Call for Regime Change
Arvind forwarded me this article from today’s Sunday Express in New Delhi, “Are you an American Scholar? You are not welcome in India”. It is well known in the research community here in the homeland that the Home Ministry and Intelligence Bureau (IB) in India have delayed approvals and finally rejected the proposals for research sponsored by American Institute of Indian Studies (AIIS) and Fulbright, pending for the past two years. This has caused much loss to many friends and colleagues. There is no reason anymore to make sponsored research subject to a bilateral regime, and have everything submitted to the Home Ministry and IB for approval. Apart from AIIS and Fulbright, I do not believe most other funding agencies require one to submit to the research visa regime. Nor should anyone have to in this day and age — this regime is a relic of the early sixties.
Why should scholars seek anything other than entry visas to come to do research in India? Indian law actually permits for much more academic freedom and right to access if you go through other channels such as the university system and approaching officials directly. Perhaps I am painting too rosy a picture. But I believe funding should not be connected to your nationality, whether Indian or not, and apart from these few bilateral programmes under the old visa regime, it isn’t.
One needs to remember that most of these are public documents in state institutions which are, in principle, open to all. Of course access is always negotiated. One can do much through the recommendations of high-level bureaucrats, and the good-will of your average clerk, and I know many American scholars who have learned the ways of the system and taught me very much when I met them in the field in India or on campus here in America. One the other hand, I have had severe arguments with American scholars of South Asia who have seriously contended with me that one cannot access archives and other materials without a research visa.
This is simply wrong, and the perception this generates must be condemned. These same elite institutions in the U.S. play a role in mediating access to state collections in India, and setting standards for research practice globally. Some of the most important collections for doing research on Indian history are located in the U.S. and the U.K. In most cases the fruits of our research work, while sponsored and supported by public institutions in India and the U.S., is privately published, stored and circulated in closed archives and university libraries to which the wider public in India or America has only limited access.
The scholars themselves are trapped inside this system, and gain very little from subjecting themselves to it. I have seen many dear friends and colleagues humiliated by the registrations, inspections, and process of seeking approvals to which research visa holders must undergo. It is degrading once you are in India. But these Fulbrighters were kept waiting for all this time and finally rejected! How many liberals amongst us would seriously submit such sensitive project ideas if they knew that the police intelligence is opening a file on them, which is tied to their conditions of stay in the country, and which will haunt them for the rest of their careers as scholars of South Asia, whether their nationality is Indian or American? The whole idea of dragging oneself through this bureaucratic-police state in India is absurd if it can be avoided.
s, am a little unclear: why is arguing that access to archives should not be tied to research visas a devil’s advocate position?
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