2021 Statelessness & Citizenship Review 3(1) is considered as the right to have rights. 13 While all persons are entitled to human rights, nationality is vital for the enjoyment of human rights. 14 On the other hand, the right to life under art 21 of the Constitution encompasses several other basic human rights making ‘life’ the right to rights. This article draws an inference between the right to have rights (the right to nationality that is required to enjoy other human rights) and the right that encompasses other rights (the right to life). However, this article does not address the bigger political questions surrounding citizenship and the NRC. Instead, this article focusses on the international obligation of states not to render persons stateless and deduces how it is applicable in India as a constitutional obligation. First, this article explores the meaning of the formulation of the right to nationality as the right to have rights and shows how membership in a state is essential for the enjoyment of human rights and to live a dignified life. Second, it chalks out a link between the obligation not to render persons stateless and the right to life under international law. Third, it examines how the meaning of ‘life’ under art 21 of the Constitution includes the international obligation not to render persons stateless. Finally, the conclusions are applied to the exercise of updating the NRC in Assam to show that this state action offends art 21 of the Constitution. II THE MEANING OF THE RIGHT TO HAVE RIGHTS AND THE OBLIGATION TO NOT RENDER PERSONS STATELESS UNDER INTERNATIONAL LAW The obligation not to render persons stateless is part of the right to nationality and the prohibition on the arbitrary deprivation of nationality in art 15 of the UDHR. In fact, India and UK jointly proposed what became art 15(2) of the UDHR. 15 The right to nationality and the prohibition on the arbitrary deprivation of nationality 13 14 15 Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt 1973) 296–97. Lindsey N Kingston, ‘Worthy of Rights: Statelessness as a Cause and Symptom of Marginalisation’ in Tendayi Bloom, Katherine Tonkiss and Phillip Cole (eds), Understanding Statelessness (Taylor & Francis 2017) 17, 26. William A Schabas, The Universal Declaration of Human Rights: The Travaux Préparatoires (Cambridge University Press 2013) 1618–24. 188