Understanding the Zone of Statelessness in Assam

April 2024

Angshuman Choudhury is a co-founding member of the Right to Nationality and Citizenship Network, a project of the Development and Justice Initiative (DAJI). He is also an Associate Fellow at the Centre for Policy Research, New Delhi. In this blog entry, using the citizenship crisis in Assam, he argues that the concept of “zone of statelessness” is more useful in understanding the spectral, rather than monolithic, nature of citizenship deprivation in certain contexts.

Statelessness may not always be a monolithic condition that is the absolute inverse of having citizenship. It could also be a spectral phenomenon that falls into a grey zone of identity and belonging. In fact, it is crucial for scholars of statelessness to recognise non-traditional forms of statelessness in specific contexts that create unique forms of precarity.

The citizenship crisis in the northeast Indian state of Assam reveals such a possibility. Here, instead of being rendered completely stateless, those who fall through the cracks of a convoluted politico-legal system of citizenship determination and crimmigration are pushed into what I call a “zone of statelessness” – a liminal and incessant state of exception between total exclusion and total inclusion.

Three interlocking institutions and processes have aided the creation of this precarious zone – Foreigners Tribunals (FT), the Doubtful Voter (D-Voter) system, and the National Register of Citizens (NRC).

In 2019, Assam released the final draft of the NRC, a list that seeks to identify “genuine Indian citizens” living in Assam and, in the process, sieve out “illegal immigrants” from Bangladesh. 1.9 million people were left out of the final NRC, rendering their political and legal status as Indian citizens unclear. Similarly, the Election Commission of India has so far marked 96,000 people in Assam as “D” (doubtful) in voter rolls based on arbitrary parameters.

The FTs, which have no basis in the Indian Constitution, sit at the center of this triangular regime of mass disenfranchisement. They decide who is and who isn’t a “foreigner” in Assam using opaque quasi-legal norms that keep changing. In February, the Assam government revealed that the FTs had declared 159,353 people foreigners while 96,149 cases were pending as of 31 December 2023.

In combination, these processes have created a graded list of “half-citizens” who fall into one or more of these categories: awaiting clarity on their legal status, undertrials (those being tried) before the tribunals, ineligible to vote but able to exercise other rights, declared as foreigners but awaiting deportation, detained indefinitely, or released detainees who are socioeconomically disempowered.

Notably, the entire disenfranchisement process is in situ – meaning most of the “declared foreigners” were either born in Assam or have lived in the state for many decades and would never be deported anywhere else. In that sense, the ‘zone of statelessness’ they find themselves in is a metaphorical prison where an individual is condemned to a life as a legal half-entity and a social persona non grata in their homeland. Sometimes, it is an actual prison, as the fate of hundreds who have been kept in prolonged detention as a result of negative FT verdicts shows.

The abstract nature of statelessness that this system generates isn’t an incidental by-product. It is a categorical outcome of a systematically organised, bespoke process of disenfranchisement that is designed to segregate and de-certify people without rendering them stateless in the traditional sense.

For instance, the very legal category of “declared foreigners” or DF was created just for Assam to de-nationalise so-called “illegal Bangladeshis” without having to resort to the existing category of “illegal migrants” who violate India’s Foreigners Act of 1946 and are liable for immediate detention and deportation. In Assam’s case, they are only detained and not deported, as Bangladesh doesn’t acknowledge the presence of their citizens in Assam.

The perplexing vagueness of the “zone of statelessness” is also reflected in the statements of political leaders. In 2018, the current chief minister of Assam, Himanta Biswa Sarma, who belongs to the ruling Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) of India, said that those left out of the NRC would be declared as “stateless citizens” without providing any clarity on what that really denotes. After all, how can someone be stateless and a citizen at the same time?

Because the state hasn’t yet created a clear legal-administrative pathway beyond the NRC, those excluded remain unclear about the significance of their exclusion. What does it mean for their relationship with the Indian state? No one really knows.

Beyond these, the “zone of statelessness” is also manifested in tangible material forms. For example, 2.66 million people – including not just those left out of the final NRC but also many who were excluded in the first two drafts – are no longer able to apply for or use their existing national identity number, known as “Aadhar”, as their biometric data has been locked. So, while they aren’t non-citizens, they are denied access to essential services, including subsidised rations offered by the state.

Another tangible marker of the “zone of statelessness” is the randomness with which the survivors of the FT-NRC-D-Voter regime, as the Right to Nationality and Citizenship Network (RNCN) documented in a 2021 survey, were excluded from emergency medical assistance, livelihood pathways, and essential rations during the COVID-19 pandemic. While many could access them, others couldn’t. Among those who did not receive such assistance during the lockdown, released detainees comprised the largest share (39%), followed by declared foreigners (31%). The former category of people also needs to report to a police station every week, often after travelling long distances on foot. “A dark cloud over our family” is how one affected survivor described her ordeal. This regime of suspicion, surveillance and deprivation is very much a core part of the “zone of statelessness”.

Therefore, scholars, lawyers, activists and humanitarian professionals need to move beyond typeset, black-and-white notions of statelessness and pay heed to more spectral forms of exclusion that might be equally, if not more, precarious than total citizenship deprivation.

_{Image by Pawel Czerwinski on Unsplash}