While the Constitution and the law define citizenship and the conditions thereof, they do not expressly talk of a “document” which “conclusively” establishes the citizenship of a person. While there are legal provisions in India for the acquisition of several documents such as passport, driving licence, PAN card, Aadhaar card and voter identity card which specify the nationality of the holder as Indian, none of them require the person concerned to present a document to prove their citizenship to acquire them
The confusion created by the clarification issued by the ministry of external affairs that Indian passports are primarily travel documents to prove identity of the person abroad and that they are not conclusive proof for citizenship is unsettling for a large section of people in the country. The time, the cause and the aim of the statement about the document when citizenship does not appear to be a point of debate in the country do not help clear the confusion either.
Indian citizenship by birth, naturalisation and descent are governed by Articles 4 to 11 of the Constitution and the Citizenship Act, 1955. While the Constitution primarily defines citizenship immediately after the formation of the Republic, the Citizenship Act governs it ever since it has come into force.
While the Constitution and the law define citizenship and the conditions thereof, they do not expressly talk of a “document” which “conclusively” establishes the citizenship of a person. While there are legal provisions in India for the acquisition of several documents such as passport, driving licence, PAN card, Aadhaar card and voter identity card which specify the nationality of the holder as Indian, none of them require the person concerned to present a document to prove their citizenship to acquire them.
There appears to be a certain urgency in certain sections of the administration to put an unusual focus on citizenship and the documents to prove them. The RSS and the Sangh Parivar organisations including the BJP have been talking about a national register of citizens (NRC) in India. Home minister Amit Shah has talked about it as a real possibility and a tool to identify non-citizens and get rid of them. He is on record talking about the Citizenship (Amendment) Bill, 2019, as a precursor to the NRC. Those who read the intent of the government warned against its passage as it has all the ingredients of being used as a tool to target sections of people who do not exactly fall in the demographic groups right wingers would approve of.
It may be recalled that a routine special intensive revision (SIR) of the electoral roll has put crores of Indians into hardship. The legal requirements to remain on the roll were next to impossible for many; in fact the Supreme Court observed that it would be tough even for a judge to procure them at a short notice. It must not be forgotten that the apex court, however, approved the patently unjust exercise which still has several lakh people externed from the roll for no fault of theirs. Reports say the West Bengal government is using the exclusion from the roll as an excuse to delete their names from the list of ration-card holders.
Right wing governments have a penchant for putting ‘citizenship’ on a high pedestal. There are many around who applaud the use of the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agency by the Donald Trump administration in the US to target people who do not form part of the national mainstream. That even American Indians have fallen prey to the tactics of the agency has not deterred them. India with crores of people who cannot even prove their right to be on the electoral roll will not be able to withstand such a special intensive revision of it.
The government better employ transparent and inclusive rules that will cover every Indian as an Indian citizen. It should be incumbent on it to provide everyone who has the eligibility to be an Indian citizen with a document should a need be felt for one, and not the other way around. After all, the Constitution was adopted, enacted, and given to ourselves not by “we, the citizens of India”, but by “we, the people of India”.
