‘Dunki’ and immigration: How the first modern passports came to be

Passports of the past

Passports function as permits and proofs of identity, allowing the residents of one country to travel to another, and documents similar to it have existed for centuries.

In the Hebrew Bible, the Book of Nehemiah says that the ancient Persian king Artaxerxes, in around 450 BC, sent a prophet to Jerusalem but also sent letters with him that requested other governors to grant him safe passage through his journey.

Similar documents were in place in countries such as France and the United Kingdom. In his book The Passport: The History of Man’s Most Travelled Document, Martin Lloyd writes, “In France, the ‘Passport System’ had been well established before the French Revolution of 1789. Internal passports for travel from town to town were required as well as overseas passports for foreign excursions.”

The French State also used this system to “prevent skilled workers and capital from leaving and deterring troublemakers from arriving,” he adds. Further, a foreign traveller to France had to surrender his passport, which would then be replaced with a temporary one for the duration of his stay.

How did modern passports come into existence?

The Indian Ministry of External Affairs’ passport services website says that in India, “There was no practice of issuing Indian passports before the First World War.” This changed with the First World War (1914 to 1918) when the British government of India enacted the Defence of India Act. Under it, possessing a passport for leaving and entering India was compulsory. It then continued seeing how the practice was in place in other parts of the British Empire.

The World Wars changed the way passports were seen elsewhere too, arising out of a need countries felt to secure their borders and prevent the entry of people seen as enemies. In 1914, the British Nationality and Status of Aliens Act was enacted (where ‘alien’ referred to a “non-British subject”) to “consolidate and amend the Enactments relating to British Nationality and the Status of Aliens”. It spoke about the naturalisation of aliens and other laws related to citizenship.

According to the article ‘A Brief History of the Passport’, published in The Guardian, the first modern passport was a product of this Act. Before this, international travel did not require such documents. It carried distinguishing features of its holder – “a photograph and signature”, their complexion, etc. The article gives an example of an entry under it – “Forehead: broad. Nose: large. Eyes: small.”

A body seen as a predecessor to the United Nations, the League of Nations, also held a conference on the matter of regulating travel through passports in 1920. The Conference on Passports and Customs Formalities sought to have a standard system. The British system then became a common one from here onwards.

The 1920s saw laws on passports from countries such as the US. It was also a period when the country was seeing immigration from China and Japan pick up. A National Geographic article notes, “A year later, perhaps recognizing a political opportunity, the U.S. passed the Emergency Quota Act of 1921 and later, the Immigration Act of 1924 limiting the inflow of immigrants. The emergency? Too many newcomers from countries deemed a threat to ‘the ideal of American hegemony.’ How to identify an immigrant’s country of origin? By a newly minted passport, of course.”

In both the US and the UK, at least some residents found the prospect of describing their features and having to attest to their identity uncomfortable. An article in the Smithsonian Magazine says, “Ladies blushed at having to tell their age to a clerk. Gentlemen objected to having their romantic notions of individual character reduced to a generic list of physical traits. Headlines like ‘W.K. Vanderbilt Tries to Identify Himself’ detailed bureaucratic bothers, and the fact that President Woodrow Wilson needed a passport made front-page news.”

Despite their initial intended use as a wartime means of distinguishing between allies and enemies, the passport continues to endure and has solidified as an essential aspect of modern citizenship.