We the people
When a colony gains independence, and adopts a constitution, do subjects turn into citizens overnight? What kind of contract between the citizen and the state enables democracy to thrive? How are rights conceptualised, articulated and guaranteed in a society marked by inequalities? If you are interested in these questions, read On Citizenship (2021), a collection of four essays.
In the first essay, titled “Citizenship: The Right to be a Citizen,” historian Romila Thapar writes, “Citizenship is commonly described as the relationship between the individual as a citizen with the state to which he or she may belong. This is the state to which citizens owe allegiance and for which they perform some agreed upon duties, and in return the state has to protect them in various ways.” This simple but comprehensive definition sets the ground.
She delves further into how the concept of citizenship evolved along with modernisation, industrialisation, capitalism, the emergence of the middle class, nationalism, and democratic forms of government. According to her, equality is not possible without representation. In this regard, early Greco-roman societies are not worth emulating. They denied citizenship to women and slaves.
Professor Thapar spells out the notion of rights by outlining the state’s obligations to provide food, water, shelter, healthcare and education to all citizens. She says, “This is the absolute minimum for every citizen. These are not to be seen as the largesse from the kind heart of the state viewed as the patron.” Her words offer a strong critique of authoritarian leaders who seem to have forgotten that “the citizen is the one who has established the state”.
The second essay, titled “The Evolving Politics of Citizenship in Republican India,” has been written by journalist and editor N Ram. He examines the political construction of citizenship in a post-colonial India that identifies itself as secular and democratic. His enquiry is concerned with “citizenship as legal status, defined by civil, political and social rights, citizenship as political agency, and citizenship as a source of identity and belonging.”
Instead of merely dabbling in philosophical abstractions, he engages directly with issues surrounding the Citizenship Amendment Act (2019), the National Population Register, and the National Register of Citizens. He calls out anti-muslim politics but cautions against “facile comparisons between full-fledged fascism operating on a scale that brought on World War Ii…and the current rightwing chauvinist and demagogic antiimmigration movements.”
Professor Thapar does not hold the same point of view. When she recalls the persecution of Jews by Christians in Germany, she is reminded of Hindus in India and Buddhists in Myanmar who “are not averse to seeing their Muslim compatriots being similarly targeted.” By giving space to both these perspectives, the book demonstrates that freedom of speech must include the freedom to disagree and argue.
The author of the third essay, “Citizenship and the Constitution,” is Gautam Bhatia, a scholar of constitutional law. He acknowledges that the framers of the Indian Constitution had to deal with the immediate problems arising out of Partition, a period of unprecedented communal violence. This did not hamper their ability to develop a longterm vision and craft “an idea of citizenship that rejected markers of identity, whether ethnic or religious.”
This essay gives a glimpse of the robust debates in India’s Constituent Assembly, which played a role in formulating a vision of Indian citizenship that is “secular, egalitarian and non-discriminatory.”
P S Deshmukh wanted India to be recognised as the homeland of Hindus and Sikhs just as Pakistan had been established as the homeland of Muslims. Jawaharlal Nehru rejected the idea of “writing discrimination formally into the citizenship law.”
India’s push for universal citizenship is laudable but the comparison with Pakistan overlooks the complexity of Muhammad Ali Jinnah’s position. In his Presidential Address to Pakistan’s Constituent Assembly in 1947, Jinnah had said, “You are free to go to your temples, you are free to go to your mosques or to any other place of worship in this state of Pakistan. You may belong to any religion or caste or creed, that has nothing to do with the business of State.”
Justice Gautam Patel, a judge of the Bombay High Court, has written the final essay titled “Past Imperfect, Future Tense.” He focuses on the relationship between citizenship and fundamental rights, and brings to our attention several examples of attempts to undermine these rights. In 1962, for instance, 3,000 Indians of Chinese descent were “interned in an abandoned World War II POW camp in Deoli, Rajasthan.” What was the reason for this?
The government was suspicious of them because they were “Chineselooking.” This is a case of racism from Indians towards fellow Indians. Justice Patel writes, “They were held there, with no legal or constitutional remedy or recourse.” He reminds us that citizens also have “the right against state-discrimination.” The state, after all, is constituted by citizens and is governed by their representatives.
This is a fine book. Do not miss it.