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Scan for outdated or missing drivers - takes under a minuteDriver Scan →Repair Windows errors before they cause bigger problemsFix Now →Svetoslav Roerich became an Indian citizen because he regarded India as his permanent home—and, at that moment, Indian citizenship would let him travel to the Soviet Union for an exhibition. He took the oath of allegiance on March 21, 1960, after applying under Section 6(1) of the Citizenship Act, 1955.
India was the home where Roerich intended to stay
Roerich’s clearest explanation came in a letter dated March 5, 1960. As quoted in Ajay Kamalakaran’s 2023 account in Scroll.in, he wrote: “I have resided in India for a period of over 28 years, as a permanent resident and it is my intention to continue to live in India.”
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That statement makes his decision more than a matter of obtaining travel documents. He had lived in India for decades and said he planned to remain there. The same account describes him as content with his life in India and not keen to live in Russia.
A Soviet exhibition gave the application immediate purpose
The timing was also connected to a possible visit to the Soviet Union. According to Kamalakaran’s account, the Soviet embassy asked whether Roerich would return to his country of birth. He was interested in seeing his elder brother and exhibiting his paintings there, but the trip required an Indian passport. The account says he could make it only as an Indian citizen.
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The two reasons fit together: India was where Roerich intended to continue living, while citizenship made a particular journey possible. The Soviet visit was not the same as choosing to resettle there.
He was not simply changing from Soviet to Indian citizenship
Roerich was born in St Petersburg in 1903. Kamalakaran’s account says he was a Russian imperial citizen and that he and his family became stateless after the Bolshevik Revolution. The family left Russia, lived in Europe and the United States, and began visiting India in the 1920s; by the 1930s, they had settled in Naggar, in present-day Himachal Pradesh.
That history matters: the 1960 decision, as described in the account, was not a straightforward switch from Soviet citizenship to Indian citizenship. It was the naturalization of a Russian-born artist who had lived in India for many years and was reported to have been stateless.
How the application was handled
Kamalakaran reports that Roerich applied under Section 6(1) of the Citizenship Act, 1955. The account describes officials discussing procedural requirements, including newspaper notices and a language requirement. Roerich supplied a letter certifying that he understood Urdu adequately, and the application was approved after an Intelligence Bureau check. He took the oath of allegiance to the Constitution of India on March 21, 1960.
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The article quotes Home Ministry official Fateh Singh as saying Roerich could be accepted under the proviso to Section 6(1), which allowed conditions in the Third Schedule to be waived, but that the prime minister wanted the prescribed procedure followed while the application was handled quickly. Singh also wrote that Roerich’s eminence would make him “a useful and valuable citizen of India.” These quotations and procedural details are reported by Scroll.in; the underlying correspondence is not independently established here.
The same account says Narayanan Raghavan Pillai proposed that the usual newspaper-notice requirement be set aside under Rule 26 of the Citizenship Rules, 1956. It also reports an application cost of Rs 108.75. Those details describe the handling of Roerich’s particular case, not a general statement of present-day citizenship procedure or fees.
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Why this story is about belonging as well as a passport
Roerich was known as an artist, particularly for large portraits, including portraits of Jawaharlal Nehru and Indira Gandhi. His citizenship story joins the practical circumstances of an exhibition trip with his own declaration that he intended to keep living in India. The passport answered an immediate travel need; his letter gave the deeper reason for making India his home.
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