This is one of the great mysteries of researching India as a non-Indian. Do foreign scholars wanting to conduct fieldwork in India need a research, a student or a business visa? If you are doing research overseas, you need to take responsibility of all visa preparations and outcomes. But I do want to share my fourth-month experience from March to June 2016 of trying to affiliate with Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) in New Delhi and get my project approved by the India High Commission in London because I believe it can be helpful as a reference, even if your visa experience is completely different.
I applied right after the February 2016 Kanhaiya Kumar arrest on JNU campus[1], and many rumors surrounded antagonism to political activism on university campuses by Prime Minister Narendra Modi and the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP-Hindu nationalist right-wing party), in power since 2014. While I doubt national politics did and would significantly change the policy environment for research visas, it is something to keep in mind as you submit your application.
TLDR: Be assertive, persistent but considerate, as with any social scientific research process. Confidently frame the value of your research to the Indian government in your application, while being careful not to insert yourself insensitively into domestic political matters as an outsider. Fieldwork for global histories always require this skill; you should always be negotiating these politics in a way that doesn’t offend but allows you to ask the intellectual questions you need to ask. Maintain good relations with your affiliated institution and be respectful of any faculty members that help you with administrative duties, because they are going out of their way to navigate the red tape that comes with applying for obscure visas.
What follows is a detailed step-by-step account.
2016 March 9: After submitting my online application the night before, I submitted my research visa application physically through appointment at VFS Global Bristol branch. At the time, I confirmed with them that I had assembled all the necessary documents and it would take up to 21 days to fully process. About a week later on March 16, I received a phone call from the India High Commission in London stating that I needed to send a research synopsis and letter of confirmation that I am enrolled as a PhD student at the University of Exeter (my home institution), documents which I emailed in an attachment to the High Commission by the end of the same day.
2016 March 18: VFS informs me that my application was put on hold because I needed a ‘document showing Government of India approval for the project’. Confused, I made numerous calls to confirm what this means with VFS and the High Commission, but the only answer I could get was ‘just ask your affiliated institution, JNU will know what document this is.’ I emailed my JNU mentor, asking if he knew what they were referring to and he quickly replied on March 21 with a PDF of a letter dated 2008 August 20 from the Government of India, Ministry of Human Resources Development, Department of High Education U.4 Section to JNU’s Academic Branch Registrar (Reference No. F.31-18/2008-U.4). It basically states the revised policy of the Indian government to give automatic permission to approved universities, that granting the necessary letters to a foreign research scholar also acted as GOI approval for the research project. I submitted these to VFS on March 21.
2016 March 23: I heard back from VFS for the second time stating that my application was again put on hold because the letter submitted was dated 2008 and that I needed a more current letter from the Government of India. I called the High Commission and VFS numerous times but I could get no answer other than to ‘just ask JNU’. I reluctantly asked my mentor but he said no one had heard of such a document or a change in policy. As I understood it, if my project was sensitive, then the High Commission automatically refers my application to the relevant Delhi ministries but it doesn’t ask the applicant to produce such a document (according to very helpful academic blogs like Raphael Susewind and India Mike[2]).
So I went to the newly opened Bristol branch of VFS Global on March 30 to ask what exactly this document was and how to get it (they didn’t want to let me in the building if I hadn’t made a prior appointment, but I can’t make an appointment just to ask questions, only to submit hard copies of documents after making the application online). After speaking with another representative who basically read off information on VFS Global’s website, he agreed to call the Rep I’d been working with on her personal number and she (apparently) said to him that the content of the document was fine, I just needed a more current one.
At this point, I didn’t know if VFS were properly reading the documents I had sent them, or if they were just blindly sending them to the High Commission without knowing what the documents were and then repeating whatever the High Commission said without more specific details on what was required. This was all they would tell me: no clear idea what the document showing GOI approval looked like or how I could apply for it and always repeating that I should ask JNU. So I assumed that they meant, you need to show a document proving that the 2008 policy is still in effect. As I was also advised to email the VFS Rep for more detailed information, I did so later the same day (30 March) but received no reply except the usual automated message: that they’d received my additional documents, they’d reply in 24-48 hours and that I could track the progress of my application on VFS website. I spoke with my PhD supervisor and we agreed that finding evidence from GOI Ministries that this 2008 policy was still in effect might do the trick.
I am by late March 2016 thoroughly bamboozled. Story will continue, stay tuned.