Precarious Citizenship, Securitised Minority Identity and their Human (In)Security in Postcolonial India:

The Case of CAA-NRC in Assam

Surbhi Khyati

 

Abstract: Postcolonial nation-states follow a trajectory of ‘nation-building’, wherein, more often than not, minority identities are securitised under pressure to assimilate with the majority. Identity politics has been a constant in the realm of security politics, where minority identities are ‘securitised’ by the political elite, using the ‘Security Speech Act’ to create a situation of emergency around these identities. Such socio-political processes pose a threat to the human security of the minority groups. This paper will focus on the process of ‘securitisation’ of the minority, through the ‘Speech Act’, which forces the narration of the minority community into the binary realm of insider/outsider or self/other. The case study of Assam will be used to examine the nuances of the ongoing issue of Bangladeshi immigrants in the state. A cursory analysis of Assam’s colonial history reveals a complex case of identity formation, where the colonial policy of drawing and redrawing the state’s borders facilitated the settlement of various ethno-religious groups through migration. Post-colonial realities and government policies further complicated the lives of communities residing in Assam. In contemporary politics, with the implementation of the Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA) and the National Register of Citizens (NRC), several members of the minority community have found their citizenship to be in question. The paper attempts to situate the discourse on identity based (in)security politics within the larger debate on nationalism and tries to unpack the changing dynamics of ‘securitised’ identities of the ‘Bangladeshi immigrant’ in Assam, conflating various identities to transform a ‘local’ political cause into a ‘national’ securitised minority politics.