Indian Citizenship Research Articles

Disaggregating citizenship: Tibetan refugees navigating identity, belonging, and exclusionary state policies in India

AbstractThis essay explores the struggles of second‐generation Tibetan refugees under an exclusionary Indian citizenship regime. Confronted with a national orthodoxy that entwines legal status, entitlements, and national identity, Tibetans respond by “disaggregating” citizenship. First, stateless Tibetans, born in India to refugee parents, won legal appeals by demonstrating that Tibetan nationality was no bar to Indian citizenship. In response, Indian authorities demanded that Tibetans give up refugee entitlements and remove themselves from their national space and political community in exile as the price of Indian citizenship. This article explores the diverse responses of Tibetans to the citizenship‐on‐offer: some aspiring for it, some accepting it, and others actively rejecting it. These responses illustrate strategies refugees employ to navigate citizenship regimes that often render them liminal. Refugees act both to mitigate the precarity of statelessness and to preserve their identity, community, and political aspirations against erasure. In doing so, they not only disrupt the national orthodoxy of states that negates refugee experiences but also reveal the incompleteness and contradictions of citizenship regimes.

Amma La: Reflective Account of a Participatory Mixed Theatre Method in Migration Research in India

This article presents the methodological process of interpreting the ethnographic data of my research about the question of Indian citizenship for Tibetan refugees in India as a theater play titled “Amma la” (meaning “mother” in Tibetan). I present the enacting of the theater play “Amma la” with young Tibetans in India (2019) at three different institutions. I argue that performing the theater play “Amma la” with Tibetan participants in 2019 is a method of enacting the research findings in a participatory, collaborative, creative, and novel way that opens up possibilities for shared meanings and transformative re-interpretation of the data within an embodied, artistic, and performative dimension. I argue that the performance of the theater play “Amma la” sits theoretically at the intersection of verbatim theater, political theater, and participatory drama as well as forum theater and physical theater. It could also be argued that the theater play “Amma la” constitutes a form of experimental theater that is not complete and foreclosing, but processual and prospective. And finally, performing “Amma la” is a form of process drama, focusing on improvisation, and the process of creating and acting a scene for the benefit of the participants-actors, and not on the polished and rehearsed performances for a specific audience. For these reasons, I argue that “Amma la” is constructed on and theoretically supported by what I will simply call participatory mixed theater methods.

Abstract C133: The missing cancer and palliative care in displaced community in Northeast India

Abstract Introduction: Cancer is a chronic illness needing long treatment. This includes late toxicity management in case of cure and palliative care if cure is a distant possibility. Northeast part of India shares international border with Bangladesh and both sides had witnessed geopolitical uncertainty since India’s independence in 1947. Unrest and military rule in East Pakistan made the citizens to flee to India which continued even after the creation of the new country Bangladesh in 1971. However, the poor migrants are not eligible under the public health scheme due to lack of proof of citizenship. Methods: We have analyzed the public health scheme and issues of migrants in Northeast India after observing discontinuity in care. Ayushman Bharat Pradhan Mantri Jan Arogya Yojana (AB PM-JAY) is a national public health insurance scheme of the Government of India that aims to provide free access to health insurance coverage for low- income earners in the country. The scheme is applicable to Indian citizens. In 2019 Government of India passed the Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA) to provide Indian citizenship to the illegal migrants who entered India on or before 31st December 2014. However, the exercise to identify migrants as per the Act is a tedious process and not yet over.: Results: Until the exercise of granting citizenship under the Citizenship Amendment Act is done, the poor migrants who have no proof of citizenship cannot take benefit under AB PM-JAY scheme. Unfortunately, some internally displaced Indian citizens are lacking proof of citizenship and many of them are suffering from chronic illnesses and cancer, however neither afford to pay for treatment nor eligible to get free treatment under AB PM-JAY scheme. Conclusions: Northeast India migrant issue is a special situation where poor migrants from other country and some displaced poor Indians are not eligible to get cancer care under public health insurance scheme. The Citizenship Amendment Act provides a solution by granting citizenship. However, the tedious process is taking long time and no solution being offered in the interim period. Citation Format: Suryakanta Acharya. The missing cancer and palliative care in displaced community in Northeast India [abstract]. In: Proceedings of the 17th AACR Conference on the Science of Cancer Health Disparities in Racial/Ethnic Minorities and the Medically Underserved; 2024 Sep 21-24; Los Angeles, CA. Philadelphia (PA): AACR; Cancer Epidemiol Biomarkers Prev 2024;33(9 Suppl):Abstract nr C133.

Reflexivity and emotion in the citizenship journey of stateless India-Bangladesh enclave dwellers

The present study was conducted to understand the essence of the lived experience of the stateless erstwhile enclave dwellers in India and Bangladesh who later chose Indian citizenship during land and population swap between the two countries as per Land Boundary Agreement (2015). The study is phenomenological in nature and studies the phenomenon of living in statelessness in the Enclaves for generations, their emotions during transition and their pollyannaism after getting citizenship. The researchers conducted unstructured open ended interviews among the erstwhile enclave dwellers who were bestowed Indian citizenship and are living in India. Samples were taken both from the enclave dwellers who have been living in their own place and not displaced during land and population swap as per Land and Boundary Agreement (LBA) 2015, between India and Bangladesh and also from the enclave dwellers who had to move to the Indian mainland and are living in Permanent Rehabilitation Clusters (PRCs) provided by the Indian Authorities. All the participants of the study were male and their real names have been replaced by the pseudo names. The enclave dwellers reflected that the decades and generations of suffering from statelessness, lawlessness, lack of schools, hospitals and other civic amenities has cost their education, mental and physical health, dignity and identity. Though all the erstwhile enclave dwellers reflect on the statelessness and express their emotion on getting citizenship in the same way, but the pollyannaism of enclave dwellers who were not displaced by LBA 2015 and living in the ancestral place and those who are living in the PRCs are quite different.

Promoting Effective Refugee Protection in India: Balancing National Interests and International Obligations

This paper explores the situation of refugees in India, particularly Sri Lankan and Rohingya refugees who are seeking asylum in India and face the issue of statelessness due to the lack of a concrete refugee law in India. The Foreigners Act 1946 of India defines foreigners as individuals who are not Indian citizens and requires non-citizens to possess government-issued documentation. Failure to possess such documents exposes individuals to penalties outlined in section 14 of the Act, including potential imprisonment and fines. The Act also grants the government the authority to detain and deport foreign nationals residing unlawfully in India. Furthermore, the Citizenship Amendment Act, 2019 (“CAA”) addresses the plight of religious minorities, excluding Sri Lankan, Rohingya and other refugees, as it only applies to refugees from Afghanistan, Bangladesh, and Pakistan. The CAA allows eligible Hindu refugees who entered India before December 31, 2014, to obtain Indian citizenship. The absence of a concrete refugee law in India, coupled with concerns over the potential impact of the CAA on India’s secular constitutional fabric, has raised international apprehension. It is important to note that India is not a party to the Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees, 1951, and its 1967 protocol, limiting its refugee protection obligations. By analysing relevant legal sources, judicial decisions and international standards, this paper aims to provide a comprehensive understanding of the legal complexities surrounding refugee protection in India and the implications of the CAA within the context of India's international obligations. Keywords: Refugee; International Law; India; Secularism; Domestic Law.

Indian Citizenship Revisited

Sukumar Muralidharan, The Nation and Its Citizens: Tales of Bondage and Belonging, Rupa Publications, 2022, 263 pp., ₹395, ISBN: 9789355206381 (Paperback). Anupama Roy, Citizenship Regimes, Law and Belonging: The CAA and the NRC, Oxford University Press, 2022, 280 pp., ₹1495, ISBN: 9780192859082 (Hardcover). Harsh Mander and Navsharan Singh (Eds.), This Land Is Mine, I am Not of This Land: CAA-NRC and the Manufacture of Statelessness, Speaking Tiger Books, 2021, 421 pp., ₹499, ISBN: 9789390477180 (Paperback).

Navigating Indian citizenship: A comprehensive analysis of laws, amendments, and controversies

Navigating Indian citizenship: A comprehensive analysis of laws, amendments, and controversies

Destitution and displacement: unveiling the precariousness of homelessness and statelessness among uphill country Tamil repatriates in India

ABSTRACT This article presents the conceptual framework of political and physical homelessness as embodiments of precarious homelessness, emanating from the palpable characteristics of housing. This physical housing doesn’t just provide shelter, it also gives people a sense of political identity and belonging to a home or country. The uphill Tamil community, coerced into migratory movements from India to Sri Lanka for plantation labor, confronted a formidable existence marked by precarious homelessness. This community nurtured a perception that the absence of their personal dwelling impeded a sense of belonging to the Sri Lankan nation. Even subsequent to acquiring Indian citizenship and repatriating, their precarious homelessness endured during their post-repatriation phase due to transient or inadequate housing conditions in India. This state of precarious homelessness begets housing insecurity and prolonged psychological adversities, encompassing apprehension, strain, and anguish among the Hill Country Tamils. By propounding this framework, the study not only enhances understanding of homelessness dynamics, but also provides scholars and policymakers with a holistic view to address homelessness among stateless and displaced populations.

PELANGGARAN HAM TERHADAP KEBEBASAN BERAGAMA: STUDI KASUS KONFLIK ANTAR AGAMA DI INDIA DAN INDONESIA

Freedom of religion is something that is protected because it involves human rights. Human rights are contained in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. However, some regulations regulate the fact that violations of freedom of religion have not only occurred once or twice but have occurred many times. India is one of several countries that experience conflicts regarding freedom of religion, especially between religions, namely Islam and Hinduism. This conflict culminated with the emergence of the ratification of the Amendment to the Indian Citizenship Act (CAB) in 2019 and caused a polemic of riots between Muslims and Hindus. The method of analysis used is a qualitative data analysis method. The research method carried out on the problem this time is the statute approach (statutory approach), case approach (case approach), and explorative research (things that have not been known before), which are all related to this research. Based on the findings of the research conducted and the data obtained that there is still discrimination against religious minorities both in India and Indonesia, the existence of human rights is very concerning. The implications can be achieved by increasing religious tolerance and increasing the importance of human rights, especially freedom of religion, providing a deterrent effect on human rights violators.

When 'green' becomes 'saffron': Wind extraction, border surveillance, and citizenship regime at the edge of the Indian state

Low-carbon mega-infrastructures constitute one of the main institutional responses to climate change in India's agrarian settings, as they are imagined around features of 'greenness' and 'cleanness.' But this story entails a problematic construction of land, the reconfiguration of space for extractive development, and a complete disruption of agrarian social structures around features of exclusion and dispossession. This research adopts perspectives from political ecology to understand the persistence of class-caste relations, the legacy of coloniality, and the new citizenship regime underlying 'green' extractivism in India's low-carbon infrastructures. Wind turbines align with broad ethno-religious conceptions of Indian citizenship and space as Hindu, and their expansion over new border areas serves nationalist projects of territorial reconfiguration, cultural identity revivalism, border-making, and Muslim populations' surveillance.

Levels and predictors of nurses’ knowledge about diabetes care and management: disparity between perceived and actual knowledge

BackgroundNurses have a crucial role in managing, educating, and caring for diabetic patients. However, their knowledge should be regularly assessed to avoid preventable complications and reduce costs. Therefore, the present study assessed the perceived and actual knowledge about diabetes among nurses in Hail province of Saudi Arabia and investigated predictors of such knowledge.MethodsA cross-sectional study was conducted among 325 conveniently sampled nurses from all public hospitals and primary healthcare centres in Hail province from September to December 2022. A pre-designed questionnaire was used to collect demographic and practice-related characteristics of the nurses. In addition, data on nurses’ perceived and actual knowledge about diabetes were collected using the Diabetes Self-Report Tool (DSRT) and Diabetes Basic Knowledge Tool (DBKT) self-report questionnaires, respectively. The mean knowledge scores for demographic and practice-related variables were compared using the independent-samples t-test and one-way analysis of variance. Multiple linear regression was used to identify significant predictors of perceived and actual knowledge. The correlation between perceived and actual knowledge was investigated using Pearson’s correlation coefficient. A P-value ˂0.05 was considered statistically significant.ResultsBased on a highest maximum score of 60 using the DSRT, the mean score of perceived knowledge was 38.4 ± 12.0, corresponding to a percentage mean score of 64%. On the other hand, based on a highest maximum score of 49 using the DBKT, the mean score of actual knowledge was 23.2 ± 9.6, corresponding to a percentage mean score of 47.3% of correct responses. Being Indian, having a diploma or a bachelor’s degree, and having a poor or fair self-perception of competence in diabetes care were predictors of lower perceived knowledge scores, whereas having no access to diabetes guidelines was a predictor of higher scores. However, being non-Saudi and having experience of at least 16 years were predictors of higher actual knowledge scores. The correlation between actual and perceived knowledge about diabetes was negligible and statistically non-significant (r = 0.011, P = 0.055).ConclusionNurses affiliated with public health facilities in Hail province lack adequate knowledge about diabetes, with no correlation between what is perceived to be known and what is actually known. Indian citizenship, having a diploma or bachelor’s degree, not having access to diabetes guidelines, not attending courses/workshops, and having a poor or fair self-perception of competence in diabetes care can significantly predict nurses’ perceived knowledge. However, being non-Saudi (Filipino or Indian) and having at least 16 years of experience can significantly predict their actual knowledge of diabetes.

“Hum Kaagaz Nahi Dikhayenge” (“We won’t show our papers”): The Narratives of Bodies and Belongings at the Anti-CAA Shaheen Bagh Protests 2019-20

The Shaheen Bagh protests of 2019-20 were a nation-wide performance of dissent against the Indian citizenship laws CAA, NRC and NPR that would religiously discriminate against Muslims. Began and led by Muslim women from the neighbourhood of Shaheen Bagh in Delhi, the protests engendered critical conversations around the nation, the gendered body, space, history, and legal citizenship. The essay is a critical exploration of the counter-narratives the protestors performed against the State’s discriminatory, divisive and violent narratives, through the lens of performance studies. The bodies of the protestors became spaces of dissent and the bearers of the multiplicities of the nation, the corporeality of the individual, the domestic space, the Muslim neighbourhood, and the protest space expanded, encompassing, and even creating, the nation itself. The essay, thus, argues that as the protest site became a space of multiplicities, the protestors built the nation(s) of their secular imagination and their disidentifications presented the excess that the State could never fully regulate.

Gender, Education and Citizenship as Ideological Weapons of an ‘Army of Holy Women’ in Bengal: The Matua Matri Sena

This paper seeks to analyze the recent phenomenon of the development of a Matri Sena (literally, an ‘Army of Holy Women’) among the Matua sect of West Bengal, India. Historically known to have suffered caste-based untouchability and forced migration due to communal conflict, the Matua community’s current political motivations surround the issue of ‘refugeehood’ and Indian citizenship. Given this background, the emergence of the Matri Sena as a complex identity among a religion–caste–gender–nation nexus is oriented towards bipartite objectives: one, to actualize the gender-egalitarian ethos that informs Matua religious foundations, and two, to claim legal citizenship status for its community members precisely through a new gendered ideology. We argue that the women gurus of the Matri Sena are able to realize their religious/political aims by fashioning themselves as mothers of an ideal family, community, and by extension, the nation. In deploying their specific gendered ideological constructions, they enact their new roles as influencers in both private and public Matua lives. In such renderings, the woman guru’s mother-figure emerges as a political subject through crucial engagements with Matua religiosity on one hand, and dominant Hindu nationalist discourses on the other. In this article, we critically analyze ways in which the Matri Sena constructs a new maternal notion of religio-political power, and how such power furthers both collective Matua aspirations and contemporary national imaginations.

Visualizing Citizenship in a Bureaucratic Frame

ABSTRACTIn this article, I focus on how Pakistani Hindu migrant men in India circulate bureaucratic portraits of reportedly forcefully converted women, leveraging the evidentiary value of images within a visual idiom of liberal citizenship. The style of these portraits—rectangularly framed, front‐facing individuals—is akin to the style of passport photos. The images and their captions circulate as visual evidence to reify normative claims to Indian citizenship within a Hindu‐India imaginary. Such images generate veracity through their state‐like form, shaping how migrant men see themselves into recognition. By emphasizing how migrant men adopt a bureaucratic visual convention (the passport‐photo look) to make claims about associative fates based on a shared group status, I expand our understanding of the identity photograph. I argue that bureaucratic framing is an aesthetic register that facilitates claims to citizenship within the visual logics of state recognition.

The Citizenship (Amendment) Act and the changing idea of Indian Citizenship

ABSTRACT In 2019, the Indian parliament adopted the Citizenship (Amendment) Act, which grants citizenship to non-Muslims ‘persecuted’ minorities such as Hindus, Sikhs, Buddhists, Jains, Parsis or Christians from Afghanistan, Bangladesh and Pakistan. Protests were held against the CAA in various parts of India. For protestors, the CAA is contrary to the secular character of the Indian citizenship. Supporters of the CAA also held rallies enumerating its benefits. This paper traces the historical evolution of the constitutional debates and changes in the Indian citizenship rules, and examines the socio-political impact of the CAA.

Administering Indian citizenship

ABSTRACT Primary legislation on Indian citizenship – particularly the Citizenship (Amendment) Act, 2019 – has recently attracted a great deal of attention. However, secondary legislation, and administrative policies and practices, which form the backbone of citizenship administration in India, have mostly escaped scholarly and public attention. This is concerning since the lawfulness of some of these critical policies and secondary legislation is highly questionable. Against this background, we survey and analyse the main policies and secondary legislation that constitute India’s citizenship administration. We then argue that despite government’s efforts to argue for immunity from judicial review, and some judicial statements characterizing administrative discretion in this area as “absolute and unfettered”, judicial review of citizenship administration is very much available. Finally, we argue that some of the most important policies and rules relating to citizenship administration in India breach public law norms.

Citizenship Securitization in India: Reflections from Debates in the Constituent Assembly and the Indian Parliament

Citizenship policies to manage, control, and filter secure identities from insecure identities are influenced by citizenship securitization, an emotive and contentious subject due to the Partition and multiple migrations in India. The idea of citizenship securitization that had entered into the discourse after the Partition, knitting varieties of unease and danger into a patchwork of insecurities became harder with time, rendering Indian citizenship exclusionary. This paper attempts in-depth content analysis of the Constituent Assembly and Parliamentary Debates on citizenship in order to follow the development of citizenship securitization.

Native American Voting Rights in Utah: Federal Policy, Citizenship, and Voter Suppression

Native American Voting Rights in Utah: Federal Policy, Citizenship, and Voter Suppression

The paradox of citizenship and nationality among Tibetans living in India

ABSTRACT This article discusses the implications of a landmark judgement of Delhi High Court on 22 December 2010 which declared that Tibetans born in India between 1959 and 1987 were eligible for Indian citizenship. A majority of Tibetans in India steadfastly refuse to avail of this facility as a mark of patriotism to their fatherland Tibetan. The Tibetan Exile Government’s discouragement of Tibetans acquiring Indian citizenship needs to be understood as apprehensions based on erroneous conflation of citizenship with nationality. Drawing from ethnographic interactions with Tibetan Bhutias from Darjeeling and Kalimpong in West Bengal, who have always been Indian citizens, as well as Tibetan nomads in Ladakh, I argue that for Tibetans in India the choices of aspiring for citizenship or retaining refugee status are pragmatic, contingent ones as they navigate through bureaucracies, lived realities of their lives in India and their aspirations as Tibetans.

“A Simple Act of Justice”: The Pueblo Rejection of U.S. Citizenship in the Early Twentieth Century

AbstractIn January of 1920, the House of Representatives passed HR 288, also known as the Carter Bill, which would have made all American Indians born in the territorial United States citizens. While lauded by some as a “simple act of justice” to extend citizenship to America’s first peoples, many Native Americans protested the bill, which eventually led to its demise. In the press, the Pueblos led the protest. Their activism highlights key, yet overlooked, developments in American Indian citizenship in the early twentieth century. First, citizenship lost any pretense of a consensual nature. Second, Indigenous protests forced congressmen to change the very nature of citizenship: from a status that marked completed assimilation to something much more pluralistic. Highlighting the Pueblos’ fight helps historians analyze Native activism in the Progressive Era while problematizing citizenship as the ultimate aspirational status.