Denied citizenship, Pakistani immigrant's son cracks India's NEET exam

For Premchand, a street seller of clothes in Jodhpur, his son Sandeep's achievement is an opportunity to look back at his own journey

On the footpath outside the railway stadium in Jodhpur, a man in his late 40s has setup five mannequins donning salwars of various hues and a neatly stacked pile of colorful clothes on the bare ground. To ordinary wayfarers, Premchand would be one the thousands of other nondescript street sellers in the ‘Blue City’ of Rajasthan earning a few hundred rupees a day to see his family through life. But for the man, who took a train journey with his wife and five children from the town of Khipro in Pakistan’s Sindh province through the border checkpoint of Munnabao before landing at Jodhpur in 2011 in search of new beginnings, the new year has thrown up a pleasant surprise. That it has come after a life of struggles – from incarceration without any charges, occasional harassment from authorities, denial of visas and citizenship that have made him and his family ‘nowhere people’ and unprecedented legal challenges – has made it all the more sweet.

On January 10, his eldest 18 year old son Sandeep was allowed by the Jodhpur bench of Rajasthan High Court to seek admission in any medical college of his choice. Sandeep had scored an 81 percentile in the National Eligibility cum Entrance Test (NEET), India’s top state conducted medical exam.  By finishing in the top 20 per cent among the 1.5 million students who appeared for the exam and just half of who qualified, Sandeep has set himself and his family up for a new beginning his father had hoped for when he left Khipro behind. 

Sandeep had to face twin legal hurdles before he got an all clear from India’s courts to pursue his dream to become a doctor. The long term visas of his entire family had expired in 2017 and was never renewed by authorities. This put him in a legal grey zone. He was neither a tourist nor a citizen. Not even a refugee since India doesn’t recognise refugees by virtue of being a non-signatory to the 1951 UN Refugee Convention and its 1967 Protocol. He and his family were illegal aliens in a familiar land.

Sandeep's father Premchand

Fearing that his family’s ‘nowhere’ status would rob him of the opportunity to take the exam, Sandeep approached the Rajasthan High Court with the help of a local activist to allow him to sit for NEET. His lawyer petitioned the court that denying a ‘brilliant student’ like Sandeep the opportunity to take the exam would be a travesty of sorts. Just a week before NEET registrations were to close, the court ordered the director of India’s National Testing Agency (NTA) to accept Sandeep’s application, paving the way for him to take the exam. However, the court ordered NTA to not declare his result without its permission.

The results were declared on November 1, 2021 and NTA got the green signal to declare Sandeep’s result. Having cracked the exam with flying colours, Sandeep now faced a second hurdle. Neither a citizen nor a visa-holder, his achievement would come to naught if he was denied admission to India’s top medical colleges. He approached the court again. On January 10, 2022 the court ordered the administrators at NEET to allot him an appropriate medical college in accordance with his merit. The court ordered authorities to ignore the fact that Sandeep or his family did not have a long term visa. In many ways, the legal system and even the government had worked in symphony to ensure the boy wasn’t denied his due. “I think it’s one of those rare cases where everybody wanted the same outcome. From the judge to the home ministry and external affairs ministry officials, NEET director and the state who were respondents and their lawyers who never opposed Sandeep’s petition. The entire judicial process ensured that his perseverance didn’t go to waste” said Sanjay Mehta, Sandeep’s lawyer in the case. 

“I had worked very hard for it. I am grateful to god and the court for honouring my hard work and letting me pursue my dream. I will pursue MBBS at the Sawai Man Singh (SMS) Medical College, Jaipur. I cannot afford to pay capitation fees that most medical colleges ask for MBBS courses. SMS Medical College has a reasonable fees structure and doesn’t ask for donations” said Sandeep.

For Premchand, his son’s achievement is an opportunity to look back at his own journey from a drought hit village in Pakistan to the desert city in Rajasthan. One of the eight brothers, Premchand was the fifth and last of the lot to make the train journey to India in 2011. Working as a cloth seller in Khipro, he disposed of much of 15 acre land before moving to India with his family. As soon as he landed in India with a one month visa, he submitted all his identity documents with the authorities and applied for a long term visa. The initial days were tough despite support of extended family who were already settled in Jodhpur.

Premchand worked as helper with a vegetable vendor initially pocketing Rs 150 a day for his work. Soon a local Sindhi cloth trader employed him as a salesman at his emporium in the city. “It was a completely different experience. In Pakistan, men only bought pathaani suits in my area from me. Here, people were only buying pant-shirt (western attire). I got used to their sensibilities quickly” said Premchand.

In 2016, trouble came knocking on his door. His uncle’s son who had come over from Pakistan was arrested on spying charges by the local police. The man had stayed at Premchand’s house during his visit and the police arrested him as well for facilitating his stay and being his ‘guarantor’. Premchand was jailed for six months in 2016 before being released on bail. The man who visited him continues to be lodged in Jaipur central prison. “No charges were ever proven against me. I was just jailed for allowing him to stay in my house. But even now I have to go and present myself before the police in Jaipur every two weeks. The authorities refused to extend my family’s long term visa after it expired in 2017 citing the legal case against me” said Premchand.  

In 2019, Premchand had accumulated Rs 20,000 in savings and invested it in his roadside apparel venture. Earning anywhere between Rs 400 to 500 a day after hawking his wares for 12 hours, Premchand managed to send all his children to school and even pay a modest fee for Sandeep’s private NEET tuitions.  

“My father never asked me to help him in his business. He just told me to pursue my interests in medicine. He will be prouder than anyone else when I finally start my MBBS studies” said Sandeep.

Premchand added, “Our future depends on getting the long term visa. It is only then that I can even apply for a citizenship under the new laws. Unlike many others, me and my family have never gone back to Pakistan after we came here. When policemen come to check my papers to verify my requests for visa renewal, I begged them that Sandeep and my children’s future should not suffer for some false crime I have never committed.”

Premchand said Sandeep wouldn’t have been able to achieve anything if he hadn’t taken the decision to leave Khipro for good. He thanks his stars for prodding him to leave Pakistan at an opportune time.

The town of Khipro, Premchand and his family left behind a decade ago is no different today from when they bid it goodbye. Khipro taluka is situated in Sindh and is almost a five-hour drive from Karachi. The Indian border lies a thousand kilometres to the east. The locals are proud of their Achhro Thar, which literally means white desert – for the white sands instead of the golden hues on the Indian side. Dune after white dunes of sand as far as the eye can see. 

Tucked away in the corner of the Sindh province and far from any semblance of industrial or urban development, the locals rely on agriculture to eke out a living even in this barren and drought hit landscape. Rural roads are modest; often non-existent best traversed on an all-terrain 4X4. Electricity and medical infrastructure that the rest of Pakistan takes for granted is a luxury. Girls are often groomed to be homemakers; their education often sacrificed at the altar of ‘homely duties.’

While Sindh has the largest concentration of Hindus in Pakistan, the population of Khipro is mostly Muslim, with pockets of Christians and other minorities. In August 2021, a Hindu temple was vandalised in Khipro – one of the series of untoward incident against minorities that have been reported in recent times. While Pakistan’s PM Imran Khan has vowed to crack down on those indulging in such incidents, the fear of the unknown is deeply ingrained in those who have left the place behind.

Premchand said, “There was a lot of resentment against our community in Khipro. Local Muslim men whose families we had known for years would often jokingly say ‘We will kill you someday for speaking against us.’ But as community relations deteriorated, I could never tell when that joke would become a reality and my family would be at the mercy of violent mobs”

Lubna Jerar Naqvi is a journalist from Sindh, Pakistan