Abstract

Abstract This chapter traces the institutional, juridical, and documentary practices associated with the preparation of the NRC in Assam. It maps the debates on the NRC in the political domain, the arduous contests over legal delineation of categories such as ‘original inhabitants’ and ‘married migrated women’ in the Gauhati High Court and the Supreme Court of India, and the specific cases in which these contests played out. The citizenship amendment act of 2003 and the rules framed under it gave the Central government the responsibility to establish and maintain a National Register of Indian Citizens and issue national identity cards. This required the government to carry out ‘house-to-house enumeration’ and collect particulars of individuals and families, including their citizenship status. Making an exception to this procedure, the NRC in Assam was prepared by inviting applications from all residents with particulars relating to each family and individual, including their citizenship status, which was based on NRC 1951, and the electoral rolls up to the midnight of 24 March 1971. By tracing the pedigree of Indian citizenship to an Assamese legacy, the citizenship act opened up the possibility of a hyphenated citizenship for Assam, hitherto alien to the legal vocabulary of citizenship in India. In an inversion of the relationship between documents and citizenship, the evidentiary paradigm invoked in the preparation of the NRC in Assam listed legacy documents that would under specified conditions become proof of citizenship.

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