Mapping Citizenship in India


Book Description

Contributing to the ongoing debates on citizenship, this book traces the Citizenship Act of India, 1955 from its inception, through the various amendments in 1986, 2003, and 2005. It includes detailed studies of other significant laws and judgments including the Abducted Persons (Recovery and Rehabilitation) Act (1949), and the Illegal Migrants Determination by Tribunals Act (1983) to show how citizenship unfolded among differentially located individuals, communities, and groups. The book argues that the citizenship laws in India show a steady movement towards the affirmation of citizenship's relationship with blood-ties and descent. The volume identifies amendments in the Citizenship Act as transitions which are framed by major historical choices and decisions. It examines the liminal categories of citizenship produced in the period between the commencement of the Constitution and the enactment of the Citizenship Act, which continue to make citizenship fraught with uncertainties and exclusions. Through a discussion of laws and judgments, the work also brings out the relationship between citizenship and migration in independent India, in particular in the wake of migration from Bangladesh and distress migration because of the breakdown of rural economies.




Citizenship in India


Book Description

Citizenship is identified with an ideal condition of equality of status and belonging, it gets challenged in societies marked by inequalities. This short introduction describes the history of citizenship in India, before moving on to the pluralities and the contemporary landscapes of citizenship. It traces the amendments in the Citizenship Act, 1955 and argues that the legal enframing of the citizen involves a simultaneous production of its other-the non-citizen.




Citizenship and Capitalism (RLE Social Theory)


Book Description

In this study of politics in capitalist society Bryan Turner explores the development of citizenship as a way of demonstrating the effective use of political institutions by the working class and other subordinate groups to promote their interests. Marxist criticisms of reformism are rejected; it is shown that subordinate groups can achieve significant advances in social and economic rights, and that democracy is not a sham but a necessary mechanism for the pursuit of interests.




Claiming India from Below


Book Description

Going beyond electoral politics and government, this volume broadens the scope of the functioning of democracy in India, and explores citizens’ role in the implementation of public policy. It looks at the ways in which extra-parliamentary power monitoring devices such as public institutions, citizens’ associations or assemblies, and the mainstream and emerging forms of the media, permeate through the political order. The volume: • brings participation and communication in governance and policy making to the centrestage; • examines case studies of state and citizen engagement from across India; and • presents perspectives of practitioners, activists and scholars to provide a comprehensive view of the debates surrounding the idea of Indian democracy. This book will be useful to scholars and researchers in politics, political science, media studies, public administration, sociology and social anthropology, as well as the interested general reader.




Citizenship Regimes, Law, and Belonging


Book Description

Successive amendments in the citizenship law in India have spawned distinct regimes of citizenship. The idea of citizenship regimes is crucial for making the argument that law must be seen not simply as bare provisions but also examined for the ideological practices that validate it and lay claims to its enforceability. While citizenship regime in India can be distinguished from one another on the basis on their distinct political and legal rationalities, cumulatively they present a movement from jus soli to jus sanguinis. The movement towards jus sanguinis has been a complex process of entrenchment of exclusionary nationhood under the veneer of liberal citizenship. This work argues that the contemporary landscape of citizenship in India is dominated by the Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA) 2019 and the National Register of Citizens (NRC). The CAA 2019 and the NRC emerged as distinct tendencies from the amendment in the citizenship law in 2003. These tendencies subsequently become conjoined in an ideological alignment to make citizenship dependent on lineage, spelling out ideas of belonging which are tied to descent and blood ties. The NRC has invoked the spectre of 'crisis' in citizenship generated by indiscriminate immigration and the risks presented by 'illegal migrants', to justify an extraordinary regime of citizenship. The CAA provides for the exemption of some migrants from this regime by making religion the criterion of distinguishability. The CAA 2019 and NRC have generated a regime of 'bounded citizenship' based on the assumption that citizenship can be passed on as a legacy of ancestry making it a natural and constitutive identity. The politics of Hindutva serves as an ideological apparatus buttressing the regime and propelling the movement away from the foundational principles of secular-constitutionalism that characterised Indian citizenship in 1949.




Boundaries of Belonging


Book Description

Explores citizenship, rights and belonging in post-Independence South Asia, examining the long-term impact of the 1947 Partition.




The Oxford Handbook of Citizenship


Book Description

Contrary to predictions that it would become increasingly redundant in a globalizing world, citizenship is back with a vengeance. The Oxford Handbook of Citizenship brings together leading experts in law, philosophy, political science, economics, sociology, and geography to provide a multidisciplinary, comparative discussion of different dimensions of citizenship: as legal status and political membership; as rights and obligations; as identity and belonging; as civic virtues and practices of engagement; and as a discourse of political and social equality or responsibility for a common good. The contributors engage with some of the oldest normative and substantive quandaries in the literature, dilemmas that have renewed salience in today's political climate. As well as setting an agenda for future theoretical and empirical explorations, this Handbook explores the state of citizenship today in an accessible and engaging manner that will appeal to a wide academic and non-academic audience. Chapters highlight variations in citizenship regimes practiced in different countries, from immigrant states to 'non-western' contexts, from settler societies to newly independent states, attentive to both migrants and those who never cross an international border. Topics include the 'selling' of citizenship, multilevel citizenship, in-between statuses, citizenship laws, post-colonial citizenship, the impact of technological change on citizenship, and other cutting-edge issues. This Handbook is the major reference work for those engaged with citizenship from a legal, political, and cultural perspective. Written by the most knowledgeable senior and emerging scholars in their fields, this comprehensive volume offers state-of-the-art analyses of the main challenges and prospects of citizenship in today's world of increased migration and globalization. Special emphasis is put on the question of whether inclusive and egalitarian citizenship can provide political legitimacy in a turbulent world of exploding social inequality and resurgent populism.




Claiming the State


Book Description

Citizens around the world look to the state for social welfare provision, but often struggle to access essential services in health, education, and social security. This book investigates the everyday practices through which citizens of the world's largest democracy make claims on the state, asking whether, how, and why they engage public officials in the pursuit of social welfare. Drawing on extensive fieldwork in rural India, Kruks-Wisner demonstrates that claim-making is possible in settings (poor and remote) and among people (the lower classes and castes) where much democratic theory would be unlikely to predict it. Examining the conditions that foster and inhibit citizen action, she finds that greater social and spatial exposure - made possible when individuals traverse boundaries of caste, neighborhood, or village - builds citizens' political knowledge, expectations, and linkages to the state, and is associated with higher levels and broader repertoires of claim-making.




Citizen Refugee


Book Description

Explores how refugees were used as agents of nation-building in India, leading to gendered and caste-ridden policies of rehabilitation.




Mapping Social Exclusion in India


Book Description

"Identifies and examines various trajectories of exclusion at both macro and micro levels in India"--