2021 Statelessness & Citizenship Review 3(1) Through two specific instances, during and after the drafting of the Constitution of India, I will argue that debates around citizenship in the Constituent Assembly of India turned on a sense of Indian (and more specifically, Hindu) victimhood on both flanks of the border. In part, this turned on the ‘naturalness’ of India — largely coextensive with British India — as a timeless political and national unit. This idea had been at the heart of the nationalistic imagination, and one that was not confined to the Hindu right. 46 Not only had Islam been an essentially ‘foreign’ force (the argument went), but Muslim nationalism had also sundered this unity through the creation of Pakistan and, in doing so, unnaturally constricted the Indian nation. It logically followed, thus, that Muslim migration into India was part of a game plan to undermine India and its sovereignty by creating ‘miniPakistans’, which, if near enough to the border, could secede from the Union of India itself. Secondly, Muslims who first moved to Pakistan (in what, contrary to actual events, was perceived as a voluntary migration) and then returned from West Pakistan depleted the land available for settlement of non-Muslims who, through no fault of their own, had been forced to migrate. As we shall see, this repeated invocation of victimhood had important consequences. First, it served to reinforce concern for those refugees who had come to India. Second, it made Muslim migrants seem suspicious and sinister — as treasonous fifth columns. A The Western Border: ‘Returnees’ Versus ‘Refugees’ Due to various causes, chief among them being disillusionment in the promised land of Pakistan, a large number of Muslims who had migrated to Pakistan started going back. The question of restoration to them of their property and rehabilitating them afresh became a great problem for the government of India who took up with Pakistan the question of ensuring a two-way return of refugees. Being unsuccessful in that, the Government of India had no option but to try and limit the influx ‘to manageable proportions.’ 47 The Indian position on ‘returnees’ — or those who moved back from Pakistan to India after Independence, marks a significant moment in which citizenship first started to take religious overtones. Initially, travel between both dominions was supposed to be free, as both dominions were economically one unit. Imposing restrictions on travel was believed to increase minority insecurity and was therefore discouraged. This sentiment was undergirded by hard economics which prompted a change in this policy. Evacuee property norms, through which both states took over the property of migrants pending a bilateral settlement which would never be realised, became the game changer. Ostensibly evolved to protect the property of those who migrated across both borders in the Punjab, immovable evacuee property was also used to compensate incoming migrants. 48 As both countries disagreed on the valuation, the Government of India extended the spatial ambit of these laws and 46 47 48 For how this was imagined, see Manu Goswami, Producing India: From Colonial Economy to National Space (University of Chicago Press 2004) 1–2, where she points out how Nehru was easily able to buy into a Hindu conception of ‘Bharat Mata’. In some ways, this parallels Savarkar’s notion of ‘Hind’ as a ‘daughter of God’: see Vinayak Savarkar, Hindutva (Savarkar Prakashan 1969) 9–11. Annual and Bi-annual Reports from Pakistan (Lahore) (Archived at National Archives of India, R&I/50 II, Pak I Branch, NAI No 3(12), 1947–50). Copy on hand with the author. See, eg, Manav Kapur, ‘Of “Satanic Ordinances” and “Fictitious Families”: Creating the “Evacuee” in Indian and Pakistani Law 1947–56’. Unpublished. 216