The last time there was a kerfuffle over a misunderstood e-visa, External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj had to intervene to make sure British actor Orlando Bloom could actually enter the country after being invited by the Uttar Pradesh government. Now, things have got worse and actually caused a diplomatic incident. The Russian embassy to India has condemned the deportation of a Russian priest from Chennai on Sunday, saying the action goes against the spirit of ties between the two countries.
Father Superior Seraphim, a Russian Orthodox Priest, was detained at the Chennai airport on Sunday after it turned out that he only had a tourist visa – which authorities concluded was not sufficient if he wanted to participate in a special prayer session. According to the Russian embassy, Seraphim was kept at the airport for seven hours, denied any contact with consular officials and also not given basic support, including food.
On Monday, the embassy put out an official statement condemning the treatment meted out to Seraphim.
"The Embassy of the Russian Federation condemns the deportation of a Russian citizen, Father Seraphim, by the immigration authorities of the Chennai International Airport. Unacceptable is the fact that Russian diplomats were denied for seven hours the contact with the priest at the airport. He was also denied basic assistance, including food, despite the requests from the Embassy and the Consulate General of the Russian Federation in Chennai.
The statement goes on to say that this "disrespect," shown to a priest from a friendly country, went against the spirit of affinity and cooperation that is characteristic of the Russian-Indian relationship.
Bureaucratic incident
It's unlikely that the matter will get blown up much more – Moscow's consul general in Chennai told a Russian news agency that it was a "bureaucratic rather than a political incident" – but the fact that it had to be taken up at all should concern India's diplomatic corps.
The issue seems to have come from an attempt to enter the country with an e-visa. According to the Hindu, Seraphim had earlier visited India on a visitor visa at the invitation of the Russian embassy. The priest, part of the department of external relations of the Russian Orthodox church, had been travelling around Asia and had already stopped in India twice, which was the limit of entries on his original tourist visa.
As a result, he decided to apply for an e-visa, which the government introduced a few years ago as an update to the old visa-on-arrival scheme. Electronic visas allow foreigners to enter the country after having applied online a few days in advance. The scheme hasn't been tremendously successful though, in part because of uncertainty about who can visit and for what purpose.
The scheme is technically applicable to travellers with the objective of visiting India for “recreation, sightseeing, casual visit to meet friends or relatives, short duration medical treatment or casual business visit”. Authorities at the Chennai airport apparently concluded that this did not include humanitarian purposes, which was what Seraphim had intended to visit for.
Winter clothes
What seems to have really annoyed the Russians, however, was the fact that consular officials were not allowed to meet the priest in the airport for more than seven hours on Sunday, after which India decided to deport Seraphim.
The Hindu's report went so far as to include a complaint by an unnamed Russian consular official that the priest had to go from Chennai, which meant the Delhi embassy could not hand over his winter clothes.
The last time there was a e-visa problem, Swaraj stepped in and saved the day for Bloom. The Indian government has so far not made any comments about the Russian condemnation, but Swaraj – wrapping up a visit to Israel and Palestine – will have to deal with the Russian affair once she returns home.