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Citizenship and ItsDiscontents: An IndianHistory: Partitioned Lives:Migrants, Refugees, Citizensin India and Pakistan,1947–1965Rohit K. DasguptaPublished online: 28 Oct 2013.

To cite this article: Rohit K. Dasgupta (2013) Citizenship and Its Discontents: AnIndian History: Partitioned Lives: Migrants, Refugees, Citizens in India and Pakistan,1947–1965, Asian Affairs, 44:3, 477-479, DOI: 10.1080/03068374.2013.835094

To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/03068374.2013.835094

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South Asia

Niraja Gopal Jayal. Citizenship and Its Discontents: An IndianHistory. Harvard University Press, Cambridge, MA, 2013. pp. viii +366. Notes. Refs. Index. Hb. £33.95. ISBN 9 7806 7406 6847

Haimanti Roy. Partitioned Lives: Migrants, Refugees, Citizens inIndia and Pakistan, 1947–1965. Oxford University Press, New Delhi,2013. pp. xiii + 254. Tables. Figs. Notes. Bibliog. Index. Hb. £27.50/Rs. 1150. ISBN 9 7801 9808 1777

Niraja Gopal Jayal’s book, Citizenship and its Discontents, breaks newground as it writes a history of citizenship in one of the largest democ-racies in the world – India. As the author explains, ‘citizenship’ is not aneasy concept or meaning. It has both inclusionary and exclusionary attri-butes which structure people’s identities and access to equality. Thisremarkable book documents the evolution of the ‘citizen’ (as a categori-cal and subjective position) across India in the 20th century, exploringthe relationship not only between the individual and the state but morewidely between citizens themselves.

The book is divided into three parts, with each exploring a core aspect ofthe citizenship question. The first section of the book is about the legalstatus of citizenship as determined through birth and blood-baseddescent. The author questions the self-perception of citizens and theirarticulation of this state-based legitimacy. While colonial India’s citizen-ship model was based on race and class, this shifted to a more exclusionaryand biased form of citizenry as formed by the divisive impact of Partitionin 1947 (Haimanti Roy’s book interrogates this more broadly). The foun-dation of the Republic of India in 1947 created a new form of identitybased on state-created categories (of who should belong to whichnation). This citizenship identity was primarily based on religiousbeliefs (Pakistan for Muslims and India for Hindus). It also threw up ques-tions about the position of India’s minorities such as the dalits, adivasis,migrants from Bangladesh and those from marginal social statuses.

The second section focuses on social citizenship and traces the evolutionof rights in modern India. Jayal shows how 20th-century writing focused

Asian Affairs, 2013

Vol. XLIV, no. III, 477–492

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on the qualities of ‘good’ citizenship rather than on rights. She arguesthat the ultimate characteristic of this social citizenship regime wasthe construction of the citizen of new India as a duty-bearing ratherthan a rights-bearing individual. The final section of the book focuseson the expression of citizenship as an identity category. Jayal callsthis ‘mediated’ citizenship and examines how it is embodied and exer-cised by the individual.

Jayal raises important questions such as – who can be a citizen, on whatterms, the structural inequalities of Indian society and the fragility of theconstitutional settlement. Unsurprisingly, the role of Partition had animportant impact on the constitution-making process which resulted inthe enactment of the citizenship law in the first place. Jayal is clear inher thesis that the possibilities of citizenship in contemporary Indiaare the product of a century of disagreement, and this book addressesthe many-faceted and contested ideas of citizenship that continue to bearticulated and challenged.

Haimanti Roy’s book takes on some of the concerns contained in Jayal’swork in her own exploration of partitioned lives in the Indian subconti-nent between 1947 and 1965. Her book is a much-needed addition to thegrowing body of literature on Partition narratives in India and adds to thescholarship of those such as Urvashi Butalia, Veena Das and others.However the Partition narrative has a West Pakistan-Punjab (or themodern Islamic Republic of Pakistan) bias, and most scholarship hasbeen around this area, neglecting the East Pakistan-Bengal border(modern Bangladesh). Roy attempts to rectify this with her excellentresearch.

Similar to Jayal’s thesis on citizenship, Roy comments that the Partitionof Bengal created an animated argument over the claims to citizenship ofthe new nations and how such claims could be justified. She argues thatthe “new nation states or their minorities did not assume such identitiesand issues of citizenship” (p. 4); rather these were produced within state-led offices in Delhi, Calcutta and Dacca and given legal sanction throughlaws.

One of the primary post-independence tasks was the establishment of‘national’ states, and both countries (India and Pakistan) deployed arange of symbolic, discursive and actual methods that “producedstates as authoritative entities”. These were then controlled through poli-tics and political entities. The economy of a state has much to do with the

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livelihood practices of the people within it and Partition suddenlycreated barriers which affected those practices. Farmers could nolonger cross over to graze their cattle and people could no longermove between Dhaka and Calcutta for education. There was also arampant smuggling culture within the borderlands as an economicopportunity which was exploited by officials on both sides of the border.

The passport and visa scheme was instituted in October 1952 andmarked the beginning of a documentary regime at the Bengal border.This meant that both states could now closely monitor and regulatethe flow of people within their territories. However, it also had a detri-mental effect on the minorities of each nation. Roy states that the pass-port and visa scheme was viewed by the Hindus in East Pakistan as anobstacle to their maintaining ties with India. This became even morepronounced and problematic with the beginning of requisition whenbuildings occupied by minorities were taken over by the government.Whilst Roy argues that, in general, the government targeted all proper-ties irrespective of the owner’s religion, there is a need to examinewhether any deliberate attempts were made to dispossess minoritycitizens.

Partition generated a large scale of migration across both nations butwhile the movement in Punjab stopped around 1949, it continued inthe Bengal borders for the next two decades. Scholarship on this exilehas been focused on the ‘Hindu’ refugee and there has been very littleattention paid to those Muslims who migrated to East Pakistan. Roy isaware of this and makes a well-intentioned contribution to this area.What further makes this book unique is its focus on hitherto unknowndocuments from government files, police records, society paraphernalia,memoirs and so on, thus untangling the complex negotiations that tookplace between the individual and the state.

Jayal and Roy provide the reader with insightful analyses of discoursesaround citizenship and the nation which encourage us to rethink theconcept of the nation state and belonging. The books also articulate aset of broader questions about the role of the state in our daily livesand how that shapes communities and ideologies. Both are a valuablecontribution to our understanding of these issues.

ROHIT K. DASGUPTA # 2013http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/03068374.2013.835094

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