orbiting astronaut’s naked eye. And a passport no longer says that the bearer is an Indian citizen. The whomsoever-it-may-concern message printed inside the front jacket of a passport booklet says only that the person is an Indian national.

Yet, it created a teacup storm when a foreign office mandarin said last week that a passport is only a travel document, and not a citizenship card. It made AIMIM chief Asaduddin Owaisi wonder whether one would require a BJP membership card to prove one’s Indian’s citizenship.