Pre-publication draft September 2023 category of ‘race’.29 Scholars have noted the deep connection between racialization and immigration, where migrants are ‘perceived as different and undeserving’.30 Racialization processes may affect intersectional groups with certain class, national or religious characteristics, by constructing them as separate.31 For instance under the 2003 amendment, Indian-born children who may claim even part of their lineage from those legally deemed as ‘illegal migrants’ are disqualified from citizenship. The amendment excludes them on the ground of sharing any biological connection with the deemed outsider. While the amendment did not explicitly incorporate ethnic distinctions, the policy’s background and implementation have profound racialized connotations. What was implicit has now increasingly become explicit. After coming to power in 2014, the right-wing Bhartiya Janata Party (BJP) government has introduced a slew of immigration policies that privilege Hindu immigrants from Pakistan and Afghanistan.32 Under the Citizenship (Amendment Act), 2019,33 Parliament introduced an unprecedented religious test for Indian citizenship. It provided a faster route to Indian citizenship for non-Muslim minorities from Pakistan, Bangladesh and Afghanistan, on the ground that they suffered from ‘religious persecution’.34 Religiously persecuted Muslim minorities — of whom there are many in India’s neighbourhood — do not get the same treatment. The law violates several non-arbitrariness and anti-discrimination norms under India’s Constitution and under international law.35 The Indian Supreme Court is yet to decide the constitutionality of the legislation. Securitization of Citizenship These processes of racialization have become fused with the discourse of national security. And, as is the case in relation to racialization, the primary geography for this has been the state of Assam. In the 1990s, the anti-immigrant politics in Assam underwent two crucial shifts that eventually transformed into sustained policies of irregularization. First, the anti-immigration discourse was slowly reframed not only in terms of language and ethnicity, but also religion. Various political actors, especially those aligned with the national right-wing parties, asserted that it was the religious identity of immigrants and the impact on the state’s religious 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 Herbert J Gans, ‘Racialization and Racialization Research’ (2017) 40(3) Ethnic and Racial Studies 341, 351. ibid 342. As in the case of Muslim immigrants to the United States in the aftermath of September 11, the religious framing of immigrants in the refugee–migrant dichotomy is, in the words of Muneer Ahmad, ‘neither religion- nor conduct-based’. Rather, it has ‘racial content and is preoccupied with phenotype rather than faith or action. As with previous regimes of profiling, this one results in gross over-breadth because of its reliance upon appearance; the regime’s ascription of identity characteristics to its subjects dictates the application of the profile’. Muneer I Ahmad, ‘A Rage Shared by Law: Post-September 11 Racial Violence as Crimes of Passion’ (2004) 92(5) CLR 1259, 1278. See M Mohsin Alam Bhat and Aashish Yadav, ‘On the Verge: Revocation and Denial of Citizenship in India’ in Émilien Fargues and Iseult Honohan (eds), Revocation of Citizenship: The New Policies of Conditional Membership (GLOBALCIT 2021) 25, 31–32. Citizenship (Amendment) Act, 2019, Act No 47 of 2019. Citizenship (Amendment) Bill, 2019, Bill No 370 of 2019, Statement of Objects and Reasons, 4 [2]. M Mohsin Alam Bhat, ‘The Constitutional Case against the Citizenship Amendment Bill’ (2019) 45(3) Economic and Political Weekly 7; Michelle Foster and Adil Hasan Khan, ‘Citizenship (Amendment) Act 2019 and International Law’ (Legal Brief, 1 April 2021) <https://law.unimelb.edu.au/__data/assets/pdf_file/0005/3769484/Citizenship-Amendment-Act-andInternational-Law.pdf> accessed 1 March 2022. 8 Electronic copy available at: https://ssrn.com/abstract=4111014