How 3.6 million Indian ‘citizens’ had some of their rights removed overnight

hen Narendra Modi addressed a gathering of his country’s diaspora in the Netherlands in 2017, he urged them all to sign up for a document that would give them almost all the same rights as a full Indian citizen, in recognition of their heritage and ties to the motherland.

The Overseas Citizenship of India (OCI) card, he told them, “is your age-old link with India”. “This knot should not be opened or weighed against money and currency,” he said. “People who live here may have a different coloured passport but a different passport cannot change blood relations.”

First introduced in 2005, the card was seen as plugging the gap of dual citizenship – which India does not allow. It functions a lot like an American Green Card or the permanent residence card in the UK, giving members of the Indian diaspora all the same rights as an Indian national except for owning agricultural land, voting and getting a government job.