Contesting authoritarianism, redefining democracy: Youth and citizenship in contemporary India

Abstract

This article attempts to understand how youth in contemporary India perceives, experiences and engages with the contestations around the ideas of citizenship and nation against the backdrop of the new citizenship policies. In December 2019, the majoritarian Hindu nationalist government in India enacted a Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA) that purported to give citizenship to persecuted religious minorities from India’s neighbouring countries. But the Act crucially did not include Muslims in the list of oppressed minorities and created widespread anxieties about the possible loss of citizenship through the CAA and the National Register of Citizens. Millions of young people across Indian university campuses and neighbourhoods took to the streets to protest against the legislation. Drawing on the narratives of the young people who participated in these protests, this article highlights the youth’s conceptions of and negotiations with their identity and the use of different modes of resistance deployed in the anti-CAA movement. The article concludes by laying out the implications of these youth protests as a mode of ‘public pedagogy’ for citizenship education as an alternative to the statist models of citizenship education.