Anatomy of Unbelonging: Hindutva Citizenship and Muslim Dispossession

“I can no longer see my reflection in the river [Brahmaputra/Jamuna] that gave us life. I am become a person without a shadow. We live by the Char [island]. My husband died by suicide. My young children were omitted from the list [National Register of Citizens, published August 31, 2019]. I am a daily wage labourer. My family is living in poverty, terrified and depressed. Out of place. The earth that we love, who we are, what we believe in, how we pray, sing, came to be…our land, home, our memory…hollowed out by the lies they talk about us. Breaking, we are. In their [Hindu Right] truth, we must no longer exist.” (Bangla Muslim Woman, Assam. Name and date withheld.)

January 2024. The consecration of a temple on the wreckage of Babri Masjid marked the self-ministered deification of Prime Minister Narendra Modi. Soon after, Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) Home Minister, Amit Shah, called for the nationalisation of prejudicial citizenship. Both signalled the erasure of the Muslim from Hindu-India, portentous of the unfolding grotesque.

To mobilise a Hindu state, the Hindu Right has worked to manufacture the “Muslim problem” through decades. Its unchecked escalation today bolsters the movement to destroy Muslim belonging. To erase foundational dimensions of India’s makeup—Muslim communities, Islamic cultures, and their contributions—Hindu nationalists revision history and viralise falsehoods to fabricate Muslim persecution of Hindus. Formative to generating Muslim unbelonging is the development of a conscious and repressive, and always gendered, apparatus to marginalise and diminish minorities as “Other.” This is held in place by upper caste dominance, reinforced in policy, education, law, economy, and segregationist social, domestic, and quotidian life.

Majoritarian leaders depict Hindus as the national race and “authentic citizens”.  The Hindutvaisation of national culture and cultural citizenship effect monumental social estrangements, unleashing frenzied and calculated exhibitions that target the sanctity of Muslim lives. The Modi-led government’s aggressive minoritisation is made synonymous with national security. “Bulldozer justice,” “love jihad,” the continued siege on Kashmir, are elements of this enterprise. The “citizenship experiment” commenced by the BJP via the Citizenship (Amendment) Act, 2019 (CAA), ratified in December 2019, is paramount to this imperative.

Citizenship experiment

The thrust of the citizenship movement attests to a flatlining of law and democracy and the normalisation of the extraordinary power of the Modi-led BJP. The CAA’s pilot experiment focused on Assam in the Northeast. The momentum for prejudicial citizenship was operationalised by three intersecting campaigns: injurious amendments to the law, racialisation of Muslims in public discourse, and political discourse that relayed signals to trigger and heighten violent vigilantism by Hindu nationalists. Widespread nationwide public protests followed. The government’s brutal suppression of dissenters, alleging seditious intent, evidenced the growing acceptability of Hindu supremacism within a large section of the electorate.

Four years after it came into force, the CAA was approbated for countrywide implementation in February 2024. In March 2024, the Government of India issued rules and documentation requirements for persons seeking recourse to the law to obtain or confirm Indian citizenship. The forms incorporate an oath of allegiance to the Indian Constitution; queries regarding applicant identity, family, and criminal history; and seek confirmation of the applicant’s previous relinquishment or loss of Indian citizenship.

In its 2014 campaign to govern India, the Modi-led BJP had promised to reconstitute the basis of Indian citizenship through exclusionary changes to the law, privileging Hindus. Following re-election in May 2019, the BJP-Government of India set in motion two initiatives to recast the basis of Indian nationality. The BJP passed the CAA and determined to commence an all-India National Register of Citizens (NRC), claiming that many Muslims are residing in India “illegally” and are not Indian. In principle, the citizenship dictum is consonant with Hindu nationalist ideologue M.S. Golwalkar’s injunction that that non-Hindus in India “may stay in the country, wholly subordinated to the Hindu nation, claiming nothing, deserving no privileges… not even citizen’s rights.” India’s citizenship experiment resonates with the Nuremberg Race Laws instituted in September 1935 in Nazi Germany, which affixed citizenship rights with German “blood,” “purity,” and “honour”.

Sangh Parivar (Hindu nationalist) organisations have intensified their campaign for prejudicial citizenship through decades. In the Northeast, the Rastriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) appointed an office bearer in 1949. In 1983, a pogrom victimising Bangla-descent Muslims was orchestrated in Nellie. By 2016, the RSS reportedly had 830 centers in 672 locations across Assam.

Between April and December 2019, Amit Shah advocated for a populist movement for racialised citizenship, and the amplification of the NRC across India, to halt Muslim “infiltration.” His call found resonance as Hindu nationalists marshalled social discontent and political grievances of marginalised Hindus to propagandise “Hinduphobia” and Muslim culpability. Between 2019 and 2023, Hindutva activists used the CAA to rekindle protracted disaccord afflicting Assam. The structure (systems, institutions) and instruments (laws, policies) of “citizenship” have rendered exceptionally vulnerable Bangla-descent Assamese (Axomiya, Oxomiya)-speaking Muslim inhabitants of Assam (who also self-identify as “Miya” Muslims), particularly women among them, together with “tea [plantation indentured labour] tribes,” and the orphaned, deserted, and destitute.

“Infiltrators,” “asylum seekers”

The BJP government enflames long-standing disaffections: “Who is Axomiya/Assamese?” The drive to accord citizenship to Bangla-descent Hindus exclude and enervate Assam’s Muslims, severing diverse communities from each other, vitiating everyday relations. When Bangla Hindus are targeted, they are cast as “asylum seekers,” allowing for approbation, while Bangla Muslims are portrayed as “infiltrators.”

In 2020, while Muslims reportedly constituted 37.1% of Assam’s population of 35 million and numbered about 13 million, Bangla Muslims numbered approximately nine million. To manufacture Muslims as the “enemy within,” the BJP weaponises citizenship along the fault lines of religion and identity. Official discourse propagates Bangla-descent Muslims of Assam are “foreigners” and “intruders”. The criteria for citizenship in Assam include: (1) Applicants who entered Assam before March 1971, and (2) Children of such persons. Even if an individual was born in Assam in 1973, and never travelled out of Assam since, they will not be treated as a citizen unless they can verify that their parents entered Assam before March 1971.

The CAA requires Individuals to prove that they are citizens through an arduous process that is heavily weighted against Assam’s sizeable Muslim population with injurious, gendered impact, and affect Adivasis, Dalits, and other caste-oppressed groups. Individuals incriminated as “foreigners” are mostly local inhabitants, citizens, and often socially and economically marginalised. The revisionist purgatory also obfuscates the porosity of borders between what is “India” and surrounding states and regions for reasons of geography, relationships, and intimate histories. Muslim immigrants from neighbouring countries are fabricated as causal to population growth contaminating the Hindu nation.

The effort to legislate and recast citizenship has been accelerated in Assam since colonial and post/colonial time. While changes were facilitated by the Indian National Congress (party), the present BJP government is responsible for the stratagem to base citizenship on descent and religion. Three parallel and intersecting changes to citizenship laws have been enacted through the years: (1) Modifications to criteria for acquiring citizenship by descent (jus sanguinis); (2) Instituting mandatory registration of citizenship through documentary evidence; and (3) Adding religion as a criterion for certain pathways to citizenship. The CAA and NRC both authorise the collection of highly sensitive information utilised by the state for social engineering, promulgating fear and isolation.

CAA and NRC

The law in India omits to differentiate between “illegal” (undocumented) immigrants and refugees. The initial NRC was a list of names of Indian citizens, many of whom were refugees, premised on the first post-1947 census of India (which reportedly did not include names of individuals from at least six districts in Assam). In 2013, the Supreme Court of India instructed the NRC to update the list. In Assam, every individual claiming to be a citizen was required to make an application to the local authority with the necessary documents. Authorities scrutinised the documents and prepared a draft list of citizens. More than four million persons were excluded from the draft NRC list released in July 2018. While a majority were not of Hindu descent, reportedly between one and 1.5 million were Hindus.

The exclusion of many Hindus from the 2018 NRC list is presumed to be the foremost reason for the Citizenship (Amendment) Act, 2019, whereby, in effect, only Muslims would be excluded from citizenship. After the draft list was made public, excluded individuals were allowed to submit further documentation proving their citizenship. To regulate the NRC process, the Armed Forces Special Powers Act, 1958 (AFSPA), an impunity law, was extended in Assam in August 2018.

The most recent (ostensibly “final”) update to the NRC was published on August 31, 2019. At that time, approximately 1.9 million persons (numbering 1,906,657) were excluded from the published list. The 2019 Assam NRC list reportedly excluded approximately 486,000 Bangla Muslims (constituting 25.5% of those excluded) of a total of 700,000 excluded Muslims (36.7% of the excluded); approximately 500,000-690,000 Bangla Hindus (26.2-36.2% of those excluded); and approximately 60,000 Assamese Hindus (3.1% of the excluded).

Hindus excluded from the 2019 NRC list may find protection through the 2019 amendment to the Citizenship Act, 1955, wherein certain non-Muslims adjudged to have “illegally” entered India before December 31, 2014, may obtain citizenship. Those at risk of loss of citizenship reportedly included thousands of tribal (indigenous), ethnic, and minority communities. Among the latter, individuals including those from indigenous groups number between 240,620 and 670,657 (between 12.6 and 35.2% of the excluded).

In addition to the NRC list, the Assam Border Police pronounced certain persons to be “foreigners,” in a reportedly non-transparent use of power. The Election Commission decreed various individuals as “doubtful” citizens, declaring them “D voters” (“doubtful voters”) and divesting them of voting rights, and referred their cases to the “Foreigners Tribunals”. In February 2024, Assam Chief Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma stated that 96,000 persons had been marked as “doubtful voters.” The number of persons among those declared as “foreigners” or “D voters” that applied for inclusion in the NRC is reportedly unknown. As of March 2021, a petition challenging the categorisation of “D voters” was pending in the Supreme Court.

Foreigners tribunals

In 2005, the Supreme Court of India rescinded the Illegal Migrants (Determination by Tribunal) Act, 1983 (IMDT), reconfiguring legal parameters of citizenship. The apex court controversially returned the burden of proof for a person’s citizenship status from the state to the individual. The revocation of the IMDT led to the creation of the Assam Foreigners Tribunal(s) under the purview of the Foreigners Act, 1946, for detecting “foreigners.” The Foreigners Tribunals of Assam remain the state mechanism for appeal for persons excluded from the NRC.

While on March 16, 2021, the Lok Sabha recorded 300 Foreigners Tribunals in Assam, in February 2024, only 100 tribunals were operational. The Foreigners Tribunals routinely lack transparency with respect to principles, standards, staffing, and functioning. There is pressure on tribunal appointees to decide against citizenship applications brought before them and officials frequently extort bribes and criminalise targeted persons. Individuals who receive an unfavourable judgment from a tribunal have the sole option of appealing to the Assam High Court (unaffordable for many), followed by a (small) possibility of approaching the Supreme Court.

As of December 2023, Foreigners Tribunals had reportedly processed 337,186 cases and declared 159,353 persons to be foreigners, and 8,461 cases were on appeal at the high court. As of February 2024, 96,149 cases were pending before Foreigners Tribunals. Of those declared “foreigners,” community leaders say, reportedly, above 70% are Muslims, and among them, 90% are Bangla-descent Muslims. As of 2023, of those adjudicated “foreigners,” reportedly 40% were stipulated through ex parte proceedings, with judgments issued in absence of the accused. These records reportedly address only heterosexual and cisgender relationships.

Arbitrary rulings hazardously impact an individual’s citizenship status. These relate to lack of birth certificates and name changes due to marriage for women that are not recorded on identity documents. In September 2019, a Muslim family with land documents dating to 1927 found family members excluded from the NRC due to: “an objection filed [apparently anonymously] by someone against their inclusion in the final draft.” Community knowledge holders say that most individuals adjudged to be “foreigners” are local inhabitants with documentary evidence of belonging and citizenship. Further, the NRC may refuse citizenship to Muslim asylum seekers, refugees, and any undocumented  persons.

278 orders

In 2024, I reviewed 241 Foreigners Tribunals Orders; of which 196 were issued to persons of Muslim descent between February 5, 2013, and December 29, 2020, spanning 15 districts in Assam. In 2021, I reviewed 37 Foreigners Tribunal orders; of which 34 were issued to persons of Muslim descent between March 2005 and October 2020, spanning 9 districts. Of the 230 orders against persons of Muslim descent, 219 persons had been deemed “foreigners.”

I interviewed sixteen persons or their legal counsel, all of whom had submitted proof of citizenship. Prevalently, persons among Assam’s diverse Muslim communities possess documentary records that corroborate their claims to inhabitancy and citizenship and/or evidence based in oral history and customary practice. Frequently, proof of belonging rendered by individuals is discredited, dismissed, or deemed inadmissible.

Among 278 Foreigners Tribunals Orders:

Various of the 230 orders were adjudicated with no state representative on record on the order. Certain orders where individuals were deemed to be noncitizens counselled police to open investigations into other family members, without noting due cause. At least one person ruled a citizen in a previous case was ruled a noncitizen in another. Certain cases presumed mala fide intent on part of the appellant, disqualifying documents without justification. Various cases had references to the IMDT dating to the 1990s.

What lies ahead?

The CAA fortifies legal discrimination based on religion in a country of over 1.4 billion persons, where “minority” religious communities comprise approximately 20.2% of the population. In Assam, Bangla-descent Muslims who are unable to meet the government’s demands to prove their citizenship, or whose documentary evidence is rejected, are faced with the threat of expulsion and exile. Various NRC-excluded Muslim individuals were reportedly debarred from army recruitment. Many could not acquire passports and have been unable to go on pilgrimages. Eviction campaigns compound the crisis, targeting Muslims, as in September 2021, when police reportedly assaulted several protestors in Dharrang district and shot at least two persons. Earlier, Assam Chief Minister Sarma reportedly commended the police for ousting 800 households, 700 of which were Bangla Muslim. People have been declared “foreigners” without their knowledge, families have been forcibly separated, suspects have been detained in makeshift “internment” camps. Between July 2015 and February 22, between 40 and 44 persons – overcome by the process – reportedly took their own lives.

Through dozens of interviews with community members across India between 2014 and 2023, I learned of the devastating impact of Islamomisic policies on Muslim lives. Invisibilised, demonised, criminalised, made “Other,” violated, ransacked, boycotted, impoverished, bulldozed, evicted, decitizenised, lynched, threatened with genocidal violence…amid the double bind where Muslim resistance is officially adjudged anti-national, alongside the paucity of a broader resistance (outside fragmented progressive spaces). The depth, exhaustion, and anguish of this alienation is summarised by the woman quoted earlier in this article, as she says: “I am become a person without a shadow,” and haunts Muslims of India at large.

The Hindutvaisation of citizenship militarises the contention: “Who is Indian?” Social and legal citizenship are essential markers of selfhood and cultural worlds that sustain vitality, entitlement, and legitimacy. Powered by illiberal, absolute nationalism, India’s citizenship experiment stands to exclude masses of citizens and render them presumptively stateless. The modalities of majoritarian exclusion inherent to caste/oppression, are ascendant. The citizenship offensive securitises Muslim dispossession through discriminatory treatment, extreme xenophobia, social violence, and new forms of partition to come.

This article draws on current research and earlier collaborative work in Breaking Worlds: Religion, Law and Citizenship in Majoritarian India; The Story of Assam.

Angana P. Chatterji is co-chair of the Political Conflict, Gender and People’s Rights Initiative, Centre for Race and Gender, University of California, Berkeley. She tweets @ChatterjiAngana. Her recent publications include Majoritarian State: How Hindu Nationalism is Changing India.