Leaving India for Good

My father began writing his memoirs at my urging the summer before he turned seventy in 2003. He was, as I said in my earlier post, an engaging raconteur and I hoped he would preserve his stories in his own words without any intervention by me. He wrote four chapters before he strayed from the project, and they are a precise and picturesque portrait of his life in India. At some point he mailed these chapters to me, asking me to serve as his editor. I thought they were vividly written and though I encouraged him to go on, he didn't write any more. My father passed away at the end of January this year, and I have naturally been thinking much about his life. His partial memoir, stored in the manila envelope they arrived in, are a treasure I am very grateful to have now. I've decided to post a couple of pages of his story at a time, since it is a first-hand account of the experience of immigration and all that lead up to leaving. Unlike other Indian men of his time, my father, Jatinder Nath Kapur, did not come to America as a physician or a student. He was educated after Partition at Shri Ram College of Commerce in Delhi and in the mid-50s completed his articles to join the elite rank of financial professionals known as Chartered Accountants. At the outset of his career, he was among India's best and brightest, who believed in Nehru's vision for a brilliant new India. He was thirty-six years old, with almost fifteen years of working life behind him, when he left in 1969. It was the financial corruption at two prominent Indian family-owned companies where he worked that so disgusted him, that he fought at the expense of his career, refusing to participate in financial improprieties, that ultimately drove him out of India. But my father was never bitter about his home country. He loved India deeply. After he retired, he enjoyed leaving Connecticut around Diwali time every year and spending his winters in New Delhi, hitting a few golf balls at the Delhi Golf Club, catching up with old friends, far removed from the disappointments of his Indian past.

HERE IS THE EXCERPT:

Leaving India for Good
by Jatinder Nath Kapur

Chapter One

"Ash karo gay ji, India wich kee paya! Rishvat bazi, chori, thay leaderan di baymani," said the Immigration clerk at the counter in Delhi as I presented him my passport. ("You'll have great time, what is there left in India? Bribery, theft, and corrupt leaders.") He stamped the passport with the words "LEAVING INDIA FOR GOOD."

"Dekho," I said as he returned my documents to me. Let's see. I cleared the customs area to board my flight for Beirut en route to the United States.

How right the clerk was! In one sentence he had summed up my reasons for leaving India for good. Corruption had become part of the fabric of country. Not only were our leaders personally corrupt, I thought, but they promoted corruption by enforcing government policies that were ridiculous and encouraged illegal activities like the black market. For instance, the Reserve Bank had sanctioned only eight dollars for my travel to the USA, deciding in its wisdom that this amount would be sufficient for me to take care of my living expenses until I found myself a job. Yes, there was another way to get foreign exchange. According to Reserve Bank rules, I could get official foreign exchange up to, I believe, a maximum of one thousand dollars, provided I paid the Reserve Bank twice the official rate of exchange and allowed them to keep this money interest-free for a period of ten years. After that, they would return to me in rupees the excess charged over the official rate. The government's reasoning at that time, in 1969, was that India was very short of foreign exchange and international travel by Indians for any reason should be discouraged. Surely the government did not intend to promote the black market in currency exchange, though it was aware such a market existed for converting rupees to dollars at around 1.75 times the official rate. Perhaps it was only coincidental that the government charged twice the official rate of exchange for sanctioning higher amounts of foreign exchange.

Fortunately my elder brother, Rajinder Kapur, whom I called Jindi Bhapa, was finance director of an American multinational, and with his help I obtained a thousand dollars without paying black market rates. This happened as one of his colleagues, Hugh Steele, was visiting India on official business. My immigration visa, under third preference category, had just been approved and I was preparing myself for my journey when I met Hugh at my brother's apartment in Bombay. Hugh at once suggested that I could buy up to a thousand dollars from him. I was very thankful and said I would give him the rupees the next day. I wanted him to pay me only three hundred dollars in India and I would collect the balance when I reached America. This arrangement having been agreed between us, I went to Jindi Bhapa's office the following morning to pay Hugh the rupees. He gave me three hundred dollars cash in return and an I.O.U. note for seven hundred dollars. I tore up the I.O.U. in front of him and told him that was not necessary. "What if I die?" he said.

I told him that was a chance I was prepared to take and would be willing to write off the remaining amount if that were to happen. Hugh found my attitude puzzling.


I was a Chartered Accountant by profession and had served for fourteen years in executive positions with firms like Assam Oil Company (later Oil India), Hindustan Lever, and subsequently with Indian companies like Gabriel and Jaipur Udyog. I had never had any income other than the salary paid by these companies and when I decided to immigrate I was told I needed to present a tax clearance certificate in order to leave. Salaried employees like me normally received tax refunds since the the taxes deducted at source were higher than the amount determined after assessment. The certificate would show my tax payements were in order. I contacted V. Shankar Aiyer & Company, an accounting firm where I had served my articles years ago, to obtain the tax certificate for me. One of their partners informed me that the income tax officer had requested a bribe of two thousand rupees. If I did not pay him the money, he would tamper with my papers to show an undisclosed interest income which would increase the tax demand by five hundred rupees. I could subsequently appeal the (bogus) assessment and probably win, but that would require time. In view of the threatened harassment, the partner I suggested I pay the bribe. I knew that for practical reasons this recommendation was my only alternative, so I paid. I am afraid bribery was and still is the only way to get work done in India.