Constructing the “Citizen Enemy” - The Impact of the Enemy Property Act of 1968 on India's Muslims

Abstract

This article examines the constitutional, material and normative impact of land grabbing of propertied Muslims in and around Lucknow, Uttar Pradesh via the notorious Indian State legislative the “Enemy Property Act of 1968”. The Enemy Property Act was implemented after the Indo-Pak War of 1965 as a defense measure during the war and by 1968 had developed into a measure to protect Indian interests from “enemy” States. In the process, the article explores issues of State concern surrounding Indian Muslim belonging and constant yet thinly veiled demands to prove themselves as not working against Indian interests. Furthermore, the article attends to the issue of how these supposedly “Defense of India” legislative measures became a permanent subject of institutional inquiry and discrimination against Muslims in India (particularly in Uttar Pradesh). Based on important findings drawn from court cases contesting the Act, this study contends that the Enemy Property Act was vital to India's Post Colonial conceptions of territorial nationalism and inextricably linked to normalizing Hinduized notions of citizen belonging despite the State under the Congress party claiming to be secular when this law was enacted. Today Hindu Nationalism draws upon that legacy of constructing Muslims in India as “citizen-enemies.”