Migration and 'Intimate Citizenship': The 'Small Voice' of Ansari Begum. (June 2022)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: Kannabiran, Kalpana; Tella, Ramya K.
• Other Names: Deshingkar Priya guest-editor.
• Is Part Of: Social change. Volume 52:Number 2(2022)
• Page Start: 291
• Page End: 307
• Publication Date: 2022-06
• Subjects: Partition -- belonging -- intimate citizenship -- migration -- refugee -- migrant; Social change -- Periodicals; India -- Social conditions -- Periodicals; 303.405
• DOI: 10.1177/00490857221082956
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 0049-0857

Abstract

The Partition of 1947 saw approximately 8 million Hindus and Sikhs leave Pakistan to settle in India and 6–7 million Muslims leave India to settle in Pakistan between 1947 and 1951. This article attempts to discuss one such 'small voice', a female Tamil Muslim voice, that of Ansari Begum, in Madras, as it surfaces through the 'lines of the law'—bureaucratic and juridical—that inscribe frontiers. The idea of citizenship, it is argued, is more than the definition of a relationship between the individual and the state—it is a relationship of intimate belonging that is 'multi-layered', spatially and culturally shaped and is both abstract and specific.