The National Register of Citizens (NRC) in India and the potential for statelessness in situ: a cautionary tale from Assam

ABSTRACT

The threat of statelessness has the potential to be realized anew in India with the announcement of the impending National Register of Citizens (NRC). It has propelled this populous democracy once again into controversy. The importance of this announcement in conjunction with the 2019 Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA) cannot be overstated. We draw on the case of Assam for its potential to predict the implications and consequences of a pan-national register of citizens and the threat of detention, deportation, and large-scale rendering of statelessness for those excluded from the drafts. We stress the need for India to take incremental steps to establish transparent procedures and a clear trajectory for persons rendered stateless in situ by this state project.

KEYWORDS:

• statelessness
• citizenship
• religion
• India
• Assam

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 Willem van Schendel (2005) outlines three distinct partitions from the perspective of Assam and its neighbouring states - 1935, 1947, and 1971 – as relevant to the ethnocultural conflicts in the region.

2 All persons of Indian origin who came to Assam and have been residing there since January 1, 1966, are citizens of India. Those who entered between this date and before March 25, 1971, would be allowed to hold a passport but not vote.

3 Under clause (b) of sub-section (I) of Section 2 of the 1955 Citizenship Act, an illegal migrant is a foreigner who enters India legally but overstays the time permitted in their travel documents (Prashant 2020)

4 Bodo, the largest plains tribe in Assam, grieved the encroachment of Indigenous lands and political domains by Bengali Muslim communities, invoking narratives of the ‘illegal Bangladeshi immigrant’ (Saikia 2004).

5 The Tai-Ahom movement resists labels of Hindu and Indian in favour of the Phra Lung religion and transborder identities with Thailand (Saikia 2006).

6 A principle under international human rights law that applies to all migrants irrespective of migration status guaranteeing that they should not be returned to a country where they might face torture, cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment or punishment and other irreparable harm.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Amrita Hari

Amrita Hari (BA Hons, MA University of Toronto; DPhil Oxford) is an Associate Professor in the Institute of Women’s and Gender Studies at Carleton University and is interested broadly in global migrations, transnationalism, diaspora, and citizenship. She investigates the reproduction of gender, race, and class in Canadian migration policies, including immigrants’ reconfigurations of productive and reproductive labour in a post-migratory context, implications of temporary and precarious migrant status, and more recently, highly skilled immigrant women’s and international students’ work integration and migratory experiences during the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic.

Sugandha Nagpal

Dr. Sugandha Nagpal (Ph.D. International Development, University of East Anglia) focuses on issues of migration, gender, youth mobility, and urbanization. Her Ph.D. dissertation explored the gendered dynamics of middle-class culture in a Dalit Punjabi community. Previously, she has worked on land acquisition, maternal health and mobile technology in India, and sex selection in Indo-Canadian communities. She is part of a QMUL funded interdisciplinary project on mental health and family resilience and is currently working on an SSHRC-funded project on Covid-19 and Punjabi migration. Sugandha is also leading a project on internal migrants’ aspirations for education and employment in Haryana.