The Meaning of ‘Life’ under the Indian Constitution I INTRODUCTION What is the meaning of ‘life’? The author puts forth this question in the context of art 21 of the Constitution of India (‘Constitution’) obliging the state to not deprive persons of their ‘life’. 1 What this article examines is how this obligation of the Indian state under art 21 should include an obligation not to render persons stateless. This examination is then applied to the exercise of updating the National Register of Indian Citizens (‘NRC’) being undertaken by the Indian Government in the state of Assam in India. 2 The NRC is a register of Indian citizens that was created after the census in 1951 3 and not updated until 2015 when the Supreme Court of India ordered it to be updated for Assam. 4 This exercise was undertaken to identify illegal migrants from Bangladesh within Assam. 5 In order to have their names included in the NRC and avoid being designated as foreigners, the residents of Assam were required to submit documents issued to them before 24 March 1971, the eve of the Bangladeshi war. 6 After updating, the final list of the NRC left out about 1.9 million people. 7 The status of those not part of the list will now be determined by the Foreigners Tribunals (‘FTs’) set up across Assam to assess if they should have been included within the NRC as Indian citizens. 8 Those who are unable to establish their Indian citizenship 9 for inclusion within the NRC may be considered as foreigners. 10 In this way, the NRC could act as a citizenship deprivation process and render citizens stateless. When a state renders citizens stateless in this manner, it is the human right to nationality that is affected. A stateless person is one who is not considered as a national by any state under the operation of its law. 11 The right to nationality is a basic human right in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (‘UDHR’) 12 and 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 Constitution of India 1950, Pt III art 21 (India) (‘Constitution’). ‘NRC: In A Nutshell’, Government of Assam (Web Page, 31 March 2019) <http://nrcassam.nic.in/nrc-nutshell.html>. There is a proposal to extend the NRC updating exercise to the whole of India. ‘What is NRC?’, Government of Assam (Web Page, 2014) <http://nrcassam.nic.in/whatnrc.html>. Assam Sanmilita Mahasangha v Union of India (2014) WP(C) Nos 562 of 2012 and 274 of 2009 (Supreme Court of India) [48] (Narriman J) (‘Assam Sanmilita Mahasangha’). ibid [42]. ‘Who Are Eligible for Inclusion?’, Government of Assam (Web Page, 2014) <nrcassam.nic.in/eligibility-criteria.html>. ‘India Excludes Nearly 2 million People from Assam Citizen List’, Al Jazeera (online, 31 August 2019) <https://web.archive.org/web/20210518154042/https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2019/08/3 1/india-excludes-nearly-2-million-people-from-assam-citizen-list/ >. ‘Statement by MEA on National Register of Citizens in Assam’, Ministry of External Affairs, Government of India (Web Page, 2 September 2019) <https://www.mea.gov.in/SpeechesStatements.htm?dtl/31782/Statement+by+MEA+on+National+Register+of+Citizens+in+As sam>. In this article, ‘national’ and ‘citizen’ and ‘nationality’ and ‘citizenship’ are used interchangeably. ‘Assam NRC Final List Out: What Will Happen to the 19 Lakh Excluded People?’, Business Today (online, 31 August 2019) <https://www.businesstoday.in/current/economypolitics/assam-nrc-final-list-out-what-will-happen-to-the-19-lakh-excludedpeople/story/376476.html>. Convention Relating to the Status of Stateless Persons, adopted 28 September 1954, 360 UNTS 117 (entered into force 6 June 1960) (‘1954 Convention’) art 1. Universal Declaration of Human Rights, GA Res 217A (III), UN GAOR, UN Doc A/810 (10 December 1948). 187