Paper Trails: Mobility, Identity and the Indian State, 1947-60

• In Event: The First Decade: The Making of Post-Colonial State in India and Pakistan

Abstract

This paper examines how, in the first decade of independence, the Indian state viewed and framed policies related to mobility, i.e. movement of individuals and families. It shifts focus beyond partition-generated migration between India and Pakistan to the movement of Jews, Afghans, Iranians, and British nationals to India and of Indians to and from Sri Lanka, Burma, East Africa, Israel, and South East Asia. Such ‘migrations’ and the fate of those Indians settled in these regions became a central parameter in framing policies and legislations around Indian citizenship in the first decade of independent India. By widening the scope of post-colonial mobility, I advance two inter-related arguments. First, that the Indian state’s concern about post-colonial mobility reflected a ‘nationalizing’ need to situate people territorially. Consequently, the Indian State reframed the relationship between mobility and citizenship through various policies and legislations in the 1950s. Second, such movements was sought to be contained and regulated by the production of documents such as citizenship certificates, permits, passports and visas that introduced distinct norms of documentary identities in this decade. Here, I focus specifically on naturalization certificates issued to those who wanted to become Indians. Such documents not only ascribed nationality to the applicants (if approved) but also allowed the Indian state to frame itself as a nation and distinguish itself from the colonial state. By examining this ‘paper trail’ I hope to contribute to our understanding of the technologies of nation-state formation and how ‘Indians’ negotiated and adapted to their post-colonial predicaments.

Author

• Haimanti Roy, University of Dayton