Chakrabarty: Citizenship Deprivation as an Act of Persecution: Case Study of t But several Hindu nationalist parties were in favour of reserving birth citizenship to Hindus and Sikhs, and questioned whether Muslims, whose forefathers, in their belief, acted towards the division of undivided India could ever pay true allegiance to India.100 Others were of the opinion, that with renewed opportunities for creation of a nation-state, India should be restored to the position that existed before an “inglorious” Mughal (or Muslim) or British invasion. Legally too, the composition of India as a federal polity with a strong center (Union), emerged as a counter to strong Muslim representation from any Muslim-majority provinces, afraid that the consequence could be the demand for another separate state in the likes of Pakistan. 101 Although the demand for privileging citizenship of certain religions over the other was ultimately discarded, several Constitutional scholars have noted the resurgence of Hindu majoritarianism, and assertion of superior claims to citizenship, with the rise of Hindu nationalist parties to power in the 1980s. 102 In other instances, religious minorities have been subjected to forcible assimilation with the majority community, particularly in matters of personal laws.103 IV Assam’s Experience with the NRC The north-east Indian state of Assam shares a rather long and porous boundary with its Muslimmajority neighbor, Bangladesh, which in imperial India existed as a part of the larger state of Bengal. On partition though, Bengal was divided into two parts over its religious composition, despite sharing linguistic commonalities. 104 Eastern Bengal became a part of Pakistan, until its independence in the 1971 Liberation war. Although the Islamic faith’s presence in Assam dates to approximately the 12th century (while the British settled an additional number for migrant labor purposes in the 19th and 20th centuries),105 Muslims have been primarily viewed as invaders and “illegal migrants” by most of the high-caste native Hindu Assamese speakers. This 100 Sunil Khilnani, The Idea of India (London: Penguin, 1997) at 29-31. See, Pritam Singh, Hindu Bias in Indian Constitution (New Delhi, Critical Quest, 2017) at 7-11 (statements of CAD members such as Jagat Lal: “without centralization, history has seen it overpowered by foreign conquerors”, Jaspat Roy Kapoor, and Ramchandra Gupta: “sympathies lying outside this country”). 102 Valerian Rodrigues, Citizenship & the Indian Constitution, 164, 174, and Nivedita Menon, “Citizenship & the Basic Revolution”, in Rajeev Bhargava, ed, Politics and Ethics of the Indian Constitution (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009) 190, Paul R Brass, The Politics of India Since Independence, 2nd ed, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994) at 228. 103 Singh, supra note 101at 14-15. 104 Navine Murshid, “Assam and The Foreigner Within” (2016) 56:3 Asian Survey 581 at 589. The Bengal province was divided for the first time in 1905, resulting in the three modern states of Assam, West Bengal (India) and East Bengal/Pakistan (now Bangladesh). 105 Sir Edward Gait, A History of Assam, 5th ed (Guwahati, India:1992) at 2; Murshid at 589. 101 Published by Osgoode Digital Commons, 2021 17