The Sonia Gandhi syndrome

Letter fron Hong Kong

Hong Kong is in the grip of a videshi-swadeshi debate of the sort that resonated in Indian politics a few years ago when the BJP made much of Sonia Gandhi’s “ineligibility” for public office owing to her “foreign” origins.

At least five recent political appointees by the Hong Kong government have been pressured into renouncing their foreign citizenship — typically in the US, Canada or Britain — following an uproar over their continuing to hold “dual citizenship” and public office.

Although the appointments were not mala fide under Hong Kong law since only appointees to top-level political positions are not allowed to be ‘foreign nationals’, the issue had acquired tremendous momentum in recent days. Some of the Chinese-language media commentaries were particular trenchant in their criticism — and their demand for the appointees to either surrender their foreign passports or resign.

Activists groups too have been staging demonstration outside the government headquarters denouncing the political appointments of people who hold dual nationality. The argument being advanced is that even if the law did not forbid these appointments, it would reflect much better on their commitment and loyalty to China and to Hong Kong if they gave it up.

Another kind of ‘Gandhian’ touch was provided to Hong Kong by about three dozen South Asian detainees at an immigration centre who went on a hunger strike to protest their detention — and likely deportation.   

Asylum seekers from India, Pakistan and Bangladesh — who claim they fled persecution in their home countries — staged the Gandhigiri protest. But the Immigration Department, which has initiated deportation proceedings, said it would proceed with those since all of them had been convicted of criminal or immigration offenses. It is believed that the protest was initiated by some detainees who had been denied for various reasons — including that they were at risk of absconding. Curiously, however, the hunger strike did not cover food that the inmates’ families brought from home!