2021
Statelessness & Citizenship Review
3(1)
those who been at the receiving end of the vagaries of evacuee property law and
the permit system. Indeed, in the conventional narrative, India’s Central
Government worked in tandem with the provincial governments of East Punjab
and Delhi to draft comprehensive rehabilitation policies for incoming migrants
from West Punjab and the North–West Frontier Province. 69 Components of these
included land reorganisation in the Punjab, the setting up of ‘refugee colonies’ in
urban Punjab and Delhi, 70 and the formulation and disbursement of ‘standard
acres’ as units of land. 71 On both sides of the border, the ‘success story’ of
resettlement merged with the triumphalist creation of the new states, particularly
on the Western border. 72 On the flip side, though, the Muslim minority bore the
brunt of the hard economic choices that undergirded these decisions. Evacuee
property norms placed severe limitations on the rights of Muslims on their own
property and even on their return to India. 73
Though citizenship was not explicitly linked to religion in either country, the
link between both was clear both in legislative debates and in the actual operation
of citizenship laws. In India, the general rule remained citizenship by birth or
domicile (naturalisation was to come after the passing of the Citizenship Act 1955
five years later), but two sets of people were marked out — migrants from Pakistan
to India and vice-versa. Those migrating from Pakistan to India had to have
migrated after 1 March 1947 and not returned under a permit for resettlement
issued by this purpose, 74 and those migrating to Pakistan from India had to have
done so by 19 July 1948. 75 A year later, Pakistan’s Citizenship Act similarly
provided for citizenship for any person domiciled in Pakistan who had migrated
into Pakistan before 1 January 1952, 76 while excluding persons who had migrated
to India after March 1947 from its ambit. 77
69
70
71
72
73
74
75
76
77
India, Constituent Assembly Debates, 12 August 1949, vol IX (Braieshwar Prasad). For an
account of these processes of settlement, see Gyanesh Kudaisya, The Aftermath of Partition
in South Asia (Routledge 1999) 126.
See ibid; See also VN Datta, ‘Punjabi Refugees and The Urban Development of Greater
Delhi’ in RE Frykenberg (ed), Delhi Through the Ages: Essays in Urban History, Culture and
Society (Oxford Paperbacks 1994) 287.
Kudaisya (n 69). For an understanding of what the standard acre entailed, see Kanwalijit
Kaur, ‘Riots, Refugees and Rehabilitation: A Case Study of Punjab 1946–56’ (PhD Thesis,
Punjabi University, 2010).
A somewhat hagiographic account of the state’s support to migrants on the western frontier
is given in U Bhaskar Rao, The Story of Rehabilitation (Ministry of Information and
Broadcasting 1967).
Recent re-examinations of these claims have somewhat tarnished this narrative, with evidence
suggesting that these schemes privileged those with access to resources at the cost of ‘havenots’, including Dalits and women, see Ravinder Kaur, ‘Distinctive Citizenship: Refugees,
Subjects and Post-Colonial State in India’s Partition’ (2009) 6(4) Cultural and Social History
429, 434–40. But see Ian Talbot, ‘Punjabi Refugee Rehabilitation and the Indian State:
Discourses, Denials and Dissonances’ (2011) 45(1) Modern Asian Studies 109, 128–29;
Talbot suggests that while the proportion of aid given to Dalits was much lesser than that
given to other social groups, the fact that this aid represented the first sustained governmental
help given to Dalits means that it thus figures prominently in Dalit accounts of the Partition.
Constitution of India, art 6.
ibid art 7.
Citizenship Act 1951 (Pakistan) s 6 but see s 14-B under which there was no such cut-off date
provided for inhabitants of the disputed territory of Jammu and Kashmir and all persons,
regardless of when they migrated into Pakistan, would be considered citizens of Pakistan.
ibid s 7.
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