Pre-publication draft September 2023 have noted that despite being framed in a secular and inclusive manner, the implementation of citizenship law was always marked by religious bias.20 This was reflected in the historically evolving binary between migrants and refugees. In its implementation, India’s legal system constructed Hindu migrants as refugees, and hence deserving of citizenship status. In contrast, official practices constructed Muslims as the other — as illegal migrants who were perennially the subject of suspicion under the citizenship regime. These dynamics were aggravated by the refugee crisis in the wake of the 1971 Bangladesh Liberation War. The violence perpetrated by the Pakistani military pushed both the Bengali Hindu minority and Bengali Muslims into India’s eastern borders. The influx of immigrants started raising serious concerns among the existing populations in Indian states. Chief among these were the Assamese-speaking communities in the state of Assam, which saw Bengali immigration as a threat to their demographic and linguistic dominance in the state. What made this more complicated was the fact that Assam’s territory had been home to numerous Bengali-origin and Bengali-speaking Hindus and Muslims.21 These communities today constitute up to 30 percent of Assam’s population.22 Moreover, no authentic data on Bengali immigration, either during or after the 1971 war is available. Both India and Bangladesh have officially maintained that all refugees who had migrated after the creation of Bangladesh on 23 March 1971 have returned to Bangladesh. Despite this official position, demographic concerns on India’s eastern front — with intermittent and often unsubstantiated claims of continuing immigration from Bangladesh — have maintained severe political strain. These factors heightened the anxiety of immigration, leading to severe public disorder towards the end of the 1970s. In response to the protests, the Indian government entered into a political understanding with the Assamese groups in 1985. Under this understanding — which was later incorporated as section 6A of the Citizenship Act, 1955 (Indian Citizenship Act) — the immigrants who entered India before the creation of Bangladesh (24 March 1971) would be naturalised. The government agreed to identify and deport those who had entered the country after this date. On the face of it, the provision was meant to facilitate the amelioration of the refugee crisis. The process of naturalisation under section 6A, in fact, was faster than the process outside Assam. But the underbelly of these legal changes, soon to be exposed, was the perceived threat of the immigrant. Through two amendments in 1986 and 2003, Parliament watered down the jus soli principle. The 1986 amendment limited citizenship by birth to persons born to at least one parent who is an Indian citizen.23 The 2003 amendment diminished jus soli further.24 As 20 21 22 23 24 anxiety about the religious identity of migrants was central to state policies even if not mentioned explicitly in them. See Anupama Roy, ‘Between Encompassment and Closure: The “Migrant” and the Citizen in India’ (2008) 42(2) Contributions to Indian Sociology 219; Jayal (n 19) 63–68, arguing that religious identity of immigrants has historically been central in India’s citizenship policy, despite the appearance of religious inclusion. See generally Sanjib Barua, India Against Itself: Assam and the Politics of Nationality (University of Pennsylvania Press 1999). While there are no official numbers recording this, some scholars have analyses census statistics to offer some approximations. See Navine Murshid, ‘Assam and the Foreigner Within: Illegal Bangladeshis or Bengali Muslims?’ (2016) 56(3) Asian Survey 581-604. Citizenship (Amendment) Act, 1986, Act No 51 of 1986. Citizenship (Amendment) Act, 2003, Act No 6 of 2004. 6 Electronic copy available at: https://ssrn.com/abstract=4111014