In this excerpt of Angana P. Chatterji’s chapter The citizenship experiment from her book Breaking worlds: Religion, law and citizenship in majoritarian India in collaboration with Mihir Desai, Harsh Mander and Abdul Kalam Azad, Chatterji examines the reality of “declared foreigners” in India following the State’s creation of the National Register of Citizens. She questions what this means in relation to the State’s power over the lives of minority communities in establishing an absolute nationalism.
Breaking worlds: Religion, law and citizenship in majoritarian India in collaboration with Mihir Desai, Harsh Mander and Abdul Kalam Azad. University of California Berkeley, 2021.
Testimony of [REDACTED], Bangla-descent Muslim woman:[i] “I weep for the tragedy that has become our life. My [READACTED] did not die in peace. The NRC betrayed us. He felt like a criminal and exhausted from running around to clear his name. Then he got violently sick. He could not breathe. I do not know if it was the plague [COVID-19]. His last words were of the pain he felt, how desolate and shamed he felt being made into a ‘foreigner’ in his homeland. I am left to hold this in my heart forever.” Where to, From Here? On December 11, 2019, Prime Minister Modi had reportedly tweeted: “I want to assure my brothers and sisters of Assam that they have nothing to worry after the passing of #CAB.”[ii] On February 25, 2021, Home Minister Amit Shah stated: “The biggest contribution of the Narendra Modi government at the Center is to establish…
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