Between encompassment and closure

Abstract

The figure of the citizen as it emerged with modernity also produced the ‘constitutive outsider’ denoting differential or layered inclusions. The legal-constitutional language of citizenship in India and the manner in which it has unfolded in practice shows that citizenship oscillates ambivalently between encompassment and closure, creating a differential layering of citizenship. While encompassment unfolds as a potential moment of liberatory change, closure, as a simultaneous differential experience of citizenship, creates a breach in the differentiated-universalism envisaged by the logic of encompassment. It is this oscillation and ambivalence which creates the ‘disturbed zones of citizenship’ that propel the category of the citizen out of a legal trapping into a concept whose realisation has its own logic and momentum. In order to demonstrate this, this article maps the amendments that have taken place in citizenship laws in India, sieving out in particular the category of the ‘migrant’, to identify moments of encompassment and closure. It shows how the migrant has been integral to the amendments, and traces its different figurations within them, to demonstrate shifts in the ideological basis and institutional practices of citizenship in India.