Republic Day Special: How the passport mapped the journey of India and kept up with its milestones

Since then, the passport design has changed, through colours, covers and text. In passports issued after 1950, the cover became blue. The national emblem stayed in the middle and the words ‘Satyamev Jayate’ were added in Hindi script. The word ‘Passport’ was repositioned above the national emblem and the country’s English name, ‘Republic of India’, came below the emblem. Only after a few years would the country’s Hindi name, ‘Bharat Ganarajya’, get added to the passport’s cover.

Noting these simple details is essential because a passport is critical in a nation’s journey. It enables the citizens of a sovereign state to engage with the outside world. To its people, it defines the relationship between them and the government. As a document, it goes beyond identifying an individual to more significant narratives of identity, rights and citizenry. For India, a passport is a chronicler of how we travelled, the evolution of documentary identities, the handling of displacement of millions post-Partition and how we have evolved as a nation.

In colonial India, before World War I, movement beyond the country’s shores were possible broadly for three classes of individuals. The first two were mass movements of Indians going to work as labourers or for pilgrimage. Then, there were the British, the European and other Indian travellers. Each category had a different type of documentation.

The coolie and the pilgrim’s progress

With the end of slavery in 1834, there was a labour shortage in the British Empire. To address the problem, the administrators introduced a contract labour system to meet the requirements of plantation and mine owners in foreign lands. Labour contractors recruited poor Indians to travel to Africa and the Caribbean to work on five-year, fixed-wage contracts. These indentured labourers often worked in slave-like conditions.

Gopal Krishna Gokhale highlighted the plight of these labourers in South Africa, while moving a motion in the legislative council. He stated, “To take from this country helpless men and women to a distant land…to make them work under a law which they do not understand and which treats their simplest and most natural attempts to escape ill-treatment as criminal offences such a system, by whatever name it may be called, must really border on the servile.” The British administration gave these contract labourers not a passport but Coolie passes as their travel was on Coolie Agreements and their travel was within the Empire. The next large-scale movement was of Muslims going on pilgrimage. In this case, the Turkish government required passports from pilgrims travelling for Hijaz. As a result, the colonial authorities introduced a system of free pilgrim passports in 1884. These passports underwent a few iterations and had some distinctive features, including adding the name of the person going on Hijaz and the names of accompanying relatives and servants. It also cautioned pilgrims that the British government would not bring back pauper pilgrims.

But before the pilgrim passport, from 1847 onwards, British subjects and Europeans could get a passport from the foreign department for a fee of Re 1. It was a single-page horizontal printed document on which the passport holder’s details were handwritten. In addition to name, age, profession and purpose of passport, there was also a column for distinctive marks. At the bottom of the page, the passport stated: “This is to certify that the party above named is entitled to British Consular protection.” These passports would also evolve and there would be eight different types of passport, based on the individuals applying for them.

Beginning of a formal passport regime

The start of World War I meant that countries required travellers to have passports with visas as a prerequisite for entering their territories. In 1915, the British Foreign Office suggested that the government of India follow its form of application for issuing passports to ensure a uniform system throughout the Empire. These new regulations brought about a significant shift in passport regulations. Applicants had to provide a photograph and sign the application form or affix a thumb impression, if they were illiterate.

The form had to be verified by officials like a magistrate, superintendent of police or a notary public. These officials also had to vouch for the applicants personally and state that they were “fit and proper to receive a passport”. A single form was also devised by which natural-born British subjects, their wives and widows, persons naturalised in the UK or in the colonies and subjects of native states in India, could apply for the passport.

The new regulations also consolidated earlier ones like cautioning applicants that they had no vested right to claim a passport and it was granted at the government’s discretion. The regulations also stated, “Passports should ordinarily not be granted to persons of doubtful character or respectability.” Prof Radhika Singha, who has written about passports, in her paper “The Great War and a ‘Proper’ Passport for the Colony: Border-Crossing in British India (1882–1922)”, states: “A marked feature of the march of documentary government in the colony was that red tape strengthened the arbitrary powers of bureaucracy far out of proportion to its actual reach. This fostered delay and corruption, but it also served to remind ‘respectable’ Indians that ‘objective’ information about themselves had to be supported by evidence about their standing in trusted circles.”

The new regulations kept the passport fee unchanged at Re 1 and specified that the document was valid for two years. In 1917, the government, through the Defence of India rules, made passports mandatory for entering and exiting India by sea. However, it exempted contract labour and Armed Forces personnel from this requirement. When the system of contract labour ended in 1917, a little over 1.3 million Indians were taken as contract labour to work in far-flung colonies. Over a million soldiers also left India to fight in World War I, and more than 7,000 died.

While the different parts of the Empire were keen to exploit cheap Indian labour, they were not inclined to allow Indians to settle in their territories. Between 1890 and 1915, South Africa, Australia and Canada passed legislation to deter Indians from emigrating there. South Africa imposed tax and Canada took away voting rights of Indians. Australia required that migrants take a dictation test. To pass the test, the individual had to write 50 words in any European language as dictated by the immigration officer. In a later iteration of the test, the officer could dictate in any European language.

The 1920 Indian Passport Act and standardisation

The rules requiring passports for entry and exit from India were made under the Defence of India Act of 1915. With World

War I coming to an end, these rules were also going to expire. To continue with the passport regulations, the British administration enacted the Indian Passport Bill in 1920.

That year, the League of Nations started its work and, among other things, held a conference to standardise passports across nations. According to the League, the conference aimed “to remove transport difficulties and re-establish freedom in the sphere of international communication.”

The League’s passport conference specified that a passport should be bound in cardboard, have 32 pages, and be written in French and the issuing country’s national language. It also suggested that the passport contain a detailed physical description of the holder and a photograph of him and his wife. The British Indian and then independent India’s passports followed many of these guidelines.

Partition and the right of Indians to a passport

The independence of India and Pakistan presented both countries with the challenge of regulating the flow of people whose lives were on both sides of the border. In 1948, both countries implemented a permit system for travel between them. This system evolved into the India-Pakistan Passport and Visa scheme in 1952. Under this scheme, each country issued a passport only valid for entering the other country. In addition, travellers were also required to get a visa from the other country to enter it. The India-Pakistan Passport and the Citizenship Act of 1955 became key factors in deciding the claims for Indian citizenship. Such country-specific passports would also be introduced for Sri Lanka and later for Bangladesh.

This country-specific regime meant that Indians could have an international passport valid for other countries, in addition to country-specific passports. Incidentally, till 1954, passports were issued by state governments on behalf of the Ministry of External Affairs. That year, five regional passport offices were set up in Mumbai, Kolkata, Delhi, Chennai and Nagpur. Before independence, Indians had limited recourse for grievances relating to British authorities’ denial of passport facilities. After 1947, Indians started litigating to safeguard their right to travel abroad from government overreach. Till 1966, the Government of India had not made a specific law on passports providing the conditions under which they could be revoked or suspended.

But in 1966, Satwant Singh Sawhney, a businessman engaged in importing and exporting automobile spare parts, was asked by the passport authorities to surrender his passport. He was told that the government had decided to withdraw the passport facility extended to him. Sawhney petitioned the Supreme Court, stating that the government was violating his fundamental rights of equality and liberty without any procedure established by law. The government contended that Sawhney was being investigated for violating import licences, and it was apprehensive that if he had his passports, he might abscond to escape trial.

The apex court held that Article 21 contained the right to travel abroad. Since there was no law placing any restrictions on citizens, “the unchanelled arbitrary discretion with the executive in the matter of issuing or refusing passports to different persons is violative of Art. 14 of the Constitution.” This would catalyse the government to issue an ordinance in 1967, enacting a comprehensive law regulating passports.