In 4 years, India put 4,200 foreigners on visa blacklist for Tablighi activities | Latest News India - Hindustan Times
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In 4 years, India put 4,200 foreigners on visa blacklist for Tablighi activities

Hindustan Times, New Delhi | By
Apr 02, 2020 04:42 PM IST

Foreigners who enter India on a tourist visa are entitled to listen to Tablighi Jamaat sermons, not engage in missionary work, a home ministry official said

As many as 4,200 foreigners have been blacklisted by the Home Ministry’s Immigration Department for flouting tourist visa norms and engaging in Tablighi activities, particularly missionary work, since 2015.

India has placed 4,200 foreigners in the blacklist for visas in the last four years for entering the country on a tourist visa but engaging in missionary work linked to the Tablighi Jamaa.(Mohd Zakir/Hindustan Times)
India has placed 4,200 foreigners in the blacklist for visas in the last four years for entering the country on a tourist visa but engaging in missionary work linked to the Tablighi Jamaa.(Mohd Zakir/Hindustan Times)

The focus on Tablighi Jamaat has come after a large number of its workers were infected with the Sars-CoV-2 pathogen that causes Covid-19 virus from foreigners visiting the Markaz in Nizamuddin last month.

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While Maulana Saad, the fourth emir of Jamaat, has made it clear from his quarantine that Tablighi workers must follow medical advice, the initial resistance or hesitation by the group has been blamed for a spike in virus positive cases all over India.

About 216 foreigners were still in the six-storey building in central Delhi when Indian officials began their evacuation a few days back. Another 824 had touched base at Nizamuddin before dispersing to different parts of the country for their activities.

Cabinet Secretary Rajiv Gauba has told state police chiefs to run a quick background check on them to ascertain their activities.

According to North Block officials, Tablighi followers from abroad attract the immigration blacklist if they are found preaching or proselytizing in India. It is not a violation to merely listen to sermons from the Jamaat leadership, one official clarified.

Once it is found that an individual engaged in missionary work on a tourist visa, the Tablighi Jamaat follower is blacklisted for two years. Since January 2020, more than 2,000 foreigners particularly from Indonesia, Malaysia, Bangladesh and Myanmar have visited the Markaz at Nizamuddin.

It is understood that in cases where the immigration finds that a Tablighi preacher with a big following is misusing the visa norms by not applying for a missionary visa but coming on a tourist visa, then the Home Ministry blacklists the culprit permanently.

A foreigner on the blacklist will not be given a visa again for two years. Now the Home Ministry is debating if it should extend the validity of the blacklist to at least four years or more to send a strong message.

“Under the existing provisions, such kind of visa condition violations do not attract permanent blacklisting. But we intend to revisit the issue,” said a senior official.

The Tablighi Jamaat, an off-shoot of Deobandi movement, preaches on how to be a good Muslim by focusing on Quran and Hadiths while also incorporating some of the local traditions. In that way, it is different from Ahle-Hadith and Wahabbi movements of Islam.

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  • ABOUT THE AUTHOR
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    Author of Indian Mujahideen: The Enemy Within (2011, Hachette) and Himalayan Face-off: Chinese Assertion and Indian Riposte (2014, Hachette). Awarded K Subrahmanyam Prize for Strategic Studies in 2015 by Manohar Parrikar Institute for Defence Studies and Analyses (MP-IDSA) and the 2011 Ben Gurion Prize by Israel.

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