Consulates and embassies should be there to ease and facilitate travellers, not to make it harder for them
THERE’S a lot of talk about the normalization of relationships between Pakistan and India. But will it really happen?
One small preview that I got was when we applied for a visa to visit Pakistan this year during the summer vacations. I got an American passport after marrying an Indian cousin, who is also an American. We had our two daughters in the United States, so they are born Americans.
At the Pakistan Consulate in Jeddah, my husband applied for visas for our daughters. The man sitting in the office welcomed him quite warmly (my husband was willing to forget the long wait he had in the almost rundown room with faulty air-conditioning). But the minute the consulate official examined the visa application, his attitude changed.
In the form there is a question which asks the applicant for his father’s nationality at birth. My daughter put ‘Indian’. “You are Indian. I will tell you on your face that there is no guarantee that we will give the visa. We have to do some inquiry. It might take 10-15 days.” The visa officer spoke in a loud and rude voice.
My husband told the visa officer that the children are born Americans. “They are going to Pakistan with their mother who is originally from Pakistan. I am an American national and am not even going on this trip. What kind of investigation are you going to do on a 14 and 16-year-old?”
The visa officer said almost with contempt, “You are an Indian and because you are the father, your children are also Indians.”
My husband was extremely upset with the rudeness of the consulate staff. He left the place without applying.
I decided to go to the embassy in Riyadh and apply for the visas there. I took a train from Dammam, travelling alone in the Kingdom for the first time since I’ve been here. There was a big difference in attitude there. Perhaps because the embassy building is prettier, cleaner and well kept, its staff has a better temperament than their Jeddah counterparts. I was able to get the visas for my daughters, perhaps because I was a Pakistani or because I am a journalist and know a few people. But my queries got no official reply. Nobody talked to me, and if they did, it was all off the record.
I wanted to know what the purpose was of having questions like what was the nationality of one’s father/husband at birth. I felt like answering that with ‘the same as every Pakistani’s father prior to 1947’. My father, Mohammad Tahir, was born in 1920 in Patna. So what was his nationality at birth? Was he an Indian? Or simply a British servant? What is the purpose of such line of questioning? It seems rather suspicious and discriminatory. Specially after the way the visa officer’s attitude changed when he found out that my husband was an Indian.
“The visa officer was simply doing his job and he was correct to do so,” a high-ranking official outside the embassy told me. “One has to watch out for these things.”
That line of questioning and investigation only affects the common man who has no evil intention. All he wants to do is visit his relatives in India or Pakistan. Those who indulge in cross-border terrorism already have the means to get in and out of a country at will. They also know how to supply false information and bribe their way out. It is the common traveller who faces the brunt of such visa officers and the bureaucracy.
The same is true for the Indian visa officials. They have a column on the Indian application form which asks for present and previous nationalities. Some years back, when I lived in Jeddah, I applied for an Indian visa to visit my in-laws. I asked for multiple entry so that I could also visit Dhaka, my birthplace (I was born there when it was still a part of Pakistan). The officer gave multiple entries to my husband and daughters, but only single entry to me. When I protested, he said, “Your previous nationality was Pakistani.”
“But I am an American now,” I said.
He calmly replied, “For all purposes, you are still a Pakistani for us.”
I believe if India and Pakistan want to really work things out, the first thing they should work on is their suspicion of each other. Consulates and embassies should be there to ease and facilitate travellers, and not make it harder for them. The more Indians and Pakistanis visit each other, the more they will find that we are the same in so many ways. We have nothing to fear except our common enemies: hunger, poverty, mistrust and illiteracy. And staffers, specially at Jeddah Consulate, need to take lessons in how to talk to applicants, even if they belong to the so-called enemy country.
Consulates and embassies should be there to ease and facilitate travellers, not to make it harder for them 
