Reply to Prabhu Guptara on Dual Citizenship

["Vinay Chandekar" <vinay@asiaaccess.net.th>]

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Administrative Note:
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Week's Agenda: Political & administrative reforms
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On 03 Nov. Prabhu Guptara wrote:


     "But I will be pleased to have my ignorance of the practical
     disadvantages of such a policy (granting  dual citizenship)
revealed
     to me by other IP members."
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You are not alone in harbouring such feelings of injured innocence.
Let me try to clarify to you why Dual Citizenship can not be
granted.

First of all, impementing the dual-citizenship provision selectively
will
be nearly impossible - it is either for all or for none.

The problem lies with professorial-type people such as you who lead
a sheltered life in the marble edifices of academia and do not know
what
street-wise means. You can never imagine that  there are people who
will stoop to any depth and commit any crime to achieve their
nefarious
ends. In fact, it is the good-hearted ignorance of people such as
you that
is behind many "wet" ideas such as human rights etc which seek to
give
the guilty the full protection of law while ignoring the sufferings
of the injured
party.

Lack of provision for dual-citizenship hampers a few people such as
you, but there are thousands who will seek to hide behind the
dual-protection offerred by such provision. The problem is if a
person holding dual-citizenship, happens to breach the law of one
country, how do you tackle it ? You can Not kick out such a person,
you can only "sentence" him. Sentencing to death is always a messy
affair, so you sentence him to a certain prison term and then have
to release him to live among your "un-offending" people to "spread"
the cancer of his criminal mind among them. By comparison, it is
simple to handle a non-citizen who commits a crime in your country :
kick him out after he has completed his prison-term !

No, Prabhu, you can not have Dual-citizenship for the simple reason
that no one can owe allegiance to two countries. US citizenship
requires you to take an oath to this effect, so who will you fight
for in case there is a war between the two and you get commissioned
to train the military officers to "make effective use of  resources"
by bothe the warring countries ? Or have you assumed that since a
majority of Indian students studying Economics in USA are
capitalistic minded, US will never wage a war against India. Don't
forget, Tricky Dick Nixon did send his Seventh Fleet in the Bay of
Bengal during the liberation of East Bengal ?  The other reason is
of course, biological - one does not have two Fathers or two
mothers, so what moral grounds has he to ask for two citizenships ?
Matters of convenience to a few people can not dictate the national
policy.  Let us be lenient in "re-granting" citizen-ship to
ex-citizens who have had to give it up for whatso-ever reasons but,
two citizenships at one time is invitation to bad governance".

I wonder why everybody keeps saying, such and such thing is allowed
in so and so country and so on. You want to make India No.1 or a
idiotic imitator of others ? What suits others may not suit India.
If you sense the potential greatness of India, then this argument
smacks of tremendous self-service and wishful thinking since so many
members are all living abroad.




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