Denationalisation and discrimination in postcolonial India. Issue 3 (September 2022)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: Choudhury, Sumedha
• Other Names: Atrey Shreya guest-editor.; Briddick Catherine guest-editor.; Foster Michelle guest-editor.
• Is Part Of: International journal of discrimination and the law. Volume 22:Issue 3(2022)
• Page Start: 326
• Page End: 342
• Publication Date: 2022-09
• Subjects: Citizenship -- colonialism -- denationalisation -- discrimination -- India -- statelessness; Discrimination -- Law and legislation -- Periodicals; 342.085
• DOI: 10.1177/13582291221113517
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 1358-2291

Abstract

With the recent National Register of Citizens updating process in Assam (a northeastern state in India) and the Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA 2019), there have been significant changes to India's citizenship laws and policies. This may create one of the world's largest stateless populations in modern times. These changes manifest the government's othering process of creating binaries of belonging and non-belongingness between the majority Hindus and minorities (especially followers of the Islamic faith). In this article, taking these recent changes to citizenship as a case study, I discuss how India's colonial past, the experience of partition, and the henceforth nation-building contributed to perceiving the 'citizen' primarily along Hindu majoritarian lines. I argue that the nation-building process in India was based on retaining and simultaneously re-establishing the 'others', thereby reinforcing colonial legacies in the structure and functioning of the postcolonial state. Consequently, this article deals with two questions, first, how the adoption of discriminatory citizenship laws and the risk of statelessness in India is rooted in its complex history, the impact of British colonial expansion and the postcolonial realities and second, what role 'law' has played in the process.