Every major debate relating to citizenship in today’s world – from the status of undocumented aliens to the rights of cultural minorities and the gendered quality of citizenship – is being enacted in the political practice of contemporary India. The idea of the Indian citizen is at once the defining aspiration of modern India as also its most contested political idea. This talk surveys a century of disagreement about citizenship in India, on three of its core dimensions: citizenship as legal status; citizenship as rights and entitlements; and citizenship as identity. The disputations in each of these three spheres underline the fragility of the constitutional settlement, and signal the erosion of its vision of citizenship.

Biography

Niraja Gopal Jayal is Professor at the Centre for the Study of Law and Governance at the Jawaharlal Nehru University. She is the author of Citizenship and Its Discontents: An Indian History (Harvard University Press, 2013); Representing India: Ethnic Diversity and the Governance of Public Institutions (Palgrave Macmillan, 2006); and Democracy and the State: Welfare, Secularism and Development in Contemporary India (Oxford University Press, 1999). In 1987, Niraja Jayal edited and introduced Sidney and Beatrice Webb: Indian Diary (OUP). She has since edited/co-edited, among others, The Oxford Companion to Politics in India (2010), Democracy in India (2007) and Decentralisation and Beyond (2005). From 1999-2007, Jayal directed a Ford Foundation project Dialogue on Democracy and Pluralism in South Asia. She has served as Director, Jawaharlal Nehru Institute of Advanced Study (2004-07) and Vice-President of the American Political Science Association (2011-12).

King's India Institute

The King's India Institute was created as a centre for global engagement with contemporary India. The India Institute is committed to building India's human and intellectual capacities to address global issues on its own terms, foster long-range thinking on India's most essential dilemmas, and deepen international comprehension of the distinctive character of India's growth path and its challenges. Working in close collaboration with partners in India, in Europe, the US and elsewhere, the Institute's activities encompass academic research and scholarship, postgraduate teaching and research, policy analysis and debate, and public engagement in arts and culture. The Institute welcomes contact and partnership with institutions, corporations, students and researchers who share and wish to further this mission.

Niraja Gopal Jayal