Dilemmas of citizenship

The Assam exercise undermines the idea of India

The Central and state governments’ elaborate security arrangements before the second draft of the National Register of Citizens (NRC) was published on Monday indicates the deeply troubling nature of this Supreme Court-ordered exercise. As such, it is unlikely to solve the 40-year-old controversy over Indian identity. The exercise, the first since 1951, aims to establish Indian citizenship with the cut-off date being March 1971, in accordance with a 1985 accord signed between the government of India and the leaders of the Assam movement. The state’s experience of the issue of updating the NRC — Assam is the first state to