158 E. L. RHOADS AND R. DAS In the following section, we elaborate on the merits of a comparative analysis of the citizenship regimes in Myanmar and India, starting with two crucial moments in their recent political histories. In the third section, we trace the evolution of citizenship in Myanmar and India through key legislation and demonstrate how the specter of the potential foreigner remains central in both states. In our final section, we document how the bureaucratic and administrative violence24 meted out to contested claims of citizenship in both countries draws from and feeds into this specter and has become a key tool for state actors to design increasingly exclusionary citizenship policies. We conclude by moving beyond conceptions of the precarious citizen25 or suspect or doubtful citizens,26 to elaborate on the idea of the potential foreigner as an important analytical tool in comparative citizenship studies. Comparing citizenship in Myanmar and India On February 1, 2021, Myanmar’s military Commander-in-Chief Min Aung Hlaing staged a coup d’etat, deposing the democratically elected legislators on the morning of their swearing in and replacing them with a military junta, the State Administration Council (SAC). The coup, despite being a dramatic turn of events that brought Myanmar’s decade-long quasi-democratic period to an end, was built on a long history of military control and exclusionary politics. The military ruled the country for more than half a century following a 1962 coup, and has targeted many minority ethnic groups, with armed conflict in pockets across the country.27 The military have long considered the Rohingya – a Muslim minority ethnic group from Rakhine state in southwest Myanmar – as foreigners or illegal residents from bordering Bangladesh.28 The implementation of the current Citizenship Law of the country, enacted in 1982, led to a process of revocation of the Rohingya’s civil documentation and citizenship rights over the next three decades29 and a refusal to recognise the Rohingya as “official” minorities or one of the “national races” of Myanmar, thereby rendering them largely stateless.30 The Rohingya remained isolated without a political ally, especially against ultra-nationalist Buddhist groups,31 with intensification in their framing as illegal immigrants from Bangladesh in recent years.32 Violence targeted Rohingya communities in 2012, leading to deaths and displacement in Sittwe and Central Rakhine State, where more than 150,000 remain internally displaced.33 Widespread and systematic violence targeting the Rohingya in Northern Rakhine was committed by the military in 2017 under the watch of the quasi-civilian government led by Aung San Suu Kyi, 24 Graeber 2012; Beaugrand 2011. Lori 2017. Dubochet 2023. 27 Smith 1991. 28 Alam 2018. 29 Brinham 2019. 30 Although Rohingya may apply for naturalized citizenship if they can prove their parents or grandparents lived in Myanmar prior to 1948 or may apply for citizenship as the children of two citizen parents, the 1982 Law restricts claiming citizenship by birth to group membership of one of the 135 “national races,” which do not include Rohingya. See Cheesman 2017; Nyi Nyi Kyaw 2017. 31 Min Zin 2015. 32 Fink 2018. 33 UNHCR Myanmar Operational Data Portal https://data.unhcr.org/en/country/mmr (accessed March 30, 2024). 25 26