ABSTRACT
The unfolding of citizenship in specifi c historical contexts in India has shown that it is imbricated in state-formative practices and deep cartographic anxieties associated with the delineation of the national space amidst the assertion of specifi c ethno spaces. The historical context of colonialism in which the modern state took ideological and institutional form in India also constituted the space in which citizenship emerged as a site of contest between the colonial state and notions of self-determination and equality, which informed anti-colonial struggles. The post-colonial context was marked by the emergence of a sovereign ‘Indian’ nation-state and a ‘transformative constitutionalism’ (Baxi 2008b) embodying the will of a sovereign people. The fi gure of the ‘citizen’ in the post-colonial moment embodied the contradictions of this transformative moment, which held out the promise of rupture from a past marked by deep social divisions and inequality, and yet remained sutured to it, by the logic of the nation-state and the performative practices of social and political power which are integral to the modern state. This contradiction has continued to manifest itself in the increasing association of citizenship with ‘descent’ and blood ties, and a quickening of the process through which the working class, the poor, dalits and women are marginalized as ‘residual’ citizens.
