An Indian court rules that a man was never legally eligible to hold office because he had already naturalized as a German citizen decades earlier. Instantly, the moral theater begins: fraud, betrayal, violated citizenship. Yet the pension continues. Not because the state is confused, but because reversing past entitlements would force it to confront its own contradictions. Citizenship is treated as absolute when power is involved and negotiable when responsibility becomes inconvenient.
This is where the psychology becomes clear. Public anger is redirected toward the individual, because simple villains are comforting. “One person, one passport, one loyalty” offers emotional clarity while avoiding the harder truth: modern states themselves no longer operate on such coherence.
I support dual citizenship because human lives are layered and mobile, not static and national. States know this and rely on it for labor, capital, and demographics. At the same time, they promote a moral narrative of singular loyalty because it disciplines populations. Citizens are encouraged to police each other’s legitimacy while the state preserves maximum flexibility for itself.
The Ramesh case exposes this logic cleanly. Political legitimacy is retroactively invalidated, but financial entitlements are left untouched. Not out of mercy, but institutional self-protection. Once benefits are embedded, clawing them back creates legal risk and administrative exposure. The contradiction is tolerated because it is useful.
This pattern is not uniquely Indian. Germany, Europe, and the broader West are filled with similar arrangements. Dual citizenship is expanded quietly to stabilize aging societies, while public discourse frames it as a moral concession. Naturalization is accelerated for economic reasons, while loyalty debates dominate talk shows. Investment citizenship is condemned rhetorically, while investor capital remains welcome everywhere. The message is consistent: flexibility for the state, rigidity for the individual.
The deeper problem is not dual citizenship. It is the refusal to admit that citizenship has become an instrument rather than an identity. Once that admission is made, the moral panic collapses. A passport does not define loyalty. Behavior does. Contribution does. Legal compliance does. Everything else is symbolism designed to maintain psychological order.
The most enduring false narrative here is centuries old: the belief that the state is a moral community rather than a strategic actor. That belief survives because many people prefer the comfort of boxes to the anxiety of complexity. But complexity is the reality investors, policymakers, and globally mobile individuals already live in.
This case does not show that citizenship is broken. It shows that the stories we tell about it no longer match how power actually works. Once you see that, the passport stops being the issue.
