India’s Jews have asked Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi to intercede on behalf of their Israeli relatives facing difficulties in seeking to visit India, the World Jewish Congress reported here.
In a letter to Gandhi, Prof. Nissim Ezekiel, president of the Council of Indian Jewry, outlined the problems that Jews of Indian origin living in Israel have in obtaining a visa to come to India.
In his letter he pointed out that until 1983 “our relations desirous of visiting India and Bombay were having no problem whatsoever,” noting that upon arrival at any Indian airport visas for a 30-day stay were routinely issued by the Indian authorities.
But a change in the procedure since then required that visas be obtained in advance from an Indian embassy abroad. Because there is no Indian embassy in Israel, Ezekiel noted, “our relations and ourselves find it extremely difficult to meet in India.”
An alternative procedure, by which a visa application can be made to the Consulate Officer in Bombay, has not remedied the problem, he added. Ezekiel pointed out that these applications, going back as far as July 1986, have not been responded to.
ADMINISTRATIVE SOLUTIONS PROPOSED
“Under these circumstances, may we request you to be so kind so as to solve our difficulties in receiving a visa for our relations in Israel who desire to visit India,” Ezekiel’s letter asks. He stressed the hardships caused to those Jews attempting to come to India “to meet their relations in times of their joy and /or sorrow, i.e., in time of marriage and/or in times of serious ailments of their relations, and/or death.”
Ezekiel proposed a number of administrative solutions, including special endorsement of passports with the words “of Indian origin” and reinstitution of the previous practice of visas being issued upon arrival at Indian airports.
The Council of Indian Jewry represents the country’s 7,000 Jews and is a national member of the World Jewish Congress. The Council had forwarded its letter dated January 20 to WJC president Edgar Bronfman in New York and asked for his intervention in this matter.
In a letter sent Tuesday, WJC secretary general Israel Singer asked India’s Ambassador to Washington, H. E. Pratap Kishan Kual, to assist in having his government rectify the situation.
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