ABSTRACT
While growing evidences point to the ‘racial’ underpinnings of an otherwise ‘abstract’ and potentially expansive notion of citizenship, persistent attempts at acquiring citizenship by investing it with a ‘racial essence’ threaten to dismember the collective self of a body of people that seeks to acquire it. This chapter develops the argument with the help of a series of ethnographic works on the Gorkhaland movement conducted in the Darjeeling hills.
