Kafka in India: the mysterious J-visa
On the phone, the clerk is confused. “I’m calling about my visa status,” I tell him, and he asks a standard question: “When did you submit the application?”
“May 5, 2015,” I say, and he pauses as though he’s only heard the first part. In the silence, I can hear his thought: May fifth? But that’s today.
It’s not. I applied for a journalist visa from the Indian government one full year ago. The consulate in my hometown Chicago has gone from estimating a two week wait to one month, then three months, then no particular date. The latest iteration is sheer confusion, and an admission I never expected: they say even they don’t know what the problem is.
*****
For years now, journalists had had trouble reporting from India. In 2007, for instance, the government deported a young American named Sabrina Buckwalter after she reported for the Times of India on a rape case in rural Maharashtra. Despite years of trying, she’s only regained a short-term visa once - and was forced to leave just a few days into her visit. Other journalists have been sent back, deported, or denied visas outright.
The most sanguine journalists would say these difficulties are simply a part of global reporting. I’d say I’m resigned. In my years working and writing in Africa and Asia (including a lengthy stint in Bangladesh and a separate trip to post-earthquake Nepal), I’ve passed more than a few hurdles.
And I recognize that it is good to be neither denied nor dead. But I didn’t expect my visa to be disappeared, as it were, for an entire year.
*****
After phoning the customer service line, I decide to go to the consulate.The visa delay has gone on so long I’d completed the work I’d wanted to do in India, so I won’t be traveling. But my time in South Asia honed my inborn persistence into full-fledged obduracy and, anyway, the situation piqued my curiosity.
Plus, I feel nostalgia. Going to the consulate on this “anniversary” justifies wearing my favorite Indian clothing, and when I open the tissue covering the white salwar kameez with a mayur motif that I’d had handmade in the Bengal, I’m surprised at how crisp and lovely and comfortable it still seems.It’s this day’s source of a thought I’ve had many times: I miss South Asia.
In the lobby of the local consulate, though, a clerk reminds me I don’t miss everything. He leaves me waiting 20 minutes, doesn’t say hello, won’t give his name. He doesn’t want me to record him. He says journalist visas take “six to eight months,” but can’t offer a reason why it’s been twelve. I press him to let me talk to his boss. He threatens to call security to throw me out, then stalks away grumpily.
For another 15 minutes, I stand alone in the empty marble hall, emailing the Consulate General from my smartphone.“Does the Indian consulate have any intention of ever processing my visa application?” I ask. “Is this refusal to process a visa now standard to all journalists? Could you comment on the effect this is having on democracy in India?” No reply is expected.
*****
Like the consulate, I can think of no real reason this passive visa denial should exist.
When I first applied, processing centre bureaucrats asked over and over if I’d be shooting video. It seemed connected to the Indian response to “India’s Daughter,” the British documentary that had then just come out and been banned. I told them six times that I don’t do video, then asked outright if this was about the Nirbhaya movie. They wouldn’t confirm it, but apologized for the badgering.
After applying - right around the time they extended my wait time from weeks to months - I wrote a brief article about maps in India, noting governmental mistrust of mapping. But the profiled company was based in Mumbai and Delhi, and the story seems far too mild to warrant visa denial.
Maybe this has something to do with my association with Bangladesh, where I worked as a researcher on taboo topics (mental health and HIV/AIDS). Then again, that was under the auspices of a Fulbright Fellowship, a US government programme that India has enthusiastically embraced.
May be the passive denial reflects the position I’ve come to occupy in South Asia: too well-mannered to outright affront, but too edgy to welcome in.
Or maybe this is a mild version of a deeper issue. The nearly two-year-old Modi government has focused on controlling media message and access with unique precision, and in some ways, this is problematic.The 2016 Press Freedom Index ranks India close to the bottom, with harsher conditions than 132 of 180 listed countries.
The sub-scores are especially revealing. India ranks ahead of nearly 60 countries in its score for “underlying circumstances” (in other words, the extent to which societal discord imperils journalists). But its score for “abuse” (the specific targeting of journalists, particularly by governments) is startlingly low. Only 13 countries do worse.
*****
As I hit send on my email to the Consulate General, the Vice Consul appeared behind the service window. He is markedly different from the clerk: straightforward, professional, and rather warm.
He inquires after my work; I tell him the wait has been so long I’d completed the contract. He said I’d have to resubmit all my paperwork. When I point out that unpredictable delays make it impossible to accept any future freelance work requiring a visa, he says that I’d be welcome to go to India to practise my religion (Buddhism), speak my fourth language (Bengali), or visit a friend (an actress in Mumbai). All I can’t do, in essence, is work as a journalist.
The rub is that a J-visa is mandatory for all journalists, even those with only touristic aims. And my visa is inexplicably stuck. Even with professional ambitions forgotten, I imagine I’d still need some kind of resolution if I ever want to return in the future. With this in mind, I ask the VC when this application will be processed.
He doesn’t know. And like everyone else, he, too, cannot explain.
M. Sophia Newman has reported from Ghana, South Africa, Kenya, Nepal, France, and the US. See more at msophianewman.com.