The citizenship conundrum: ‘This Land Is Mine, I Am Not of This Land’

Jagmohan Singh

The Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA) passed by Parliament in December 2019, gave rise to unprecedented protests throughout India. Firstly, because the Act changes the citizenship laws that have been followed in India in the past 64 years. Secondly, because the eligibility criteria for illegal immigrants who wish to apply for citizenship has been set entirely arbitrarily and without reasonable ground. The attention of the world was specially drawn to the peaceful all-women protest at Shaheen Bagh, Delhi. The 100-day protest stirred an intense public debate. This book is a compilation of those debates.

As this Act weighs upon tangled contestations of belonging and rights, one wonders who belongs to India, and who does India belong to? A young Bengali-origin Assamese poet, Kazi Neel, laments, “This land is mine. But I am not of this land.” This is where the book takes its title from.

Editors Harsh Mander and Navsharan Singh are dedicated activists and work at the grassroots. The book deals with the theoretical, political and subjective aspects of this issue. The first section traces the evolution of citizenship in India. The second deals with the peculiar case of Assam and people’s experiences, which cover in detail the bureaucratic travesties unleashed in the name of protecting the state from ‘external aggression’ as well as their sobering human cost. The concluding section exposes the superfluousness of the National Population Register (NPR) and pose serious questions on the constitutionality of the CAA.

The book helps one understand that with a key value like citizenship in question, it is not just the destinies of India’s citizens but the very democratic foundation of the Republic that is at stake. It is recommended for everyone who is concerned with the future to read and reflect.