2021 Statelessness & Citizenship Review 3(1) sovereign authority and national membership get produced through a ‘continuous exposure to death under the command of the sovereign’, 38 but also (and simultaneously) through the expression of (selective) compassion towards certain bodies who are deemed to be ‘deserving’ of protection. It is this dynamic of exposure and protection that is pertinent to the making of the Indian crisis of statelessness and citizenship and the emergence of what these articles would suggest is a discourse of ‘moral citizenship’. NORMATIVE HORIZONS? Finally, I want to end this Introduction by briefly reflecting further on the piece in this Symposium collection that is most concerned with the possible available normative horizons as we grapple with this crisis — surely hope is a good register to end on! Pragashini Immanuel’s piece offers a very persuasive progressive interpretation of both the international human rights and Indian constitutional fundamental rights jurisprudence to argue that the NRC, as a statelessness generating exercise, stands in violation of both the Indian state’s obligations under international law and the fundamental right to life guaranteed under art 21 of its own Constitution. Such clearly formulated calls that continually push the normative imagination of our jurisprudence, as well as demand the responsiveness of our institutions to their legal obligations, are no doubt necessary — now more than ever. Scholars of statelessness studies ‘cannot not want’ (to paraphrase Gayatri Spivak, writing in a different context) to do so. 39 That said, and on a more provocative register, I would add that while holding onto this more critical register of hope, one might also consider questioning the often-exclusive locus of this normative desire that we have as statelessness studies scholars — ie, a status recognised by the nation-state. Much like Kapur, I would like to do so by way of drawing our attention towards an(other) repressed ‘futures past’, 40 one which only slightly historically preceded the historical moment of uncertain postcolonial nation-state building that followed the Indian partition. As Mira L Siegelberg observes in her recent book, Statelessness: A Modern History, this preceding historical moment was one of grappling with the perceived crisis and ‘decline of the nation-state’ form. In this moment, alternative political associational forms to, and beyond, the particular European political form of the nation-state, was a possibility. Most pertinently, these political forms appeared in the normative horizons espoused by groups of stateless people themselves, as authorities they would choose to be attached to. 41 Faced as we are now with a nation-state form once again in decline and mobilising the modality of expulsion and dehumanisation, an exclusive normative horizon that is tinged with nostalgia for the recovery and preservation of the territorial nation-state (and its forms of membership and protection through citizenship) cannot be our only alternative. 42 Other alternatives need to be 38 39 40 41 42 Chandran (n 20) pinpoint. See Sara Danius and Stefan Jonsson, ‘An Interview with Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak’ (1993) 20(2) boundary 2 24. Reinhart Koselleck, Futures Past: On the Semantics of Historical Time, tr Keith Tribe (Columbia University Press 2004). Mira L Siegelberg, Statelessness: A Modern History (Harvard University Press 2020) 4–6. Let alone adopting a normative position that ‘hinges’ the very ‘human dignity’ of people so fundamentally to its recognition by a nation-state. 184