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Histories of Indian Citizenship in the Age of Decolonisation

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  22 March 2021

Kalyani Ramnath
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Abstract

This essay discusses the important contributions of three new works on Indian citizenship by Ornit Shani, Uditi Sen, and Oliver Godsmark. Their books discuss the territorial partition of the subcontinent into India and Pakistan in 1947, the framing and inauguration of the Indian Constitution in 1950, the preparation of voter rolls and the first democratic elections, and linguistic reorganisation of Indian states in 1956, alongside questions of refugee rehabilitation, counterinsurgency measures and rising ethnonationalisms. The emphasis is not only on the legal regimes of national citizenship, but also how it is unevenly mapped and experienced. This emphasis on territoriality is an invitation to ask questions about continuity and change in the transition from empires to nation-states, as well as invented pasts and imagined futures that transcend national borders set up after the end of colonial rule.

Keywords

citizenshipmigrationdecolonisationlawpartition
Type
Review Essay
Information
Itinerario , Volume 45 , Issue 1 , April 2021 , pp. 152 - 173
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Copyright
Copyright © The Author(s), 2021. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of Research Institute for History, Leiden University

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Footnotes

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Kalyani Ramnath is a Prize Fellow in Economics, History, and Politics at the Center for History and Economics, Harvard University. She holds a PhD in history from Princeton University, and law degrees from the National Law School of India University and the Yale Law School.

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