Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2013. viii, 366 pp. US$45.00, cloth. ISBN 978-0-674-06684-7.
This is a rare superbly written magisterial book on the idea and practice of citizenship in India. It is a political and ideational constitutional history of citizenship that takes a clear intellectual position on citizenship and development. Three significant themes are dealt with. First, is India moving from a liberal conception of citizenship by birth and naturalization (jus soli) towards the more conservative jus sanguinis principle of citizenship by descent? Second, the book elaborates the tension between group differentiated rights and the creation of a civic community. Finally, debates over the question of social and economic rights, and civil and political equality are detailed in an exhaustive and nuanced manner.
The first chapter is a graphic account of the dilemmas of “imperial citizenship” and “colonial citizenship.” Imperial citizenship refers to the treatment of transnational Indians who were discriminated in relation to British-born, Dominion-born and European-born people in colonial India. Colonial citizenship refers to the rights of Indians in India. Indian laws generally empowered the rich, the landed and the educated, while paying some regard to minority communities and the disadvantaged. The Indian quest for equality at the time of independence therefore arose from its absence during colonial rule.
The second chapter, “Legal Citizenship and the Long Shadow of the Partition” tells a nuanced story about the Indian commitment to jus soli and clear deviations from it. The deviations, for example, pertain to Muslims wishing to return to India from Pakistan after partition and their claims to property, and the treatment of Bangladeshi migrants in Assam in the 1980s. In both cases, being Muslim was a disadvantage. Liberal voices nevertheless prevailed when the Supreme Court upheld the rights of Muslims who were inadvertently trapped in Pakistan at partition and returned back with Pakistani passports. The narrative reveals not only the Hindu-Muslim problem but a more complex problem of the Assamese not accepting Bengalis and other such inter-ethnic issues.
The next chapter details how migrant dalits and adivasis from Pakistan have had to struggle to obtain citizenship, and even more its benefits, while the rich and powerful Indian diaspora has been wooed by the government.
The book moves from a fascinating section on legal status to a section on citizenship and rights. The chapter “Pedagogies of Duty” presents a fascinating history of how the British first deployed the idea of citizenship and rights to legitimize rule over a divided society. It was this agenda of citizenship and arguments for obedience to which there arose a nationalist response: arguing why these rights lacked substance and morality. It provided an opportunity for the educated elite to rise above social and cultural differences to make political arguments about political and social equality. The next chapter details debates in the Constituent Assembly that led to a privileging of civil and political rights over social and economic rights. The historical detail and interpretation of various views on why Ambedkar changed his mind about the primacy of economic and social rights is just one example of the attention to historical detail.
The final chapter on rights describes how civil and political rights were highlighted in the constitution but not social and economic rights. The chapter remains skeptical about the new rights-based approach to development initiated after 2005, where citizens have been granted the right to food, work and education, among others. The chapter argues against the selective approach to targeting the poor and certain depressed social categories. And, it opposes cash transfers in lieu of public services. It concedes that the period of corporate-sector-driven growth in India is one where these rights have been provided, even though the book is skeptical about the benefits of industrial deregulation and globalization.
The next section of the book is devoted to citizenship. Chapter 7 describes how the dominant view within the Congress Party was largely opposed to group-differentiated citizenship for a variety of different reasons. It was the Muslim League and Ambedkar who sought representation of special interests. Women received some special rights. Hindu nationalists favoured a Hindu India with no special rights for other communities. The chapter details these ideational and political struggles in colonial India. Chapter 8 tells the story for scheduled tribes, who received special rights and reservations but whose human condition has only exacerbated internal violence, and the rise of the idea of backwardness and reservations for backward caste groups.
The book bemoans challenges to civic citizenship in the form of group differentiated rights. While these arguments are powerfully articulated, reservations have played a role in the creation of a scheduled caste party—the Bahujan Samaj Party and numerous backward caste parties in states like Tamil Nadu—where development has taken hold and gotten entrenched. One would have liked to learn more about the Indian citizen’s newfound civic rights to education, work, food and privileged government information. Where the book succeeds most brilliantly is in charting the historical roots of India’s developmental predicament through the conceptual lens of citizenship and rights.
Rahul Mukherji
National University of Singapore, Singapore