Let Red Tape zeal not hit us reputationally

Deporting foreign nationals for visa violations is standard global practice meant to ensure compliance with immigration laws. India is no exception. Foreign visitors are expected to adhere to the category and purpose stated in their visas. But could there be cases where bureaucratic zeal overshoots a calmer response to 'clerical errors'? Someone down the line in MEA's visa-approving/denying machine must have been 'merely' doing his or her job. But deporting eminent SOAS professor of Hindi and South Asian literature Francesca Orsini upon arrival at Delhi airport this week for reportedly violating visa norms could have been handled with dexterity, instead of leaving the door open for motives ascribed beyond non-compliance of regulations.

Orsini has spent years exploring India's rich literary heritage, showing how Persian, Sanskrit and Hindavi coexisted in early modern Awadh. She has critiqued Eurocentric theories of world literature that oversimplify non-Western narratives and ignore multilingual, local contexts. So, immigration officers leaving her nonplussed at the airport is ironic, especially for an aspiring knowledge economy supposedly keen to attract the best minds from across the world.

In 2022, Filippo Osella, a University of Sussex anthropologist, was deported from Thiruvananthapuram. Other cases can also be cited. If one presumes a pattern, it would do well for GoI to let its 'officers at the gate' be less Kafkaesque about such non-entries. India shouldn't appear to be capricious, especially when conspiracy theories can abound to inflict reputational damage to a country seeking to be a global site and conduit of scholarship and intellectual engagement. After all, it isn't, by default, suspicious of scholarly curiosity.