‘India @75: Religion and Citizenship in India’
| Author | Madhav Khosla,Milan Vaishnav |
| Published date | 01 June 2022 |
| Date | 01 June 2022 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1177/23210230221082800 |
‘India @75: Religion
and Citizenship in India’
Madhav Khosla1 and Milan Vaishnav2
Abstract
As India celebrates 75 years of independence, fresh questions are being raised about who is an Indian.
This essay introduces a special section of Studies in Indian Politics which puts forward answers to this
question considering recent tectonic changes in India’s political climate and party system. We outline
how religion is being increasingly adopted as a filter through which citizenship is decided—both in
formal, legal terms as well as in informal terms. The special section delves deeper into this terrain,
exploring several critical themes: de jure changes to India’s citizenship regime, the relationship between
Hindu nationalism and liberal democracy, the judiciary’s role in adjudicating religious disputes, the
Muslim community’s response to recent policy shifts and the changing nature of electoral coalition
building. Taken together, the articles in this section represent a signal contribution to ongoing debates
in India—and elsewhere—on democracy, nationalism and inclusion.
Keywords
Religion, democracy, citizenship, India, nationalism
On 15 August 2022, India will commemorate the 75th anniversary of its independence. Undoubtedly,
this occasion will usher in countless assessments of India’s success as an independent, sovereign and
democratic nation. Amid such evaluations, one question emerges above all others: who is an Indian?
Indeed, this was the very question that dogged India’s nationalist leaders and the framers of its Constitution
more than seven decades ago. The question remains a vexed one given the partition of the subcontinent,
regional migration, the nation’s diverse ethnic and religious composition and changing social norms.
Through its constitutional and legal architecture, India sought to build a liberal democracy—one that
afforded all its citizens equal rights and equal protection under the law. This effort was, as the historian
Guha (2007) reminds us, one of the most reckless experiments in modern political history due to India’s
rigid inequalities, abject poverty, sprawling geography and linguistic diversity. Unlike its neighbor
Pakistan, India decidedly rejected the equivalence between religion, ethnicity and national belonging. In
the words of political scientists Stepan et al. (2011), India was explicitly crafted not as a ‘nation state’ but
as a ‘state nation’. The former seeks congruity between a country’s political boundaries and its cultural
Columbia Law School, New York, NY, USA.
2 Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, Washington, DC, USA.
Introduction to Special Section
Corresponding author:
Milan Vaishnav, Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, 1779 Massachusetts Avenue, NW, Washington, DC
20036, USA.
E-mail: mvaishnav@ceip.org
Studies in Indian Politics
10(1) 8–13, 2022
© 2022 Lokniti, Centre for the
Study of Developing Societies
Reprints and permissions:
in.sagepub.com/journals-permissions-india
DOI: 10.1177/23210230221082800
journals.sagepub.com/home/inp
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