PRFDHR Seminar Series: India’s National Register of Citizens Process in Assam: The idea of Citizenship and the future of those declared non-citizens, Sushant Singh

Under the orders and monitoring of India’s Supreme Court, the north-eastern state of Assam has just finished, on August 31, the process of updating the National Register of Citizens (NRC) which was first made in the state in 1951. While they can challenge the absence of their names in the NRC, the two million people who do not find their names on the NRC will no longer be Indian citizens and their future is uncertain. Will they be stateless people, put in labor camps, deported to Bangladesh, moved to other parts of India, disenfranchised or given work permits? How has the NRC process, which the current Indian government wants to replicate over India along with enacting a new religion-based citizenship law, altered the idea of citizenship? What does this mean for India and South Asia?