in this situation when the rights of millions of human beings could not be protected as they cease to belong to any nation. This is happening when India has ratified various human rights instruments. And now, the state is making the NRC applicable to entire country. In Indian Democracy, Praja is not Subservient In India, in pre-colonial era, the hierarchical kingdom rule existed which assumed that kings or emperors or feudal lords as authoritarian rulers whereas those ruled or praja were the subjects and were at the receiving end. The authority of the king is derived from shastras. The Vedas and the Dharamshastras establish the divinity and superiority of kings and hail them as protectors and punishers. During the colonial period, Britishers treated the people of this country as subjects to be ruled, the subservient population to who they owe no obligations. Imperial rulers, saw India as collection of various groups or by fixed and permanent identities. Indians were not considered as free agents but their identities were constructed through groups such as Brahmins, Dalits or Muslims and this thinking cast a lasting imprint on political thought. When India attained freedom, the people of the country adopted and enacted the Constitution on 26th November 1949, which in its Preamble declares the nation as sovereign, democratic, socialist, republic and secular. This form of governance declares end of hierarchical autocratic regime replacing it with democratic style of functioning which implies rule of people whereby people elect the government periodically. In independent India, theoretically, people as citizens no longer remained as recipient of doles or mercy by the kings or the Imperial rulers but are granted equal rights in the process of governance. The Constitution of India granted fundamental rights to the citizens and onus is laid on the state to ensure that the rights of each and every citizen are being protected. The state is visualized as a Welfare state by the constitution makers and in Part IV of the Constitution, a comprehensive guideline is laid down that aims to create a social, economic and political path for the modern state. According to this model of governance, the onus is on the state to guarantee the rights of individuals while citizens are the raison-d’etre for the existence of the state. Hence, individual’s rights as abstract constructions are deeply rooted in nation’s sovereignty. Also, collective rights of self-governance are based on the intangible construction of human beings as a part of geographical territory or dominion. In this conception, the rights of any individual are protected by the larger social order of which s/he is a part as well as a member of broader sociopolitical community. This form of governance sees individuals as citizens through the prism of social relation with the state. Citizenship Law in India and Human Rights Besides the provisions mentioned in the constitution, the Indian Citizenship Act of 1955 elaborately defines as to who is a citizen and the manner in which one may acquire citizenship or March 2020 Shalu Nigam Electronic copy available at: https://ssrn.com/abstract=3566904