A Talk on ‘The Citizenship Question: Debates in the Constituent Assembly and the Contemporary Conundrum’ by Professor Anupama Roy

ABOUT THE TALK
The debates on citizenship in the Constituent Assembly, especially those from 10 to 19 August 1949, when the final provisions of citizenship were deliberated upon and approved, show the complexity of the citizenship question in the context of Partition and large-scale movement of people across the newly created borders amidst unprecedented violence along religious lines. It is evident from a reading of the Constituent Assembly Debates that the citizenship question elicited deep ‘ideational’ and ‘ideological’ disagreement among members of the Constituent Assembly. These disagreements reflected anxieties around the implications the constitutional framing of citizenship would have on the idea of Indian citizenship and encompassed questions of both the source of citizenship and its expression as an identity – attached to ideas of home and belonging. This presentation would delineate the fault/lines in the debates on citizenship in the Constituent Assembly and reflect on how the citizenship question as framed in those debates is being recalled and recast in the contemporary context.

ABOUT THE SPEAKER
Anupama Roy is a professor at the Centre for Political Studies in the School of Social Sciences at Jawaharlal Nehru University, Delhi. Her research and publications are in the fields of citizenship studies, political anthropology of public institutions, constitutionalism, law and democracy, and gender studies. Her most recent publication is Citizenship Regimes, Law and Belonging: the CAA and NRC in India (Oxford University Press, 2022). She is the co-author of the book Election Commission of India: Institutionalising Democratic Uncertainties and author of Mapping Citizenship in India (OUP, 2010, 2014), Citizenship in India (Oxford short introduction series, 2016) and Gendered Citizenship: Historical and Conceptual Explorations (Orient Blackswan, 2005, 2013). She has co-edited Dimensions of Constitutional Democracy (Springer 2020) and Poverty, Gender and Migration in South Asia (Sage, 2008). Her research articles have appeared in various national and international journals including Asian Studies Review, Australian Feminist Studies, Citizenship Studies, Critical Asian Studies, Contributions to Indian Sociology, Economic and Political Weekly, Seminar, Election Law Journal and Studies in Indian Politics. She was a senior fellow in the Centre for Women’s Development Studies, and has been a visiting scholar at various universities, including Sydney University, University of Warwick and University of Wurzburg, Germany. She was Sir Ratan Tata post-doctoral Fellow at the Institute of Economic Growth in Delhi and Key Technology Partner Fellow at University of Technology, Sydney, Australia.

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