In her first interview to talk about her deportation from India last week, British poet and writer Nitasha Kaul said, “I was treated like a criminal,” adding it was “unjust and unfair” and “a harrowing experience” for her.
When she arrived at Kempegowda airport in Bengaluru on February 23, she was denied permission to enter the country even though she is an Overseas Citizen of India and has the right to come to India as often as she wants. She was given no explanation by the authorities other than that they were acting on the orders of the government in Delhi. Instead she was held in detention, in a small room, for almost 24 hours before being sent back to the UK.
In a 35-minute interview to Karan Thapar for The Wire, Kaul, who is a professor of Politics International Relations and Critical Interdisciplinary Studies at the University of Westminster in the UK, explained that she was born, brought up and studied in India. She said: “I consider myself Indian, I care very much for India”.
Kaul was born in Gorakhpur, attended school in India, and went to college at SRCC.
She has a very close family in India, including an elderly mother who lives in the country. Equally importantly, she said she had last visited India at the start of February, just three weeks before her visit on February 23, which ended with her deportation.
Although explanations, presumably given by the government, for her deportation have been carried both by the Times of India and NDTV, Kaul clarified that neither the newspaper nor the television channel had contacted her to obtain her account and side of the story.
In the interview, she comprehensively responded to everything reported by the Times of India and NDTV as explanations given by the government for her deportation.
She said, “I have no animus for India,” something that NDTV reported, saying the government claims she has. She said she sees this as “a personal vendetta” and an attempt “to sever me from my family”.
